The Garden, a PJ Harvey Discussion Site

room509.net was one of the better PJ web sites. It died over a year ago. I recently found that most of it was captured by http://www.archives.org. Here is the last capture of it:

http://web.archive.org/web/200806010341 ... om509.net/

The Articles link contains the full text of a lot of very nice articles. There's a lot of other very cool stuff there as well. For example, these interesting comments regarding JD Salinger and the song Angelene:

"Inspired by "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" (JD Salinger). The story is as follows: an old man and a lady are in bed when the old man's friend, Arthur, calls. His wife has yet to come home from a party, and Arthur suspects her of infidelity. So the old man gives Arthur this really long pep talk and assures him his wife will return. Sure enough, she does. The woman Polly talks of in the line "Any man calls, I'll let him in" may be Arthur's wife. Arthur says whenever he thinks of leaving her, he remembers a poem he wrote to her: "Rose my color is and white/Pretty mouth and green my eyes".

Another thing to note is that in the same book of JD Salinger short stories (Nine Stories) the story "For Esme, With Love and Squaler" has the line "Dear God, life is hell" which can be compared to the similar line from this song."

or these comments regarding A Perfect Elise:

"This is a more direct connection to JD Salinger's "A Perfect Day For Bananafish" than merely the song title and the room number mentioned. The story is about a couple, Muriel and Seymour, who go on a vacation. The story begins with Muriel in hotel room 507 (harder to rhyme than room 509) convincing her mother, over the phone, that Seymour won't do anything crazy. Apparently Seymour came back from the war not quite right. Cut to Seymour: he's on the beach, when a young girl, Sybil, begins talking to him. He tells her it's a perfect day for catching bananafish. They try to catch some, to no avail. When Seymour returns to the hotel, Muriel is asleep. Seymour takes a gun, looks at his wife, and shoots himself in the head."

I was hoping thegarden.forum5.com would be there, but it's not. It appears to have been blocked.
http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/thegard ... robots.txt

So which other stories did Polly steal get inspired by?
I remember reading stuff about the aforementioned and a lot of White Chalk songs. Maybe we can organize all of those in one thread to give more insight on her plagiarism creativity.

jk.

There was a nice thread on the old board regarding the White Chalk lyrics. As I recall The Devil had an entire Dostoyevsky passage quoted in the lyrics. But didn't she acknowledge this in the album notes? Of course, my crappy WC CD didn't come with any notes so I can't verify this now. Someone on atforumz found this I think.

And When Under Ether is a passage/line in TS Elliot's (masterpiece) poem 2 (East Coker) of his masterpiece poem Four Quartets:
"Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing"

http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/coker.html


It would be nice to collect these in one place since these do come up every so often:

1. PJ lyrics inspired by literature (ITD - JD Salinger, Flannery O'Conner, WC - Dostoyevsky, TS Elliot)
2. PJ music inspired by others (Dylan, Beefheart...)

DrDark wrote:There was a nice thread on the old board regarding the White Chalk lyrics. As I recall The Devil had an entire Dostoyevsky passage quoted in the lyrics.

Not exactly right - it was Tolstoy's short story "The Devil" that inspired eponymous PJ's song and also Silence - lines "I freed myself from my family, I freed myself from work, I freed myself, and remained alone" are almost exact quotation (I judge by the Russian text though )

^ Doh, wrong Russian writer! Am I correct about her acknowlegment of this on the WC album notes?

maxno wrote:Not exactly right - it was Tolstoy's short story "The Devil" that inspired eponymous PJ's song and also Silence

Hey, how does it call in russian? (started wondering if I have this one at my parents library :P )

DrDark wrote: Am I correct about her acknowlegment of this on the WC album notes?

Dunno

DrDark wrote: Hey, how does it call in russian? (started wondering if I have this one at my parents library :P )

Дьявол

^Thanks! Now I see that it was a bit silly question But I wasn't sure how exactly "devil" sounds in russian Anyway, thanks again <3

AvrKadavr wrote:^Thanks! Now I see that it was a bit silly question But I wasn't sure how exactly "devil" sounds in russian Anyway, thanks again <3

I think the word is international. How does it sound in Pilish?

maxno wrote:

AvrKadavr wrote:^Thanks! Now I see that it was a bit silly question But I wasn't sure how exactly "devil" sounds in russian Anyway, thanks again <3

I think the word is international. How does it sound in Pilish?

"Diabeł", it's quite similar