The Britney Suite (2003)

Preface

After collaborating on the book A Town Like Parataxis and the video The Perfect Storm, Gabriel White and I were discussing a third idea - a film to be based on my sequence of poems The Britney Suite - when he left Auckland for Melbourne at the end of 2000.

We couldn't get funding to produce our screenplay, so both of us moved on to different projects instead. In the course of our work, though, we produced a version of the sequence illustrated with black-and-white blow-ups of Gabriel's fascinating Tongdo Fantasia photographs from South Korea (some of which appeared in Landfall 214 (2007): 32-40).

Very much in the style of Parataxis, this mock-up for an unpublished book still seems to me an interesting work in itself. In any case, I've decided to post it here online so you can decide for yourselves. You'll have to click on both the images and the text pages to see them properly, of course.

NB: The texts of the Paul Celan translations incorporated in the original work are available here.

An electronic text of The Britney Suite can be linked to from here.

A discussion of the work as a whole and what I was trying to achieve with it can be found in my paper "Meeting Paul Celan," delivered at the Poetics of Exile conference at Auckland University in July 2003.

Contents:

• COVER
  
  
• TITLE-PAGE
  
  
• COPYRIGHT
  
  
• DEDICATION
  
  
• CONTENTS
  
  
• QUOTATION (Britney Spears)
  
  
• [Paul Celan:] SCHNEEPART, gebäumt, bis zuletzt / SNOWPART
  
  
• QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
  
  
• QUOTATION (Cut Above)
  
  
• [Wendy Nu:] keith partridge y yo
  
  
• QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
  
  
• [Paul Celan:] ERZFLITTER, tief im / ORESPARK
  
  
• QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
  
  
• Who is Wendy Nu?
  
  
• QUOTATION (ISBN)
  
  
• Nouvelle vague
  
  
• QUOTATION (Britney Spears)
  
  
• [Paul Celan:] KALK-KROKUS, im / CHALK-CROCUS
  
  
• QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
  
  
• Letter to the author
  
  
• [Wendy Nu:] mr darling writes to penthouse forum [Wendy Nu]
  
  
• QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
  
  
• [Paul Celan:] DAS GEDUNKELTE Splitterecho / DARK
  
  
• QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
  
  
• QUOTATION (John Felstiner)
  
  
• QUOTATION (Nine Days)
  
  
• It’s always too late ...
  
  
• QUOTATION (Britney Spears)
  
  
• [Paul Celan:] BEIDHÄNDIGE Frühe / BOTH-HANDED
  
  
• QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
  

© Text: Jack Ross (2001) / Images: Gabriel White (2003)

The Britney Suite (3)

Text© Jack Ross, 2001
Photographs© Gabriel White, 2003
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-000-00000-0

• The poem “Nouvelle Vague” first appeared in Landfall 202 (2001): 111; the passages in French are quoted from Jean-Luc Godard, Nouvelle Vague (München: ECM, 1997).
• Quotations from Britney Spears come from Marcelle Katz’s interview, “Oops, she did it again …” TV Guide (October 13, 2000) pp.6-7.
• The facsimiles of Paul Celan manuscripts come from Gesammelte Werke in fünf Bänden, ed. Beda Allemann & Stefan Reichert (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986) 2: III, IX, XI, XII, 3: VII & VIII.
• The “Cut Above” advertisement comes from the New Zealand Herald (November 6, 2001) p.C7.
• The Britney Suite was first published in a numbered, limited edition of 20 copies at the Perdrix Press in April, 2001.

This book, The Britney Suite, is circulated and sold subject to condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s and/or the writer’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The Britney Suite (6)

I am eighteen years old and I have the whole world staring at me
– Britney Spears

The Britney Suite (17)

My main focus are my fans. Not some 40-year-old fart
– Britney Spears

The Britney Suite (20)

Isn’t this ‘Britney Spears’ some sort of sixteen-year-old pop idol with a pretty face and plastic voice? I think I noticed a lot of 9-year-old girls on a documentary going on about how she was their heroine and ultimate symbol of everything good in life. Oh yeah, more’s beginning to come back to me ... she’s impertinently sexy, licks her lips and looks like she’s just come in from an all-night party at the local brothel, and proclaims she’s a virgin and gives lectures about traditional family values. She the one?

– Letter to the author (29 October, 2000)

The Britney Suite (28)

You can be a good person and still be sexy
– Britney Spears