V. Vale - The Art of the Prank

Author: V. Vale

In 1977 Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg each gave $100 to V. Vale, a City Lights Bookstore employee, to begin publishing SEARCH & DESTROY which chronicled and helped spark the International Punk Rock Cultural Revolution. Inspired by Andy Warhol's early Interview tabloids, Vale's focus was on primary-source interviews and photographs involving artists. Search & Destroy morphed into RE/Search (get it?) which continues publishing books to this day. Vale's greatest hits include PRANKS, Modern Primitives (which, believe it or not, was originally conceived as a kind of faux-anthropological prank), J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, books on William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and the Industrial Culture Handbook, which put the "industrial music" category into the world's record stores and websites. Vale's most recent books include PRANKS 2 (which also includes a Joey Skaggs interview), J.G. Ballard Quotes, J.G. Ballard Conversations, and a limited-edition hardback on art paper of THE INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK.

J.G. Ballard “Obituary”
by V. Vale
researchpubs.com
April 19, 2009

J.G. Ballard with V. Vale

I particularly hate it when “rebels” die – there are already so few of them/us. Sometimes it seems like virtually everyone you meet these days in the world is a slave to the profit motive/capitalist imperative: “What’s the meaning of life?” “To make money!” J.G. Ballard, and another of my relatively recently deceased role models, W.S. Burroughs, both refused to prostitute their writing, and they both refused to shmooze and “network” merely to further their “careers.” Both had a hatred of bourgeois hypocrisy and phony politeness, while at the same time being deeply polite and courteous, almost to a fault “¦

But for now, let us think of ways to publicly mourn one of the greatest thinkers and poets of the past century. Continue reading “J.G. Ballard, R.I.P.”

This definition of pranks is from V.Vale’s introduction to his formative book PRANKS, published in 1987 by RE/Search Publications. I’ve always loved this essay. He has graciously allowed us to reprint it here. In 2006, RE/Search Publications released a follow-up book called Pranks! 2 that is equally seminal in its approach to the subject -JS

PRANKS. According to the Merriam-Webster New Collegiate Dictionary, a prank is a “trick . . . a mildly mischievous act . . . a practical joke . . . a ludicrous act.” The best pranks invoke the imagination, poetic imagery, the unexpected and a deep level of irony or social criticism””such as Boyd Rice’s presentation of a skinned sheep’s head on a silver platter to Betty Ford, First Lady of the United States. Great pranks create synaesthetic experiences which are unmistakably exciting, original, and reverberating, as well as creative, metaphoric, poetic and artistic. If these criteria be deemed sufficient, then pranks can be considered as constituting an art form and genre in themselves.

However slighted by Academia, pranks are not without cultural and historical precedent. Continue reading “Pranks Defined”