Nick Mount on Waiting for Godot

“That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.”

-Pozzo in Waiting for Godot

As mentioned in the July issue of Deep Madder Monthly, Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a play that captures the Deep Madder sentiment like very few other things in the world. Here is a lecture on the play given by Nick Mount, presented by the venerable TVO. Mount is one of my favourite professors at University of Toronto, and he gives a very apposite, almost Deep Madderian description of the emotional climate presented by said play. Please at least watch the initial anecdote, like ten minutes or something. It's really interesting.

Two new issues

We are both pleased and embarrassed to announce that the July and August issues of Deep Madder Monthly are finally completed and on the verge of being mailed out. You will likely not receive them until sometime next week, however, given that Friday is a statutory holiday. But at least you'll then have a suitable companion for your post-Christmas blues.

We are currently working on the September and October issues, which can hopefully be completed within a week or so. We'd ideally like to get completely caught up before the end of the year, and have the 2009 Anthologies available some time in January.

And finally, we'd be remiss if we did not mention that many of these updates are posted to our Twitter account before anywhere else.

Break Up

Canzine

Our participation in Canzine was surprisingly successful, despite our preparation the night before* having allowed us less than two hours of sleep. We sold five anthologies of Deep Madder Monthly and 80 individual issues were taken for free. We expected to sell no more than two anthologies. As you can see, we composed a makeshift table arrangement to present our wares, including a new poster logo thing, subscription form, and pricing sheet, including “celebrity” testimony to our credibility (funny quotations of people we admire commenting on our zine). At one point we were visited by someone from Torontoist, who subsequently mentioned us in this article on said web log. We definitely intend to attend Canzine henceforth. Thank you for joining us, everyone (give or take). It was fun.

*During which we made a new Deep Madder Radio episode.

Please Visit Us at Canzine

We have booked a table at this year's Canzine, which means we will be sitting somewhere in the Gladstone Hotel between 1-7 p.m. on 1 November 2009 feeling extremely nervous and unloved. Will you be so kind as to show (fake) your support for your most pitiable editors? Visitors will be rewarded with the opportunity to take a photograph of us feeling alienated in a milieu in which we should reasonably fit with the greatest consonance. Come to get your zines autographed, subscriptions renewed, or anthologies dusted!

We hope to have some sort of rushed, makeshift attempt at a “table display” to compensate for our lack of even the most amateur of marketing skills, as well as the fact that our zine and the entire Deep Madder enterprise are profoundly difficult to explain or justify. We will have the newest issues of Deep Madder Monthly available for free for curious passersby, perhaps sooner than they will reach subscribers, as well as anthologies for sale (so that we can feel sorry for ourselves when they fail to even attract a glance). We will also be offering a few new, made-for-Canzine novelty Deep Madder-themed items such as advertisement cards/pamphlets, (new) business cards, questionnaires, and maybe even posters. Please keep us company.

“The closest he came to marriage was two proposals, both to the same woman 46 years his junior, which were not accepted. For companions he relied instead on a circle of friends and correspondants, and especially, in later life, on his Suliot chef, Giorgis, a faithful friend and, as Lear complained, a thoroughly unsatisfactory chef. Another trusted companion in Sanremo was his cat, Foss, who died in 1886 and was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson. After a long decline in his health, Lear died at his villa in 1888, of the heart disease from which he had suffered since at least 1870. Lear's funeral was said to be a sad, lonely affair by the wife of Dr. Hassall, Lear's physician, not one of Lear's many lifelong friends being able to attend.”

-from the biography of illustrator/writer Edward Lear (1812-1888) in Wikipedia

"He was given to fits of rage, Jewish, liberal paranoia, male chauvinism, self-righteous misanthropy, and nihilistic moods of despair. He had complaints about life, but never solutions. He longed to be an artist, but balked at the necessary sacrifices. In his most private moments, he spoke of his fear of death which he elevated to tragic heights when, in fact, it was mere narcissism."

-written about Woody Allen's character, Issac, by his ex-wife in her book, in Manhattan. Christopher noted that this describes us (and Deep Madder) so well. It is one of my favourite quotations ever. I wish people said this about us.