Brian R. Banks
Brian R. Banks (Brian Robert Banks) is a writer and poet born in Carshalton, Surrey in 1956.
His mother Florence (‘Barbara’) Engel was a singer and his father Robert a printer for Fleet Street newspapers. Brought up in nearby Morden, he left home at fifteen to be involved with London’s Counterculture. There the decadent ‘bible’ À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans changed his life, [1] inspiring a debut letter in The Times Literary Supplement on errors about the French writer Léon Bloy. Full-time study at the British Museum Reading Room in Bloomsbury was aided by a descendant of samurai, Masako Sato, and the foremost English scholar of French Realism (art movement), Professor Colin Burns. Hand-copying sources there began a life-long interest in Outsider artists and writers.
Articles on Huysmans and 19th century poets such as Coventry Patmore, John Gray (poet), Arthur Symons, and Francis Thompson (whose life he parallels in some ways) appeared in various periodicals including the news-stand ‘Book Collector’ while working in a publisher’s office (when those to The Catholic Herald were unpaid, intercession with a bishop failed). While a tour-manager and label-finder for rock bands he shared the renowned esoteric bookshop of Catherine Walton’s Grimoire Books in Brighton.
Brian R. Banks’ first book The Image of Huysmans, [2] containing the fullest English bibliography on the subject, was reviewed in a 'The Times Literary Supplement’ cover-article. [3] It argued that an author’s posthumous reputation abroad should not be based on one single book—even the most famous—to the detriment of the career, which causes problems concerning reputation and context.
Colin Wilson introduced a follow-up but this was still-born at proof stage when the publisher was closed-down due to association with the rock band Psychic TV. An up-dated version will be published in January 2016 as J.-K. Huysmans and the Belle Epoque: A Guided Tour of Paris with Colin Wilson’s introduction, which partly appeared in his autobiography The Books in my Life in 1998. Along with private editions of poetry and essays, a first-hand research project was undertaken on psychic phenomena.
Emigrating at the turn of this century, several articles appeared in Polish and Czech periodicals (‘Teksty Drugie’; ‘New Eastern Europe’; ‘Discover Poland’; ‘Insider’), e.g. about the Polish writer Stanisław Przybyszewski (On the Trajectory of a Comet: An Arch-Decadent), Bruno Schulz, and the first English article on Stefan Zechowski (A Pilgrim of the Absolute) who died in 1984, co-authored with Marta Mazur after their interview with the painter’s widow-Muse in the village they lived all their lives. Banks has lectured in Belgium, Germany and Poland [4], interviewed on Polish and Israeli radio, and translated the pre-war Czech artist T. F. Šimon and catalogues at the Polish Institute of Jewish History.
Muse & Messiah: The Life, Imagination and Legacy of Bruno Schulz 1892-1942 [5] has been called the first and only international comparative study of that writer-artist, based on all-known international materials, interviews with witnesses, biographers, and extant family, currently used as the script-base for a second film on him by the Brothers Quay. Leading Polish publishers considered it too maverick (sometimes post-contract) because rather than perpetuating nationalistic nostalgia it discovers new biographical facts that are “too international” according to one publisher’s statement.
The author continues to write on Slavic subjects as well as on Rock music and Folk rock with interviews for numerous international magazines (‘Record Collector'; ‘Psychedelic Baby’; ‘The Rocktologist’ etc.) and CD liner notes. [6]
On the Origin of Spectres: The Burden of Psychical Research was issued as an 800-page Kindle e-book in 2015, reviewed by The Society for Psychical Research(London) and in America and Australia. Since 1992 he has been listed in The International Who’s Who of Authors (Cambridge), Contemporary Authors (St. James, USA), cited in the Encyclopedia of World Biography (Gale, 2013) and academic publications.
Notes[edit]
[1] Numerous translations since the 1920s either as Against The Grain or Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907).
[2] 1990, AMS Press, New York.
[3] May 30th 1992; reviews also in Canada, USA, Japan, France.
[4] Pogranicze Kulturowe (2009, Rzeszów University, Poland). International symposium on borderland culture.
[5] 2006, Inkermen Press, Loughborough, England.
[6] Medicine Head: Radio Sessions 1971-77 (2010, Angel Air Records)
External links[edit]
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