Bluestocking

We all have our own methods for picking what we’re going to read next, from friend recommendations and favoured websites to prize shortlists and ‘people who liked this…’ adverts. There’s a natural link between certain bands and authors – Suede and Ballard, Morrissey and Shelagh Delaney - and there’s a whole cottage industry of novels about Bowie (Slow Down Arthur, Stick to Thirty being my favourite). For me, the Manic Street Preachers guided a lot of my reading, from The Virgin Suicides to The Society of The Spectacle.

It’s less common for a single song to throw up enough recommendations to keep you busy, but one which manages this is Momus’s ‘Bluestocking’. Momus (real name Nick Currie) is a Scottish songwriter who emerged from the Glasgow School of the 1980s and has gone through various musical manifestations, from the traditional acoustic singer/songwriter set up, through ‘analogue baroque’ and ‘folktronica’ to his current ‘furtive and crepuscular’ loops and samples. Whilst his music has changed down the years, his lyrics have consistently revolved around tragi-comedy, murder, postmodernism and overt sexual references.

As a lyricist he is capable of poetic beauty in songs such as Lucky Like St Sebastian ('Oh Dante though I’m anti such romantic speculation I’m your hypocrite reader in the same situation, I’m your double’) as well as cruder statements (‘the cultural meaning of coming in a girl’s mouth’). Bluestocking leans towards the forthrightness of the latter, despite a surprisingly tender undertone. Like a classical poet, Momus addresses his loved one, praising her intellect and her dirty mind in equal measure: ‘I love you, you’re so well-read / blue stockings, well-spread / your carnal knowledge knocks me dead’, before going on to list the books they have enjoyed together. The titles he references are essentially a beginner’s guide to classic erotica, and are well worth further research.

Over the years, I’ve been slowly working my way through the lyrics like a reading list; I think the first I picked up was Sacher Masoch’s Venus in Furs, a classic of female cruelty and male submission on a par with Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden. Sacher Masoch will always be linked to de Sade as writers who gave their names to fetishes; unlike his more famous counterpart, he can actually write, and the cruelty of his heroine, Wanda, is deliciously chronicled.



From there, I moved on to Anais Nin, The Delta of Venus and Little Birds. One thing that always struck me from Nin’s writings was that her heroines must have possessed incredibly strong pelvic floors; regardless, I enjoyed the stories far more than the boorish trash peddled by her lover, Henry Miller.

The range of reading displayed in the song is eye-opening, from Frank Harris’s Victorian sex memoir ‘Lives and Loves’ (far superior to ‘My Secret Life’) to Bataille’s insane, surreal and perverse Story of the Eye. Francophiles will be pleased to see a strong Gallic representation including Lautreamont and Verlaine, while the references to Ovid, Petronius and the Latins of the silver age (Seneca, Apeleuis, Marcus Aurelius) took my knowledge of classical filth beyond the obvious Catullus verses.

Other highlights from Bluestocking include The Song of Songs, with its lush food metaphors, and the oral tales (behave) of The Decameron and Arabian Nights. The only one which has missed the mark for me, so far, was ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’, the narrator’s overly knowing tone at odds with most of the other texts. I still have a few to go (I haven’t got round to reading Mishima yet), but I’m getting there.

What songs have inspired you to pick up a particular book? Let us know in the comments section.