On Anna Howe

Anna is a feminine given name, the Latin form of the Greek: Ἄννα and the Hebrew name Hannah(Hebrew: חַנָּה, romanized: Ḥannāh), meaning “favour” or “grace”. – Wiki

I think you told me, sir, you never saw Miss Howe. She is a fine graceful young lady. A fixed melancholy on her whole aspect overclouded a vivacity and fire, which nevertheless darted now and then through the awful gloom. I shall ever respect her for her love to my dear cousin.

Never did I think, said she as she gave me her hand, to enter more these doors: but, living or dead, my Clarissa brings me after her anywhither!

She entered with me the little parlour. The moment she saw the coffin, she withdrew her hand from mine, and with impatience pushed aside the lid. As impatiently she removed the face-cloth. In a wild air, she clasped her uplifted hands together; and now looked upon the corpse, now up to Heaven as if appealing her woes to that. Her bosom heaved and fluttered discernible through her handkerchief, and at last she broke silence: Oh sir!—see you not here!—see you there-the glory of her sex?-thus by the most villainous of yours – thus – laid low! Ah, my blessed friend, said she! my sweet companion!— Anna Howe before the coffin at Harlowe Place, from Clarissa.

Women will have, whether by kin or soul, their sisters. Our Lady upon the Annunciation sought for directly her dear St. Elizabeth. Contrarily, that Hillary Clinton was described by the Shield Maidens during her Presidential run as “a woman but not a sister” must have stung deeply and struck home that cold poison pump of a heart. Clarissa’s glorious Anna Howe is among the first, and inarguably the best, of art’s saucy female friends. The feminine sauce-box soulmate will be portrayed throughout the subsequent three centuries since the publication of Clarissa, but none reach the grandeur of Miss Anna. Perhaps the highest compliment to Anna is that the perfidious Lovelace knows her to be his most dangerous foe, for Anna’s ferocious love for her dear Clarissa will not be brooked. At the fateful ball near the novel’s end, Lovelace and Anna meet for the first time since the totality of his evil has been revealed. The scene is the most beautiful, near allegory, of virtue’s consideration of the demonic. Bunyan could never. Miss Howe wishes nothing to do with Sir Lovelace, and she seats herself far removed in the corner to obviate his advances. Terrifyingly he suddenly appears – unseen by Anna – behind her seat, bending to her bejeweled ear while whispering, “I ask only 15 minutes with you.” Much may happen in 15 minutes, and Miss Howe isn’t here to play his reckless game. She is momentarily unnerved until she remembers her dear Clarissa. Virtue may flee until virtue must fight. Anna stands, directing herself to the exit. Lovelace attempts to detain her as she reaches the door to leave the demon to his admirers. Softly grasping her arm: “I ask, again, only 15 minutes.” Anna snapping open her fan, “accidentally” dislodging Mr. Lovelace’s impeccable wig in a mushroom cloud of hair powder before an entranced gaped-mouth ballroom is the supreme crushing of the serpent’s head in all of literature. It is also very wise advice for us when our own snakes touch our arm, imploring “just 15 minutes.” May God grant us all our own Miss Howe. And, as Clarissa most certainly was, may we be worthy of her.

On Robert Lovelace

I am now faced with the distasteful task of recording a definite drop in Lolita’s morals.

Regarding Samuel Richardson’s magisterial Clarissa and while paraphrasing Harold Bloom, it is Clarissa’s tragedy even if it is Lovelace’s play. Robert Lovelace is the great Satan of world literature.  However, it would be merely accurate to note his implacable, irreformable, remorseless malevolence.  Good reading services many ends, and reading Lovelace well is a supreme warning.  Fully descended from the titanic Iago, Lovelace is a monster of unsurpassable exuberance, luxuriating in the destruction he wroughts.  This is why the epistolary structure of Clarissa is so extremely important. Lovelace must, must admit. “Hey, Jack!”  The “monster” forever changes after Lovelace because the monster has been revealed to be human. Horror – at its “highness” – is the grand rebuke to the pagan satyr. We are not tilting dragons: the event horizon of the human abyss has been sung.  Lovelace is the human condition, of which natural goodness as a hedge against our darkness has been shown for what it is, the stuff of hell.  One reads Lovelace in 2026 as a mystical premonition of, among many others, Humbert Humbert, Freddy Kruger, and Hannibal Lector.  Hannibal Lector is particularly interesting, given Lovelace-Clarissa, Lector-Clarice.  The women spellbind their monsters, and the monsters control their women.  The women, these particular women, interest their monsters. The most insightful comment about Lovelace within the novel is from his best friend and too-belatedly reformed libertine Jack Belford, who remarks that Lovelace, when a child, tortured most those pets he loved best.  In his grip, you experience an equivocal falsehood called love. Out of it, an equivocal wrath.  Equivocation in all. Satan. Confession.  Anyone who has so unhappily found himself in a situation such as Clarissa’s, be it of friendship, of work, of romance, or of what you will reads with increasing terror.  He “loves Clarissa” and yet seeks her with increasing hatred until the very end. The end. Your end. He will not stop till she is dead. He will not stop until you are dead. The great Satan, indeed. This blog maintains that this world, this life under the valley of tears, is beautiful and dangerous. Temporally beautiful and eternally dangerous. Lovelace confirms and warns.  The monster changes after Robert Lovelace. 

The Raven as Lenore

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven is one of the great poetical works of Western Civilization. I’ve argued before for an esoteric reading of The Raven which has been heretofore unfortunately underdeveloped. The unnamed narrator is wearily pondering at that witching hour of midnight a “curious volume” of forgotten lore. As he nods but with no intention of sleep, there is suddenly a tapping. The Raven, published in 1845, was birthed in that tempestuous 1840’s decade in which Spiritualism – and “spirit knocking” – raged to prominence in the antebellum United States, and one need only consider as grimoire the narrator’s curious volume for a very different reading to effervesce. Poe was famously well read, and I choose to believe he knew and was influenced by Matthew Lewis’s diabolical The Monk. The Monk is, well was when formerly people read such things, criticized by the more pious for its peri-enlightenment skeptical portrayal of religion, and yet Lewis merely strips the Faust legend of saccharine poignance. The legend bit because Satan was very, very honest: “I’ll give you everything now, but I will take your soul for eternity.” It is Lewis, of all people, who asks the actually orthodox question, “why the hell would you ever trust the devil?” The monk, not exactly orthodox, is cheated through Satan’s duplicity even out of his “everything now,” and the demons writhe. The house always wins; and, in this valley of tears, it is still to some extent the Prince of this World’s house. Poe’s unnamed narrator is playing the devil’s game, no matter how casually he may thumb the spell book’s pages in that bleak December midnight. The narrator conjures with the devil his lost Lenore, and she dutifully arrives as the black and blackening Raven. “But tell me, oh, please tell me that you are in heaven?” “Nevermore!” Nevermore implies once was. Was Lenore in heaven until the narrator conjured her? Does judgment occur in heaven such that “all go to heaven” be yet another devilish trick? The narrator’s despair is that, should he go to heaven, Lenore will not be there. “Nevermore!” And if he stays with his beloved – “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting” – he will never go to heaven. “Nevermore!” He, like the monk, makes his choice. Never play with the Devil.

Reading 2025, A Selection and Best Of

The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser – I figured I’d finish it sometime around 2034 when the Cenobites manifest. I could not put it down and finished all 18 trillion pages of it just shy of 3 weeks. Britomart – picture Samus Aran become Strider (Genesis version, IYKYK) – and Belphoebe are two of the most enchanting female war machines in all of literature. The sections on Despair and the Bower of Bliss bury all but a handful of GOAT’s.

”Christabel,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge – anyone who has unhappily woken up, scales dropped, to realize this one being he has loved above all others only and only gives hugs that hurt knows the temptation: flee with abandon to the forest of angst or raise with quickness the bridge. The more the hug, the more and more the hurt. Is this, can this even be, love? Hugs that hurt as vampiric lesbianism.

On the Lapsed, St. Cyprian – anyone troubled with my tone should take a gander at Sts. Cyprian and Jerome and get back to me.

The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence – it’s about 25 pages long and took me longer to read than the The Faerie Queene. One does not thrill to Lawrence. Once goes to him as some go to the dentist. Still, the scene of Ursula and Skrebensky on the nighttime fantasmagoric sands of the doomed riverbed of Lethe is among the most heartbreaking I’ve ever read. I nearly cried. This scene, my word this scene, is nothing less than the ravages of modernity itself condensed and presented to the perceptual level. I have a screenshot of it and gaze whenever the demons get too close.

”Howl,” Allen Ginsberg – the Beats are like if Australia and Alanis Morisette got married and spawned the literary version of a Damien Thorn who decided to eat a rusted bucket load of shrooms and try his clawed hand at a poem.

Collected Poems, Emily Dickinson – the original goth chick. Witchy woman needed some sunlight and a Michelob.

Pamela, Samuel Richardson – how does one invent in the same work both the modern and the post-modern?

Symposium, Plato – I read it every year. Plato drinks you under the table (literally) and then walks home at dawn. Tl;dr: Plato >>>> Aristotle.

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy – Nietzsche once said somewhere or other that the scandal of Christianity is that Christ first resurrected and then died. This is not even in the ballpark of sanity; yet in Blood Meridian McCarthy terrifies us with his Big Bang as Apocalypse. The End and then the Beginning. The Judge will never die. Some say he never sleeps. The Judge will never die. Some say…

House of Leaves

This is not for you. – prologue, House of Leaves

Mark Danielewski’s Y2K-era House of Leaves is the cult horror equivalent to that other literary apotheosis of Generation X, Infinite Jest. Capitalizing on the era’s early internet culture and fascination with “found footage” tropes, House of Leaves is most famous for its labyrinthine structure. Johnny Truant, a down-and-out tattoo parlor worker bee in LA (does it get more Gen X? Yes, it does. He sojourns in Seattle.), is called over frantically at 3am to the apartment of his best friend “Lude.” A la Toni Morrison, person-names are very important here. Lude’s upstairs neighbor – a mysterious blind, elderly man named Zampanò – has passed away, and Lude is compelled to enter his apartment. Once inside the apartment and upon smelling a strong odor – not bad, just “sort of human” – Johnny now falls under the spell of compulsion as he discovers in a corner a massive stack of papers and detritus that he removes from the apartment. The papers are the beginnings of a scholarly manuscript describing and critiquing a massively influential and important documentary-turned-horror film, The Navidson Record. This film, created by the famous photographer Will Navidson of National Geographic fame, took the world by storm, showing as it does an inexplicable horror such that it is unclear if the footage is real or a hoax. Navidson’s reputation strongly argues against a fake. Entire schools of thought have developed around the meaning of The Navidson Record, and Zapanò’s is to be the definitive compendium. The manuscript is thoroughly footnoted, with an extensive bibliography, with commentary by major film and literary critics, with references to university film studies centered on the documentary. Johnny cannot stop arranging the manuscript into book form – Rime of the Ancient Mariner meets The Evil Dead. And he frequently adds his own footnotes and commentary to the manuscript. So the “structure” of House of Leaves is such that Johnny is compiling Zampanò’s manuscript of Navidson’s documentary-horror film. And there are mysterious, omniscient “editors” who with mercifully rare interpolation add even further comment. However, Johnny soon discovers that there is no evidence such a film, a person named Navidson, or any of the references or commentaries have ever existed. Why would Zampanò do this? How did he do this? Regardless, Johnny himself cannot stop – he must continue the manuscript, and his continuing of something which is obviously the product of a disturbed mind leads to his own insanity.

Whatever the merits of the book, I do find it interesting to consider HoL a generation later, in which strangers on the internet routinely are similarly compelled to extensively comment and compile (screenshots are the new bibliographies) upon other strangers’ writings about things that quite possibly have never existed. And occasionally these people go insane. House of Leaves, if nothing else, inchoately prophesied in its doomed house on “Ash Tree Lane” in which the inside is larger – and infinitely so – than the outside of the house, the phenomena of doom scrolling and trolling and that the Panopticon ever expands as it ever closes in.

Blood Meridian

My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed – The Wasteland

And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says hell never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite, He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing, He says that he will never die.

Cormac McCarthy’s incessantly violent Blood Meridian has been described as the apocalyptic American novel.  This is helpful.   One interesting thing about this particular apocalypse is that, given the novel’s setting in the 19th century unsettled American West, it is an apocalypse of a society which has yet to exist.  Those who read here and know I cast a sullen eye on descriptions of America as some end of history light-of-liberty on the Hegelian hill might understand why I can imagine that nearly any American novel is similarly apocalyptic – an end of the world for a world yet to exist.  A judge is one who guards justice – and “justice” in America is nonsensical.  Judge Holden, Satanic Antichrist, is the most terrifying character in American literature precisely because he is the apocalyptic modern, American brutal whimsical adjudicator.  

The Gray Ghost

Work conference personal post alert. Without getting too personal I’ll say I spend most of my work-a-day in a dog-eat-dog environment. By no means is it “cut throat.”  No one is actively seeking another’s metaphorical demise in order to move higher up the ladder.  But one does learn that eventually, should he ascend high enough, he will be called upon to perform a coup de grace.  Better to decide well in advance how one will face all that. My very first boss – whom I was rather close to and worked very closely with – was a 5-2 90 pounds-wet lady we called “The Gray Ghost.”  I never heard her utter a cuss word. I never heard her raise her voice.  But she was an inexorable cold hearted, merciless wraith of a being. She would tear your throat out and be off to her evening plans as untroubled as a lark. When I read Edith Hamilton describe Atropos, I always think of the Gray Ghost. I remember very early on in our work relationship she was discussing – she wasn’t one “to complain” – a colleague she had been annoyed with.  She asked my thoughts. “Well,” naively, “if he’s been doing good work and now not, maybe he has something going on outside of work.”  She stopped. “No.  He’s never been strong. And people don’t change. The only thing you can change in a bad colleague is his employment status.”  He was gone soon enough; walked out by security. There was an urban legend she asked him at that last, fateful interview right before she calmly told him he would never work there again if he had ever “read even one of” her books.  He was unable, so the legend runs and perhaps too nervous or perhaps too defiant to the end, to come up with a title.  The Gray Ghost. 

Pop Art

(Warning: Cologne nerd post). Tania Sanchez, writing in her magisterial vademecum Perfumes: The Guide, suggests typical steps to perfume nirvana. As I think this applies to many experiences with art more generally, I’ll offer my paraphrase. First one begins experiencing with whatever particular art is at hand – a film, a band or song, etc. Once he realizes he has an interest – or a love – our pilgrim voraciously ingests everything he can get his hands on. Then he believes he is an expert, a connoisseur, and he (often snobbily) seeks out the most niche, the most avant-garde, the most extreme, the most vintage. And finally, nirvana. Our pilgrim realizes life is short, one literally cannot ingest everything, and he settles into the comfortable mode of enjoying whatever movie he wants for the simple reason that it is what he likes.

For the longest time, I was intransigently opposed to “pop art.” Heavily under the esthetic influence of Ayn Rand and Harold Bloom, I wasn’t convinced pop art was even art. This pilgrim was at the third – and most annoying – stage. And yet I remember the first time I saw Warhol’s Marilyn and Elvis, and I keep coming back to pop art.

Similar to my views of pop art – and for similar motivations – I also was very annoyed at “journalistic” photography as an art form for quite some time. Though I appreciated “performative photography,” journalistic photography just seemed like the nightly news in snapshot. Meh. Tiptoeing to the fourth stage, coming out of the shadows of Rand and Bloom and appreciating so much the Goddard approach (ie, art redeems reality), I now tend to view photography as contemporary still life, and still life is a great love of mine.

One branch of abstract expressionism, the so called “Color Field School,” believed it was rescuing painting as an artistic media. Painting, they maintained, had become overly concerned with illustrating figures in three-dimensions. But three-dimensions aren’t possible on painting’s flat canvas. Painting was attempting to be “sculptural,” (since sculpture is properly a 3-D endeavor) and thus an impossibility and a lie. By eliminating figures and focusing on the flat plane of the canvas (think Mark Rothko) the movement was saving painting. I’ll agree that sounds like some hooey. But let’s continue.

It’s intriguing to me to consider pop art as photography, of sorts, of popular culture. And popular culture has some importance. But it’s also intriguing to consider pop art – similar to the color field motivations – as “saving” photography. Photography can never be “purely” journalistic or performative. Pop art manifests, reminds us of, this great truth.

The Scrivener’s Curious Lore

“Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone, “come here”…Upon this he noiselessly slid into view.

“Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?”

“I would prefer not to.”

Having just finished Herman Melville’s terrifying short story “Bartleby,” I wonder if Melville was inspired by the inescapable Poe’s “The Raven.” “The Raven” famously opens upon a dreary midnight in which the narrator is seeking “surcease of sorrow” from the loss of his beloved. The typical reading is that the narrator seeks forgetfulness through rummaging among some old books – a sentiment I understand completely.

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—”

“Perhaps” – Bartleby’s proprietor’s word! – there is much more going on this dreary midnight. Just what is this curious volume of lore the narrator is poring over? “Lore” is a knowledge or history typically passed down loosely through ages. Interestingly immediately after the narrator “ponders” over this lost knowledge he notes a rustling of his purple curtains. Purple in occultic practices signifies extra-sensory perception or psychic awareness – and the narrator’s purple has awakened.

“In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he: not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—”

It is just then that the raven bursts forth and lights upon pagan Athena’s statue. That the narrator was pondering his forgotten grimoire is evidence of Poe’s intriguing ambiguity. We can very well accidentally commune with Evil. Our narrator wasn’t seeking forgetfulness. He was pondering communication. And communication he got. The Raven.

Melville’s “Bartleby” conjures a dreariness of its own – sunny midday on Wall Street, Manhattan. And Bartleby, the man, is just as conjured – and just as accidentally – as his more famous Raven counterpart is. Part II to come.