Alexander Trocchi
Encyclopedia
Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi (30 July 1925 – 15 April 1984) was a Scottish
novelist.
to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys
, he attended University of Glasgow
. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to relocate to continental Europe. In the early 1950s, he lived in Paris and edited the literary magazine Merlin
, which published Henry Miller
, Samuel Beckett
, Christopher Logue
, and Pablo Neruda
, amongst others. Although not published in Merlin, American writer Terry Southern
, who lived in Paris from 1948−1952, became a close friend of both Trocchi and his colleague Richard Seaver
, and the three later co-edited the anthology Writers In Revolt (1962). Though established somewhat in rivalry with the Paris Review
, George Plimpton
also had served on Merlin's editorial board. Trocchi claimed that this journal came to an end when the US State Department
canceled its many subscriptions in protest over an article by Jean-Paul Sartre
praising the homoeroticism
of Jean Genet
.
Maurice Girodias
published most of Trocchi's novels through Olympia Press
, often written under pen names, such as Frances Lengel and Carmencita de las Lunas.
Girodias also published My Life and Loves
: Fifth Volume, which purported to be the final volume of the autobiography of Irish writer Frank Harris
. However, though based on autobiographical material by Harris, the book was heavily edited and rewritten by Trocchi.
. He left Paris for the United States
and spent time in Taos, New Mexico
, before settling in New York City
, where he worked on a stone scow on the Hudson river. This time is chronicled in the novel Cain's Book
, which at the time became something of a sensation, being an honest study of heroin addiction with descriptions of sex and drug use that got it banned in Britain, where the book was the subject of an obscenity trial; in America, however, it received favourable reviews.
Trocchi was then deep in the thralls of heroin addiction; he even failed to attend his own launch party for Cain's Book. His wife Lyn prostituted herself on the streets of the Lower East Side
. He injected himself on camera during a live television debate on drug abuse
, despite being on bail
at the time. He had been charged with supplying heroin to a minor, an offence then punishable by death. A jail term seemed certain, but with the help of friends (including Norman Mailer
), Trocchi was smuggled
over the Canadian border where he met up with Leonard Cohen
. His wife Lyn was arrested and son Marc detained, but later joined Trocchi in London.
, Califorinia, then the centre of the Southern California Beat
scene. In October 1955, he became involved with the Lettrist International
and then the Situationist International. His text "Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds" was published in the Scottish journal New Saltire in 1962 and subsequently as "Technique du Coup du Monde" in Internationale Situationniste, number 8. It proposed an international "spontaneous university" as a cultural force and marked the beginning of his movement towards his sigma project, which played a formative part in the UK Underground
. He resigned from the SI in 1964.
Trocchi appeared at the 1962 Edinburgh Writers Festival where he claimed "sodomy
" as a basis for his writing. During the festival, Hugh MacDiarmid
denounced him as "cosmopolitan scum." However, while this incident is well known, it is little remarked upon that the two men subsequently engaged in correspondence, and actually became friends. Trocchi then moved to London, where he remained for the rest of his life.
He began a new novel, The Long Book, which he did not finish. Much of his sporadic work of the 1960s was collected as The Sigma Portfolio. He continued writing but published little. He opened a small book store near his Kensington
home. He was known in Notting Hill as "Scots Alec." He died of pneumonia
in London, on 15 April 1984.
In the 1960s Trocchi lived in Observatory Gardens, Kensington, London on the two top floors of a 19th century terrace block comprising six stories. He had two sons: Marc Alexander Trocchi and a second son, Nicholas. The eldest son, Marc died of cancer at age 15 in 1974, and shortly after Alexander's American wife died. The final tragedy was the suicide of the youngest son, Nicholas who, some years after his father's death, returned to the family's home in London and leapt from the top floor of the five-storey building to his death. An interesting postscript: when the terrace block was extensively refurbished into luxury apartments in 1980s the number on Alexander Trocchi's house was removed, one assumes to avoid the house becoming some form of shrine.
movements of the mid-20th century began to rise soon after his death. Edinburgh Review
published a "Trocchi Number" in 1985 and their parent house published the biography, The Making of the Monster by Andrew Murray Scott, who had known Trocchi for four years in London and who went on to compile the anthology, Invisible Insurrection, in 1991, also for Polygon. These works were influential in bringing Trocchi back to public attention. Scott assisted the Estate in attempting to regain control of Trocchi's material and to license new editions in the UK and US and Far East, also collating and annotating all remaining manuscripts and documents in the Estate's possession.
During the 1990s, various American and Scottish publishers (most notably Rebel Inc.
) reissued his originally pseudonymous Olympia Press novels and a retrospective of his articles for Merlin and others, A Life in Pieces (1997), was issued in response to revived interest in his life and work by a younger generation. His early novel Young Adam
was adapted into a film starring Ewan McGregor
and Tilda Swinton
in 2003 after several years of wrangling over finance.
Tainted Love (2005) by Stewart Home
contains a lengthy 'factional' meditation on Trocchi's post-literary career period in Notting Hill. In 2009 Oneworld Publications
reissued Man at Leisure (1972), complete with the original introduction by William Burroughs, and in 2011 Oneworld Publications also re-released Cain's Book, with a foreword by Tom McCarthy.
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
novelist.
Early career
Trocchi was born in GlasgowGlasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys
Arctic convoys of World War II
The Arctic convoys of World War II travelled from the United Kingdom and North America to the northern ports of the Soviet Union—Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. There were 78 convoys between August 1941 and May 1945...
, he attended University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to relocate to continental Europe. In the early 1950s, he lived in Paris and edited the literary magazine Merlin
Merlin (literary magazine)
Merlin was an avant-garde British literary magazine. Seven issues were released between 1952 and 1954. It published the work of Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, Christopher Logue, Pablo Neruda, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others....
, which published Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, Christopher Logue
Christopher Logue
Christopher Logue, CBE is an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He has also written for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage...
, and Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, amongst others. Although not published in Merlin, American writer Terry Southern
Terry Southern
Terry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...
, who lived in Paris from 1948−1952, became a close friend of both Trocchi and his colleague Richard Seaver
Richard Seaver
Richard Woodward Seaver was an American translator, editor and publisher. Seaver was instrumental in defying censorship, to bring to light works by authors such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Eugene Ionesco, E.M. Cioran, D.H. Lawrence, Jack...
, and the three later co-edited the anthology Writers In Revolt (1962). Though established somewhat in rivalry with the Paris Review
Paris Review
The Paris Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. Plimpton edited the Review from its founding until his death in 2003. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S...
, George Plimpton
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...
also had served on Merlin's editorial board. Trocchi claimed that this journal came to an end when the US State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
canceled its many subscriptions in protest over an article by Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
praising the homoeroticism
Homoeroticism
Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...
of Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
.
Maurice Girodias
Maurice Girodias
Maurice Girodias was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press, and spent most of his productive years in Paris.-Early life:...
published most of Trocchi's novels through Olympia Press
Olympia Press
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane...
, often written under pen names, such as Frances Lengel and Carmencita de las Lunas.
Girodias also published My Life and Loves
My Life and Loves
My Life and Loves is the autobiography of the Ireland-born, naturalized-American writer and editor Frank Harris . As published privately by Harris between 1922 and 1927, and by Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press in 1931, the work consisted of four volumes, illustrated with many drawings and photographs of...
: Fifth Volume, which purported to be the final volume of the autobiography of Irish writer Frank Harris
Frank Harris
Frank Harris was a Irish-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day...
. However, though based on autobiographical material by Harris, the book was heavily edited and rewritten by Trocchi.
Drug addiction
Trocchi acquired his lifelong heroin addiction in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He left Paris for the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and spent time in Taos, New Mexico
Taos, New Mexico
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,700. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, and El Prado. The town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American...
, before settling in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he worked on a stone scow on the Hudson river. This time is chronicled in the novel Cain's Book
Cain's Book
Cain's Book is a 1960 novel by Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi. A roman a clef, it details the life of Joe Necchi, a heroin addict and writer, who is living and working on a scow on the Hudson River in New York....
, which at the time became something of a sensation, being an honest study of heroin addiction with descriptions of sex and drug use that got it banned in Britain, where the book was the subject of an obscenity trial; in America, however, it received favourable reviews.
Trocchi was then deep in the thralls of heroin addiction; he even failed to attend his own launch party for Cain's Book. His wife Lyn prostituted herself on the streets of the Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
. He injected himself on camera during a live television debate on drug abuse
Drug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
, despite being on bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
at the time. He had been charged with supplying heroin to a minor, an offence then punishable by death. A jail term seemed certain, but with the help of friends (including Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
), Trocchi was smuggled
Smuggling
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...
over the Canadian border where he met up with Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
. His wife Lyn was arrested and son Marc detained, but later joined Trocchi in London.
Later life
In the late 1950s he lived in VeniceVenice, Los Angeles, California
Venice is a beachfront district on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, fortune-tellers, artists, and vendors...
, Califorinia, then the centre of the Southern California Beat
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
scene. In October 1955, he became involved with the Lettrist International
Lettrist International
The Letterist International was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord as a schism from Isidore Isou's Letterist group...
and then the Situationist International. His text "Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds" was published in the Scottish journal New Saltire in 1962 and subsequently as "Technique du Coup du Monde" in Internationale Situationniste, number 8. It proposed an international "spontaneous university" as a cultural force and marked the beginning of his movement towards his sigma project, which played a formative part in the UK Underground
UK underground
The Underground was a countercultural movement in the United Kingdom linked to the underground culture in the United States and associated with the hippie phenomenon. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London...
. He resigned from the SI in 1964.
Trocchi appeared at the 1962 Edinburgh Writers Festival where he claimed "sodomy
Sodomy
Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
" as a basis for his writing. During the festival, Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
denounced him as "cosmopolitan scum." However, while this incident is well known, it is little remarked upon that the two men subsequently engaged in correspondence, and actually became friends. Trocchi then moved to London, where he remained for the rest of his life.
He began a new novel, The Long Book, which he did not finish. Much of his sporadic work of the 1960s was collected as The Sigma Portfolio. He continued writing but published little. He opened a small book store near his Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
home. He was known in Notting Hill as "Scots Alec." He died of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
in London, on 15 April 1984.
In the 1960s Trocchi lived in Observatory Gardens, Kensington, London on the two top floors of a 19th century terrace block comprising six stories. He had two sons: Marc Alexander Trocchi and a second son, Nicholas. The eldest son, Marc died of cancer at age 15 in 1974, and shortly after Alexander's American wife died. The final tragedy was the suicide of the youngest son, Nicholas who, some years after his father's death, returned to the family's home in London and leapt from the top floor of the five-storey building to his death. An interesting postscript: when the terrace block was extensively refurbished into luxury apartments in 1980s the number on Alexander Trocchi's house was removed, one assumes to avoid the house becoming some form of shrine.
Resurgence
Interest in Trocchi and his role in the avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
movements of the mid-20th century began to rise soon after his death. Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
published a "Trocchi Number" in 1985 and their parent house published the biography, The Making of the Monster by Andrew Murray Scott, who had known Trocchi for four years in London and who went on to compile the anthology, Invisible Insurrection, in 1991, also for Polygon. These works were influential in bringing Trocchi back to public attention. Scott assisted the Estate in attempting to regain control of Trocchi's material and to license new editions in the UK and US and Far East, also collating and annotating all remaining manuscripts and documents in the Estate's possession.
During the 1990s, various American and Scottish publishers (most notably Rebel Inc.
Rebel Inc.
Rebel Inc. was an iconic Scots counter-culture publishing company and literary journal, founded by Kevin Williamson in 1992 with the upfront but accurate slogan of "F*** the Mainstream!"...
) reissued his originally pseudonymous Olympia Press novels and a retrospective of his articles for Merlin and others, A Life in Pieces (1997), was issued in response to revived interest in his life and work by a younger generation. His early novel Young Adam
Young Adam
Young Adam is a 1957 novel by Alexander Trocchi which tells the story of Joe, a young man who labors on the river barges of Glasgow, and who discovers the body of a young woman floating in the canal...
was adapted into a film starring Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor. He has had success in mainstream, indie, and art house films. McGregor is perhaps best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting , young Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy , and poet Christian in the...
and Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
in 2003 after several years of wrangling over finance.
Tainted Love (2005) by Stewart Home
Stewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
contains a lengthy 'factional' meditation on Trocchi's post-literary career period in Notting Hill. In 2009 Oneworld Publications
Oneworld Publications
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey to publish non-fiction for general and academic markets. Based in Oxford, it publishes across a wide range of subjects, from history, current affairs, and religion to philosophy,...
reissued Man at Leisure (1972), complete with the original introduction by William Burroughs, and in 2011 Oneworld Publications also re-released Cain's Book, with a foreword by Tom McCarthy.
Novels
- Helen and Desire (1954)
- Carnal Days of Helen Seferis (1954)
- White Thighs (1955)
- School for Wives (1955)
- Thongs (1955)
- Young AdamYoung AdamYoung Adam is a 1957 novel by Alexander Trocchi which tells the story of Joe, a young man who labors on the river barges of Glasgow, and who discovers the body of a young woman floating in the canal...
(1957) - My Life and LovesMy Life and LovesMy Life and Loves is the autobiography of the Ireland-born, naturalized-American writer and editor Frank Harris . As published privately by Harris between 1922 and 1927, and by Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press in 1931, the work consisted of four volumes, illustrated with many drawings and photographs of...
: Fifth Volume (1954) - Sappho of Lesbos (1960)
- School for Sin (1960)
- Cain's BookCain's BookCain's Book is a 1960 novel by Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi. A roman a clef, it details the life of Joe Necchi, a heroin addict and writer, who is living and working on a scow on the Hudson River in New York....
(1960)
Collections
- Scott, Andrew Murray, editor. Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds: A Trocchi Reader, (1991)
- Seaver, Richard, Terry Southern and Alexander Trocchi (eds). Writers in Revolt: An Anthology (1962)
Biographies
- Scott, Andrew Murray. Alexander Trocchi: The Making of the Monster (1992)
- Bowd, Gavin. The Outsiders: Alexander Trocchi and Kenneth WhiteKenneth White (poet)Kenneth White is a Scottish poet, academic and writer.-Biography:Kenneth White was born in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland, but he spent his childhood and adolescence at Fairlie near Largs on the Ayrshire coast, where his father worked as a railway signalman.White obtained a double first in...
(1998) - Campbell, Allan, and Tim Niel (eds.). A Life in Pieces: Reflections on Alexander Trocchi (1997)
About Merlin and Paris
- Campbell, James. Exiled in Paris: Richard Wright, Lolita, Boris Vian and others on the Left BankExiled in ParisExiled in Paris is a 1994 book by James Campbell, a Scottish cultural historian specialising in American Literature and culture. He is the former editor of the New Edinburgh Review and works for the Times Literary Supplement...
(1994) - Scott, Andrew Murray. Trocchi and MacDiarmid, Where Extremists Meet, Chapman magazine, no. 83, 2003.
- Hill, Lee. A Grand Guy: The Life and Art of Terry Southern, (Bloomsbury, 2001)