Comments on: Evil River

By: Jim Pennington

Jim Pennington — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 13:06:58 +0000

come World War Three, I’ll be listening out for “dim, jerky, faraway”, knowing that’s when the Wild Boys will start chucking their film grenades

By: Ron Thorndycraft

Ron Thorndycraft — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 14:58:40 +0000

In my copy of George Millar’s novel ‘My Past Is An Evil River- there’s a signed inscription dated 1957: ‘With all good wishes from an author who fears this book was written too close to it’s subject’. 60 years ago that was understandable but the passing of time has obscured that thought somewhat. Millar had read French poetry, and in WW2 as an agent of SOE with the French resistance chose a remembered line of Baudelaire as a secret signal for the BBC to broadcast when a supply drop was to be made to a parachuting ground he’d organised: ‘La langoureuse Asie et la brulante Afrique’. Similarly, lines of Verlaine were used to warn the resistance of the imminence of the D-Day invasion.

By: Jim Pennington

Jim Pennington — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 19:50:05 +0000

I just read this Millar book … It is not without substance even though the dynamic is conventional. It has interesting structures (eg odd passages of dialogue, parallel narratives ) and I can well imagine (and let’s accept Burroughs did read it once) that it appealed to Burroughs on this account and for it’s essential didact: forget the past (i.e. Hitler and what he stood for) or it will poison/kill you (i.e. continuing the war as guerillas, as some Nazis did, will get you nowhere). His marriage to Ilse may well have resonated.. as would have his reliance on Freudian therapy to cope with the evil river of his past sexual encounters. This maybe simplifies matters too easily but it has helped me understand a few things. And I can well imagine that there is a book/mss with that title waiting in the Amazon wings to appear….

By: John Church

John Church — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 22:36:46 +0000

I’m sure you know this but George Millar was a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, (I can’t remember which), also a fluent French speaker who spent time in France as a young man and who served with SOE in the Second World War; parachuted behind enemy lines ahead of D Day to create havoc in occupied France.

He may well have created the translation of which you speak specifically as a title for his novel. I, on the other hand, am not an educated man and had never heard of the said Verlaine, but was searching in google for the origins of George Millars title. Thanks for that!

By: RealityStudio

RealityStudio — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:30:59 +0000

Evil River is not coming out and, according to a “source,” there was never even a manuscript for it. See here:

https://realitystudio.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=500&p=4016&hilit=evil+river+source#p4016

By: randy

randy — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:13:10 +0000

Interesting info–but you never answered the question. Is there a WSB bio called Evil River and if so, when will it be published? I’m starting to believe this is some myth, like a second autobiography from Harry Crews or the Will Christopher Baer novel Godspeed.