BAR STORIES, PART I

Drunk Text - Maudlin & Pugnacious It’s Thursday night. That means it is a drinking night in the college town where I live. I live on the periphery, not just of the town but also of its society. I am too old to be an undergraduate, and too young and unmoored to be a family … Continue reading BAR STORIES, PART I

DISCOURSE AS HOME: AN ANALYSIS OF W.H. AUDEN’S “IN PRAISE OF LIMESTONE”

Despite the familiarity of the voice in W.H. Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone” (from the helpful instructiveness of “Mark these rounded slopes” to the gentleness of “my dear”)—the poem remains stubbornly enigmatic. As critic John Hildebidle has noted, “When Modernist syntax is most direct, the idea being expressed is often most complex ... the tone … Continue reading DISCOURSE AS HOME: AN ANALYSIS OF W.H. AUDEN’S “IN PRAISE OF LIMESTONE”

New Juche: Abjection, Location, Prostitution and the Unmasking of Western Culture

Obsoletion of Genre The Scottish writer New Juche moved to Southeast Asia from Edinburgh during the mid-2000s, in search of perversity and abandon. And if his books are any indication, he found what he was looking for. Abjection, cruelty, and sexual degradation — masturbation, prostitution, porn, and all the viscous fluids that flow from them … Continue reading New Juche: Abjection, Location, Prostitution and the Unmasking of Western Culture

Every Dog Has His Day: The Greatness Of Dylan Dog

To call Sherlock Holmes a “literary sensation” may be the greatest understatement in history. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decided to kill off the character, which he decried as a burden that kept readers away from his more serious historical fiction, the good people of Britain wore black armbands in mourning. They refused to believe … Continue reading Every Dog Has His Day: The Greatness Of Dylan Dog

Against Decolonization

I Just Watched a Land Acknowledgement on Masterchef Australia “I think even racism can be ambiguous here. You know, once I made an interview where I was asked how do we find reactionary racism. You know what was my answer. With progressive racism. Then, ah, ah, what do you mean? Of course I didn’t mean … Continue reading Against Decolonization

The Night Guest

The bedroom was illuminated only by a clouded Apollo in a silver cage. At a glance, Anja could identify a number of unusual things about this creature. For one, the fact that it was glowing at all, a flame of blue indignation licking at the dusty darkness. Not only that, the colour of its light … Continue reading The Night Guest

Miss Jones and the Designs of the Devil

In “La représentation de la mort dans le cinéma américain,” eccentric sociologist Roger Caillois examined the depiction of the afterlife in a handful of postwar American films. He was surprised to find a seemingly coherent mythology emerge, one which seemed to easily map onto the collective imagination. According to Caillois, the films suggested a consistent collapse of the old … Continue reading Miss Jones and the Designs of the Devil

Fulci The Pessimist

Known as “The Godfather of Gore” (a title he shares with Herschell Gordon Lewis), Lucio Fulci’s oeuvre is actually far more complex than his sobriquet might suggest. Fulci’s work, like those of his contemporaries in post-war Italy, ran the gamut from sword and sandal to polizioschetti to gialo to sex farce. Italian filmmakers were working … Continue reading Fulci The Pessimist

Corn on Macabre – An Appreciation of Robert McCammon

Good horror, like good love, is hard to find. And as we hurl toward Halloween the hunger for heinous haints hooks the heart like Pinhead’s chains. But where can you get that ferocious fix in these trite and troubled times? Lord knows the movie morlocks at Netflix and Amazon have double-dipped a well that’s bone … Continue reading Corn on Macabre – An Appreciation of Robert McCammon

QUIS UT DEUS? (Who Is Like Unto God?)

Grosbard’s 1981 film True Confessions begins with what is probably the best existing depiction of the Catholic Latin Mass, “celebrated” by Robert DeNiro, who reportedly insisted on learning to say the entire liturgy correctly and did every take as a full solemn high nuptial mass (its most elaborate form). The scene lingers notably on the … Continue reading QUIS UT DEUS? (Who Is Like Unto God?)