Bad critics, good drink and young women
Citizen Kohen
Aryan Kaganof
2004
Pine Slopes Publications, Bryanston, South Africa
The Freedom Fighters
Aryan Kaganof
2004
Illuseum Press, Amsterdam
Stones Again
Aryan Kaganof
2004
Pine Slopes Publications, Bryanston, South Africa
Reviewed by Trevor Steele-Taylor
The ever prolific Aryan Kaganof’s latest publications (as apart from an array of new films) are, as ever, self-reflective diaries; narratives formulated from ceaseless notetaking, filtered through carnal nets of young girls, alcohol and cinema and guided through the maelstrom by the philosophers Hegel, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.
Citizen Kohen is a truly breathtaking work. A book on cinema to rival Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time and equally a book of lies, which creates a myth where cinema is intrinsic along the lines of Stephan Laws’ Demoniac, Tim Lucas’s Throat Sprockets and the classic of them all, Theodore Roszak‘s Flicker.
Citizen Kohen is a filmmaker who, travelling internationally to film festivals as an honoured, if badly behaved guest, slips into the roles of assassin, seducer and philosopher. That which surrounds the narrative is what really matters. The progress of Kohen’s travels is interrupted by film reviews and analyses written by fictitious critics with names concocted from slight alterations to the names of the living. These analyses generally involve a film by the title of Femme de Siecle, a film directed by Kaganof’s previous embodiment, Ian Kerkhof, as a homage to the Spanish director, Jesus Franco. The film does exist. A crystalline meditation on the feet of a girl as she ascends a staircase to indulge in vampiric fellatio. The film being analysed though, does not bear any relation to the film as it exists and references all manner of other Kaganof/Kerkhof productions, including those, which do not exist.
The joke of jokes is the vast filmography, which concludes the book. Some films listed really exist. A good deal of them don’t. Many will never. Some will in time.
With The Freedom Fighters, Rimbaud stands at Kaganof’s elbow as he anguishes over turning 40. A slim volume of poetry, beautifully produced by the Amsterdam-based illuseum press, the brief verses take us on a journey through low budget eateries and sexual episodes with Joan of Arc, escaping the process of ageing and, more importantly feeling the scorn of Rimbaud who, by that age had given up poetics altogether for the more fulfilling epiphany of criminal activity.
Kaganof’s intrinsic romanticism is doom laden to be sure. Shedding tears over growing old is a difficult river to cross safely (and joyfully) and his memories of women veer from the blunt ("I once fucked a girl in Beaufort West") to the visionary ("In my dream, a naked woman drove my car without her seatbelt on") but the lesson is Rimbaud’s once again with support from Wittgenstein – Silence – "without Rimbaud’s silence there is no Beckett. Not yet mature enough for silence, Kaganof writes poems in shabby bars – entertaining the teenage waitresses".
"He finishes typing the manuscript of his fictional autobiography and realises that he has not written a novel"
Stones Again, Kaganof’s most recent opus is the follow on from this. By no means silent, but without a plot, he sits in a shabby bar (Stones, on the right side of Main Road, Melville, Johannesburg, going up and on the left, going down), entertaining the teenage waitresses with his notes, observing alcoholic delirium tremens, cocaine-fuelled visits to the toilet and young girls playing pool. Wittgenstein will not leave him alone and neither will the obsession with turning 40.
The narrative is divided by brief haikus called Shooters (the concocted drink guaranteed to land one on the floor – 12 certainly would to even the stoutest stomach). Kagonof sits on his barstool and the interminable bustle of meaninglessness goes on around him. He would never pursue a conversation with a girl (be she barmaid or waitress) who had never heard of Wittgenstein, but, the pre-finale of the book involves teenage waitress, Nina slicking her tongue deep into his mouth, unrepulsed by his prophylactic tooth-brace. Is it a dream or is it not? Does it matter? Has she heard of Wittgenstein? Forty is just around the corner.
If viewed as a sub-Bukowski presentation of alcoholic eternity, Stones Again comes a trifle short, but that is clearly what this book is not. It is a book about the failure to construct sense (plot) out of senselessness (life). He says so himself:
"Kaganof has failed. He finishes typing the manuscript of his fictional autobiography and realises that he has not written a novel. There is no plot."
Trevor Steele Taylor is the co-director of the Cape Town International Film Festival
