Bart Plantenga - A punk Borges: the surreal, political & aesthetic levity; it is communicating with the guts, genitals and five portals of sense

Bart Plantenga, Beer Mystic

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"The Beer Mystic was born under unusual but [sur]real circumstances. I did actually walk under streetlights in NYC and they did give up the ghost and go out. This was long ago when exhaustion, disillusionment, poor eating habits, drink and nightclubbing probably had a mind-altering effect on my reality. It was also during this time that we quite coincidentally formed the legendary [at least in our own minds] NYC writing group, The Unbearable Beatniks of Light, later just The Unbearables.
Over time my fiction, meta-fiction and non-fiction has appeared in over 200 sources. The Beer Mystic has appeared in a number of literary sources including Semiotext[e] SF. Most of these were in earlier pre-pubescent versions; the latest, final version now appears online in a unique format called the Beer Mystic Global Pub Crawl.
40 sites host a Beer Mystic excerpt
Each host includes the excerpt plus the URL to the BEFORE and AFTER excerpt. Browsing of host sites is also encouraged.
People can click to specific excerpts or follow the path of URLs from beginning to end of Beer Mystic.

“Top-fermented, with a good nose, an acrid middle, a dry finish — bubbly and acidulous in reserved measure –and with ambient yeast peculiar to the Lower East Side, the kind that turns concrete to dust. Plantenga is a poet and a prankster as well as a distinguished bathtub brewer. He deserves immediate investigation.” - Luc Sante

"Time: The months around Black Monday, October 1987, date of the last financial crisis – the scent of Prozac perks the air.
Ambience: Grim Reagan-era tension between the Haves & Have-nots [& the Have-something-elses]. A swirling delusional state of drunken godliness and traffic gridlock as an urban metaphor for meditative clarity and epiphany all culminates in the Central Park Zoo as a city-wide dragnet including police dogs and helicopters closes in on the Beer Mystic.
Attitude: Anti-traffic, pro-beer, pro-darkness and libation, distrustful of dogs and their owners. Mystification is transformed into mysticism.
The Beer Mystic: Furman Pivo, a young, disillusioned lad, is probably in the wrong place with too much information and not enough ambition. He subsists inconspicuously in a shadowy zone, outside of the velvet ropes of the trendiest clubs. The velvet ropes are the contemporary equivalent of the barbed wire that separates us from them. He teeters on the ragged edge of schizoidal perceptions – The Man Who Fell To Earth as Charles Bukowski reading Albert Camus – and takes an offhand cue from the Situationists of lore, who believed the efficient organization of life as manifested by the logical grid of the city, the enhancement of traffic circulation and streetlight strategies to ensure safety are ultimately detrimental to dreams and human creative endeavors. Dreams are born in the dark.
Furman is originally from somewhere else Midwesternish, both immigrant and itinerant, with dreams fueled by listening to Patti Smith’s “Piss Factory” one too many times. He is a foot messenger and aspirations are soon whittled down to desperate gestures that cling to what is left of pride.
Furman, too geared up to stay “home,” wanders the forgotten seams of nocturnal New York to wear himself out so he can eventually sleep. He drinks to slow the world down, reverse the dizziness imposed upon us by the spin of our earth.
One fateful night Furman is offered a third way. He discovers himself drunk under a NY streetlight – when suddenly this streetlight goes out, on the blink, extinguished – Poof! – it’s dark.
Coincidental synchronicity: It happens again… and again and again. The unusual becomes the uncanny, and perceived synchronicity begins to acquire a mystical spin. He begins to believe he [or he + beer] may be the cause of these outages. The events are fixed somewhere between mystification and environmental consciousness. he discovers that the urban blight of excessive light has devastating effects on human dreams. As do automobiles and dogs, each killing in us the dreams we use to sustain our inner lives. \without dreams, denizens seek dream surrogates elsewhere in consumer activities: partying, drugs, shopping, status.
The Beer Mystic is born: Furman’s life gains mission. The battleground is laid out: Beer + him vs. light + cars… his life changes, gains substance, responsibility, and ultimately a quasi-religious fervor with a sense of mission.
The Beer Mystic eventually becomes convinced he has one week to live. He vows to make his “last days” a romp, a decidedly going-out-with-a-bang affair – a riot of automotive anarchy; Manhattan’s automotive infrastructure, by the end, is paralyzed in a state of [in]glorious, cacophonous gridlock – he has indeed for one instant mastered the significance of his insignificance. But, in the end, he does NOT die and this means he is in big trouble.
Magical realism? Speculative meta-fiction? Or something more hybrid, deceptive, transient, possible…"

“The Beer Mystic is so goddamn good at the end of the fog. The surreal, political & aesthetic levity talked to me in person. It sent me full speed into the outrageous black hole of Americana. I recommend it unconditionally; a wise, witty, poignant gift of real pleasure…” - Larry McCaffery
























Bart Plantenga, Wiggling Wishbone: Stories of Patasexual Speculation, Autonomedia, 1996.


"A sinister collection of stories that, through force of language, reveals the limits of power and commerce. His “intelligent rage” addresses Hitler from his dog’s point of view, a sexual liaison with Andy Warhol, the Pope’s wet dreams, and other targets. Plantenga has been called “the William Gibson of the Lower East Side,” “a punk Borges,” and simply “an incredibly talented underground writer.”

"Illustrated collection of speculative stories, meta-essays, blasphemies, and pata-fictions. Compared to Burroughs, Borges, Ballard, Southern, Phillip K. Dick...
Includes a mail order catalog tour, Andy Warhol and his hair, prosthetic sex organs, a forensic scientist falls for a car crash victim, Hitler from his dog's point of view, strange drink recipes, a woman without a face, sexual malfeasance in the Vatican.
A NOVEL OF EVERYDAY PARTICIPATION: Story proposes offer to participate in actual novel by purchasing your character and level of involvement in the novel.

“frightfully intelligent” - Andrei Codrescu

“an incredibly talented underground writer” - Glenn Branca

“playfully experimental, funny & futuro like the high end of sci fi and the high end of erotic fiction” - John Strausbaugh

“The William Gibson of the Lower Eastside.” - Charlie Morrow

“Bart Plantenga writes fiendishly inventive short pieces of fiction.” - Russ Kick

“cryptic Phillip K. Dickian sci fi stories full of gruesome detail delivered hard-boiled style.” - Evelyn McDonnell

"A scathing assault on passive cultural carrion who get their rocks off strictly from media consumption. A thoughtful, clever & well-written collection... a hilarious & disturbing vision of the not-so-distant future." - Margaret Weigel

"Bart Plantenga has constructed a dense, and often hilarious, tropic of shattered pasts and people who cannot be separated from their plastics, machines and isms in his glorious collection of meta-fictions, Wiggling Wishbone. The only way this could be done convincingly is at the level of language. The prose is an intense cauldron which ties together the body… But the book's core consists of a thoughtful reworking, a deeper elaboration of, the principles of [the crime] genre… Wishbone reshapes this material in an unusual way. It could be said that the book's great innovation is to project a noir future. … Language gives us a future. The critical yet poetic language Plantenga accesses mixes the technocratic language of the armored state with the observant, chivalrous talk of the ad character. … Thus the book's substantial powers include: 1) a transvaluation of noir values, 2) a transplanting of them into a more critical look at how the apparatus of modern domination works, 3) a deeply felt, darkly imagined world, with plausible, real, anguished characters, [4) the beautifully sophisticated stranding of the two worlds by the creation of a neo-language that takes in both its bivalved fluctuations.]" - Jim Feast






Bart Plantenga, Spermatagonia: The Isle of Man [a graphic novella], Autonomedia, 2003.







"As everyone knows, psychogeography is the study of the effects of the geographic environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals. So when Kees Califlora, a corporate psychogeographer (paid to locate places where people are predisposed to certain marketable behaviors), begins to doubt the validity of his own identity and experience, he's too well-informed about the fictions of his own life to address it directly. The result is a dizzy unravelling, as Kees abandons friendships, interactions, and eventually even language."

"Spermatagonia: Not a state, not a place, it confronts our crushing contemporary zeitgeist and details the implosion of a self-styled underground club boytoy gone straight. Kees had been pursued by Angela and David Bowie, Warhol, Capote, Monie Love, Von Bulow, Jenny Jones, Malcolm McLaren, was pampered by Gore Vidal, tromped around with Tennessee Williams, had bit parts in a Serge Gainsbourg and a Butthole Surfer video, and had odes to him written by poetic homo-revolutionaries. As kees becomes increasingly ensnared in an illusory past and an incongruous future, he vows to disappear — physically, spiritually, and mnemonically."

“robust, intelligent, determined, articulate... courageous, and cool.” - Robert Coover

“radiant with the importance of the dead... I was overjoyed to silence.” - J.P. Donleavy

“it did the job; put truth on record... It is communicating with the guts, genitals and five portals of sense.” - Thomas Pynchon

“it is fantastical creations like this that have the power to make us regret the world of reality…” - Naomi Klein

"Plantenga captures the petty chill of hip sweatshops as skillfully as his character captures laughter. Plantenga's style is free form… Poetry jumps from his prose. Along the triple x route to the enlightened implosion of Laugh Man Spermatogonia takes fascinating side trips. Including explorations of the nature of laughter and the use by intelligence agencies of sound as a torture technique. Spermatogonia is illustrated with Dave Lombard's b&w photos, which evoke the album art of No New York and the furtive alien autopsy shots of Fox Muldaur." - Peep Magazine









Bart Plantenga, Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World, Routledge, 2003.




"Wait a minute. Yodeling spans the globe? Not only Alpine sheepherders and American cowboys do it (or, if they're gentlemen, don't)? Guess its history is secret, even if its performance never could be. Plantenga, a novelist and DJ rather than an academic, starts his survey, predictably, in Switzerland and Alpine Germany and Austria, but then proceeds to (often) lower elevations: the Low Countries, Central Europe, the Balkans, Scandinavia, and Italy; then India, Hawaii and the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand (figures: they got cowboys, too); then Africa and Latin America--all before getting to Anglo North America. For each place, he describes the kind of yodeling done there and, in generous sidebars, notes great practitioners, especially those who have been recorded. The last two chapters are concerned with yodeling's crossover into funk, rap, and techno. Who'da thunk? Plantenga's presentation is rather scrappy, sometimes reading like downloaded, spell-checked research notes, but his fascination with yodeling is contagious, making this a honey of a folk-and-pop-fans' browse." - Ray Olson

"The hills are alive with the ululations of centuries of yodelers, whose echoes persist undyingly. Bart Plantenga shows how yodeling, which may be encoded in our DNA, is humanity's most open secret, linking Swabian and Farsi, mountain and atoll, cowboy and jazzbo. Like an errant carnival ride, his book is fun, head-spinning, and ontologically profound." - Luc Sante

"How did an ancient Swiss mountain tradition evolve into an American country-music staple? That's only one of the questions Plantenga seeks to answer in his solid, exhaustive look at yodeling, a high-pitched ululation good for herding cows, marketing Tarzan, and inflicting Martian brain melt in a Tim Burton film. Moving beyond the kitsch factor, the author credits Jimmie Rodgers, the tubercular Singing Brakeman, for siring Nashville's infatuation with this Alpine cry; notes that real cowboys probably didn't yodel before Gene Autry; and tracks the warble as far as Bollywood and New Zealand." - Entertainment Weekly

"For 150-year-old academic publisher Routledge, a major release is usually a heavy classroom tome. But this fall it found itself with an uncharacteristic hit: Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World ($20), by radio deejay Bart Plantenga, which has attracted an audience of hipsters that, says Marketing Director Frederic Nachbaur, has helped it sell more copies than many Routledge titles do in an entire run. The book traces the singing style to such unlikely places as Central Africa and Mexico, and dishes on its various adherents. Everyone from Sly and the friggin' Family Stone, the Fugees, De La Soul... to even the Velvet Underground have used yodels, Plantenga says." - Washington Post

"Writing like the manic, gonzo son of Nick Tosches, Plantenga here crams into his text just about everything one would ever want to know and then some about yodeling and yodelers. A DJ and amateur musicologist, he intends to trace yodeling from its Swiss origins to the upper registers of country, funk, folk, and pop, among other genres. As a thoroughly entertaining, throttle-at-the-red-line ride through the history of the various discrete styles of yodeling,this book scores a ton of points. The bibliography is thorough, and the annotated listening lists are highly eclectic and full of insight. Highly recommended for all public libraries and for academic libraries with significant popular culture or world music collections." - James E. Perone

"Both a serious study of the history of yodeling, and a fun look at how this unique sound has worked its way into popular culture...promises to be a classic for fans of music and pop culture." - BookSense

"The British-Irish folk music/American country link is common knowledge, but the provenance and, goddammit, appeal of the yodel in country (and, claims, Plantenga, rap, reggae, ambient and rock music) remains a mystery. Tackling his subject manfully and opting for humor over academia, he wrangles it into a Rough Guide-like format, with pull-outs on key figures and artifacts and a useful glossary (epiglotissary?) of terms." - Sylvie Simmons

"Like its subject, this history of the yodel is both goofy and heroic. Plantenga unearths loads of historical data about the yodel, from its origins in Appalachia to its secret presence in modern pop, with stops in Germany, Latin America (where Tarzan's yell receives an entertaining sidebar) and, of course, American country music. Plantenga's style is breezy and ingratiating and he wisely refuses to treat yodeling or yodelers as a joke. An excellent treatment of an underdiscussed subject." - Michaelangelo Matos

Bart Plantenga web page