Yes, it's true. Tim Barrus is dead. I know it 'cause Prairie Mary said so.
Of course, it's not really true - not any more true than that there is a band of questing, transgressive, fatally ill but very, very sexy teens wandering somewhere around a tourist's fantasy of Europe. Or that Tim Barrus once interviewed Mao. Or that he's somehow managed to reconnect with the child he once adopted.
It's getting harder and harder to slog through the nonsense that roars out of NasTimWorld, and so I don't often bother. I sometimes wonder if he hasn't programmed an autotext generator, a program that randomly spits out prose based on a limited vocabulary, all of it focused on hating publishing, craving publicity, and terribly, terribly wanting to be "dangerous". Oh, and, of course, every once in a while randomly inserting the phrases "and I am Marie of Rumania" and "My eyes to the sky" into the proceedings.
So who knows what's going to happen next? And does anyone really care?
A sidenote: I happy to be very well educated, all allegations to the contrary not withstanding. I can hold my own discussing existentialism or dialectical materialism; I can talk about the causes of the Franco-Prussian war; I can even wax eloquent, if need be, on Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Mapplethorpe, or Mao Tse Tung, even though I never met a one of them. So there. Hell, at least I know that catacombs don't have windows...
And to a previous commentor: the prounciation of "Nasdijj" has been discussed here.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Namedropper
Well, it's still all much of a muchness in BarrusWorld, but his usual loops are closing in again. He's spent much time of late playing with his sad little homunculi, dragging the imagined imps through various hoops and to his fanciful lairs, most recently in a highly suspect "Amsterdam" that - as with his writings on Greece, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere - suggests strongly that he's never traveled much further from Lansing, Michigan than Hendersonville, North Carolina.
What's interesting, though, to the real aficionado, is that he's circling back in on the things that really interest him, returning to the screeds against publishing that did so much to endear him to that world back in the days when he actually did have a publisher; the horrible injustices done to him when Tim Barrus was exposed as Nasdijj (or is that vice versa?); and returning to his old themes of all the Great and the Good he once graced with his presence. It's a familiar gallery of faces: Mapplethorpe, Capote, etc., and undoubtedly just a matter of time before Tennessee makes his obligatory appearance. NasTim stands outside what despite himself he still sees as a charmed world and looks in, and it's really rather airless and sad.
But - in the past, the re-cropping up of these themes has heralded a change. Perhaps he's getting tired of this particular pretense - the maverick leader of this group of underage junkie hooker artists that he's been toying with for some months now; the "co-writer" with the equable Prairie Mary on what must indeed be a very odd book; the occasional vlogger. What could come next?
If I had to bet, I'd say: yet another coterie, in some mildly changed way, of glitteringly tragic boychiks, all agog at the greatness of Tim - followed by tirades against publishing, narcissistically autobiographical bits about great days with Robert and Truman - and then yet another hemi-semi-demi-metamorphosis.
At least, from I can see, he's had no success (and, in fairness, doesn't really seem to have tried) in actually scamming people to believe this latest saga. The next one?
I'll keep an eye out and let you know...
What's interesting, though, to the real aficionado, is that he's circling back in on the things that really interest him, returning to the screeds against publishing that did so much to endear him to that world back in the days when he actually did have a publisher; the horrible injustices done to him when Tim Barrus was exposed as Nasdijj (or is that vice versa?); and returning to his old themes of all the Great and the Good he once graced with his presence. It's a familiar gallery of faces: Mapplethorpe, Capote, etc., and undoubtedly just a matter of time before Tennessee makes his obligatory appearance. NasTim stands outside what despite himself he still sees as a charmed world and looks in, and it's really rather airless and sad.
But - in the past, the re-cropping up of these themes has heralded a change. Perhaps he's getting tired of this particular pretense - the maverick leader of this group of underage junkie hooker artists that he's been toying with for some months now; the "co-writer" with the equable Prairie Mary on what must indeed be a very odd book; the occasional vlogger. What could come next?
If I had to bet, I'd say: yet another coterie, in some mildly changed way, of glitteringly tragic boychiks, all agog at the greatness of Tim - followed by tirades against publishing, narcissistically autobiographical bits about great days with Robert and Truman - and then yet another hemi-semi-demi-metamorphosis.
At least, from I can see, he's had no success (and, in fairness, doesn't really seem to have tried) in actually scamming people to believe this latest saga. The next one?
I'll keep an eye out and let you know...
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Back in the Spotlight
Well, well, well - whaddya know? Our boy NasTim has returned to the headlines as the new year gets under way, thanks to the literary-hoax roundups prompted by the unmasking of yet another memoir-faker. The Tim Barrus/Nasdijj story has gotten itself star spots in at least two lists of "top ten" frauds, in Time and on the ABC News site.
I hope this little reminder of scams past doesn't cause too much angst for the poor troubled boys over at Too - God knows they have hard enough rows to hoe as it is, sad little imaginary imps. NasTim really loves putting them through their paces, coming up with ever more harrowing traumas for them to savor.
Meanwhile, he's also found the time - remarkable for someone supposedly running three shelters on three continents - to once again become something of a fixture on various New York Times blogs. Seems like that would be much easier if one were, instead (and just for an example), oh, I don't know - sitting around a house in North Carolina without much else to do?
Oh - and his rather baffling acolyte, the redoubtable Prairie Mary, is now accusing me of having written poison-pen notes to Barrus's sad little he-nymphs. All I can say, for the record, is: tain't so. NasTim's multiple paranoias can extend however far they like, but that doesn't change the fact that I obdurately remain not Lars Eighner or any of the other "persecutors" he or anybody else have ever mentioned. I'm just a blogger with an interest in truth.
I hope this little reminder of scams past doesn't cause too much angst for the poor troubled boys over at Too - God knows they have hard enough rows to hoe as it is, sad little imaginary imps. NasTim really loves putting them through their paces, coming up with ever more harrowing traumas for them to savor.
Meanwhile, he's also found the time - remarkable for someone supposedly running three shelters on three continents - to once again become something of a fixture on various New York Times blogs. Seems like that would be much easier if one were, instead (and just for an example), oh, I don't know - sitting around a house in North Carolina without much else to do?
Oh - and his rather baffling acolyte, the redoubtable Prairie Mary, is now accusing me of having written poison-pen notes to Barrus's sad little he-nymphs. All I can say, for the record, is: tain't so. NasTim's multiple paranoias can extend however far they like, but that doesn't change the fact that I obdurately remain not Lars Eighner or any of the other "persecutors" he or anybody else have ever mentioned. I'm just a blogger with an interest in truth.
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