The Gallery magazine articles by Alan Cabal

Although periodical writer Alan Cabal is best known as a New York Press writer, he has written for other publications like High Times and CounterPunch. Then there is Gallery magazine. He wrote two articles for the publication back in 2000. When I mentioned to Mr. Cabal that I had read his Gallery magazine articles, his response was: "It might amuse you to know that they tried to stiff me on the money for that. Of course I got it, but the inherent absurdity of trying to stiff a guy on an article about the collections business resonates with the times, no?" Gallery magazine went bankrupt in 2008, according to Wikipedia. Also, according to Wikipedia, they left "many photographers and models empty handed; some were owed as much as $100,000."

Of Mr. Cabal's two articles for Gallery, one was about his three years in the collections industry and the other was about the Slovenian avant-garde music group Laibach. In "When A Stranger Calls" he gives a personal account of the collections industry followed by advice on how to protect yourself from a collector; and in "They Might Be Nazis?" he gives a short history of the music group Laibach's origins. You can read them both below.

Here are scans of page 46-50 of his Gallery article "When A Stranger Calls: The Ins And Outs Of The Collection Trade"  from the April 2000 issue (republished below with permission from writer Alan Cabal; the illustrations are by Tony Millionaire):

Page 46:

Page 47:

Page 48:

Page 49:

Page 50:

And here is a scan of page 143 of Mr. Cabal's Gallery article "They Might Be Nazis?" from the March 2000 issue (republished below with permission from writer Alan Cabal):

Although Gallery's management were apparently assholes who often wouldn't, or couldn't, pay their employees, the end result seems to have been a decent magazine, with softcore nudity that you can share with your girlfriend to her enjoyment too. You might even be able to get her to recreate some of the photography for you. I did.

First known interview with Alan Cabal materializes on the web!

Alan Cabal, February 2010

Jeepers, blogger Mesikämmen has posted an excellent interview with Alan Cabal! It's funny and unpredictable, and as far as I know, the first known interview with Alan Cabal, ever. Here's a sampling of some of the exchanges between Mesikämmen and Alan Cabal:

Q: Who are the most dangerous men on Earth? Why?

A: Darth Cheney has no pulse. Do the math. Does the name “George Romero” ring a bell anywhere? HE’S A GODDAMNED ZOMBIE, they are fucking RARE now, but the fucking things will be galloping over YOUR GODDAMNED WELL-MANICURED EUROPEAN HEDGES shrieking about their RIGHTS to bite into your BRAINS and SPINAL CORDS turning you into their feces or worse.

...

Q: What makes you American? I feel you are in your own peculiar way very American – what is the essence of your American soul?

A: I was born here. I could not possibly be anything but an American. I have no discernible or traceable biological origin. It is sealed.

Alan Cabal, February 2010

For your benefit, I will elucidate upon why, I think, Mr. Cabal's biological origin is "sealed": his biological mother was seriously troubled, and so Mr. Cabal ended up in the hands of an adoption agency that probably seals their records from the prying eyes of their clients' progeny.¹ He probably has little idea about who she was, and even less idea about who his father was. Mr. Cabal  has written that his biological mother claimed to have been raped and that the adoption agency had declared her "borderline psychotic." Here's the rundown about his biological mother from his NYPress essay about his adoptive mother:¹

I was born on Dec. 1, 1953, to a weird little girl from Bridgeton named Helene who was 15 years old. Her mother was a certified schoolteacher who for some reason was working as a bus dispatcher at the time. Her mother has been described to me as "abrasive and domineering." Helene played the piano and had an interest in mathematics. She had a tendency to break out in hives when she got nervous, which was fairly often by most accounts. She had been raped, or so she said. Spring fever, perhaps. The adoption agency’s psychiatrist declared her "borderline psychotic," but psychiatry is at best an inexact science, kind of like voodoo or dowsing. They bury their mistakes, like the rest of the medical profession.

Mr. Cabal's mention of Operation Paperclip in the interview piqued my curiosity, and maybe it did the same for you, too? If you want to read more about some of the ideas that Mr. Cabal has, then check out his extensive bibliography which I put together in my spare time in my capacity as a NYPress scholar.

Take-away question: Why is Mr. Cabal's biological origin sealed?


Sources:

1) "Badlands: Burying Camden And My Mom", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 6 (February 9–15, 2000).

William Monahan once rang up writer Anthony Burgess in the middle of the night

As I wrote a few days ago, I'm apparently a big bother to writer and filmmaker William Monahan. Perhaps it's the far reach of my research into his works, which has brought me into contact with his friends, brief acquaintances, and even former colleagues. Or maybe it's the genealogical research I've been doing into his family tree. What writer wants someone poring through official documents left behind by the members of their family for the purposes of elucidating upon their written works.

You may have noticed that so far I have exclusively discussed writer William Monahan and his works in my blog entries without any mention of other New York Press writers, other than briefly mentioning C.J. Sullivan the other day. This is just the current kick I'm on. Before I started this blog I had just finished writing a biography of NYPress writer Alan Cabal. I've done some research into NYPress writer Jim Knipfel, but other than his memoirs and some of his journalism, I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Knipfel's works. I think Mr. Knipfel is a great character though, but on the whole he's a hack (he admitted as much in an interview, if I recollect properly).

As troubling as it may be to have someone examining your life's work with a magnifying glass, at least my efforts are not inane. As Mr. Monahan tells it, he and his friends once rang up writer Anthony Burgess in the middle of the night and did nothing more than ask one silly question after rousing him from bed. Here is the conversation that Mr. Monahan claims to have had, circa 1992, with writer Anthony Burgess (1917 – 1993):

Excerpted from Mr. Monahan's NYPress essay "Byrne"¹:

One night back in my party days we drank several bottles of Jagermeister, had a talk about the state of literature and decided to call writers. Someone who had just read John Cheever's letters tried to call Allan Gurganus' mother and ask how she thought he'd got into The New Yorker. We tried Julian Barnes. Amis was unlisted. Gore Vidal came to naught—you try to get a phone number in Italy at 3 a.m.

Finally it occurred to us: Anthony Burgess. If anyone would talk to us—if there was anyone we wanted to talk to—it was Anthony Burgess.

He having published his addresses in his autobiography (either Little Wilson and Big God or the other one), we figured he wanted company and wouldn't mind a call. I got directory information in the Principality of Monaco (you have to call France for this) and asked for the number for Mr. John Wilson. The phone purred about 4000 times and then an old Englishman answered.

"Who in God's name is it?"

"Anthony Burgess?"

"Yes?"

"The writer Anthony Burgess?"

"Yes, yes, yes."

I braced myself and got to the clever part.

"Is your pen name John Wilson?"

At this moment, of course, I realized that I'd totally fucked up what I had intended to say. Burgess himself was floored by the inanity of the question. Three thousand miles of weirdness crackled on the line. Burgess recovered first.

"No," he said, smoothly, "I have nothing to do with him." There was another protracted silence. "Go to bed," said Burgess, not unkindly, and hung up.

About a year later, he died. From then till now I have never bothered another writer, and so it shall be, selah. All that's left is karma.

Anthony Burgess was the pen name of John Burgess Wilson, though every reader knows the man by his pen name rather than his real name. When I read Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange a few years back I loved it and even took to using, for a short time, and only with my close friends, the fictional argot called Nadsat that the characters in the novel talk to each other in. If Mr. Monahan's anecdote above is any indication, Anthony Burgess seems to have been a kind, gentle man, though I don't know what his temper was with journalists, interviewers, and his biographers. Everyone has their snapping point.

Take-away question: Who were Mr. Monahan's drinking buddies on the night they called up writer Anthony Burgess?

Sources:

1) William Monahan. "Byrne", New York Press, vol. 10, no. 32 (August 6–12, 1997), Books & Publishing Supplement, p. 14.