Things to keep in mind:
The secret of what keeps it going.
What, after all, kept him writing with any sense of accomplishment if his view of the present state of life was so melancholy, and his faith in words to sustain a better vision so frail? Why did not he cease before he did?
The answer may be partly that for Spenser, in his own particular form of exile in Ireland, writing had become somehow synonymous with living. The long poem, instinct with a better time, peopled with the glistening creations of his imagination, sustained him despite the profound disappointments and frustrations of creating and living. To stop one would have meant stopping the other. That the attraction of ceasing was strong is attested by the temptation to give in that assails his epic protagonists; that he saw no final reconciliation of the images in his head and what he saw around him, or even what he could write, is evident from his own words and from the fact that all ideal moments of vision vanish and all the lovely ladies and brave knights meet only to part with promises of future bliss.
—posted 855 days ago
Two bananas and a New York Times.
Forty’s coming slowly, sadly. —I suppose I was due for a bit of a break after last year’s epic run? But not too much, no, no. The next three novelettes have to go off like clockwork, plotwise, at least: maybe that’s why the words have suddenly gone chary.
So here, have a cover reveal; the image that will eventually grace this dilatory no. 40, “ – dirty white noise – ”.
In other news, I’ve started reruns: posting the early stuff on the sorts of webserial portals where the kids hang out these days, Royal Road and Reddit and Scribblehub, to start. Think of it like cheap paperback editions on spinner racks in drugstores, and I do not mean for any of that to be taken as the slightest bit derogatory. There’s honor in the stooping. —One can’t help but feel the slightest bit out of place, though: I’d been discombobulated enough by urban fantasy’s slip into paranormal romance; now the shelves are littered with things like isekai and litRPGs and ratfic and “hard magic” systems, and I’m just dizzy. Still. One has to put oneself out there.
A final bit of teasing: there may well be some new edition news forthcoming. I’ve been running some numbers. We’ll see.
But that’s all about handling what’s already been written! I need to get back to what comes next. Happy spring once more, y’all.
—posted 985 days ago
(Originally posted on the Patreon.)
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of magical realism.
The first recorded use of the term can be found in the work of the German philosopher and poet Novalis, who, in 1798, wrote of two hypothetical kinds of prophets: a magischer Idealist, and a magischer Realist. The discussion—one about idealism and realism—is beyond the scope of this piece, so suffice it to say that the term is then put to sleep for more than a century, until another German, Franz Roh, summoned it in 1925, when discussing a specific vein in German painting of the late 1910s to early 1920s. It is in his book Nach-Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Probleme Der Neuesten Europäischen Malerei that magical realism resurfaces, now deployed to explain a distinct return to realism in post-Expressionistic painting. “Magical,” according to Anne Hegerfeldt, is how Roh understands this return—one mediated by “a sense of mystery and unreality.”
Interestingly, the term reappears a year later in Italy, in the work of Massimo Bontempelli, an Italian poet and future secretary of the Fascist Writers’ Union. Whether Bontempelli—who was more interested in fabricating new European “myths” after the hard reset of World War I than with German Idealism or painting—was aware of the work of Novalis and Roh is a matter of debate. But that Bontempelli is looking for “an explanation of mystery and daily life as a miraculous adventure,” in the words of Maryam Asayeh and Mehmet Arargüҫ, and the fact that he was a wordsmith (a fascist poet, that most sado-masochistic of combinations), puts his understanding of the term closer to ours.
—posted 1086 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the impossible.
“Imagination to power,” as the French students said. “Be practical, do the impossible,” because if you don’t do the impossible, as I’ve cried out over and over again, we’re going to wind up with the unthinkable—and that will be the destruction of the planet itself. So to do the impossible is the most rational and practical thing we can do. And that impossible is both in our own conviction and in our shared conviction with our brothers and sisters, to begin to try to create, or work toward a very distinct notion of what constitutes a finally truly liberated as well as ecological society. A utopian notion, not a futuristic notion.
—posted 1094 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the ancillary.
He was the born confidant, the shadowy friend, the evasive supporter. What you assert he does not deny. In a sense he acts out feminine attributes in relationships, he yields, he consoles, he sustains. He is the felt in the bedroom slipper, the storm strips on the wintry windows, the wool lining back of piano keys, the interlining in conversations, the shock absorber on the springs of cars, the lightning conductor. He is the invisible man. When he worked at the press with us, and Gonzalo’s anarchism, erratic hours, cause us so much anguish and extra work, he was the receptive ear, the devoted helper. In his diary he asserted his physical hungers and fulfillments. But I have yet to know this enigmatic friend.
—posted 1102 days ago
Hexagonagall.
Oh, hey, I kinda lost the conceit on the last one, didn’t I. Shoulda been something like Heptanomicon, instead of an ansible quote.
Anyway. —The kid’s now had a thirteenth birthday, which has me feeling the passage of time in all kinds of ways; the first draft of no. 39 proceeds apace, on track to finish on time, if not necessarily under budget (there’s already one scene that went on for over 1,800 words because it took me a while to figure out what it was trying to do, so that’s gonna need to be completely restaged on the rewrite, and no, it’s not the one with the adraxone monologue). —But it’s nothing we can’t handle.
Click here, then, for the cover reveal (or here, for the underlying image): the VERN, Chilli’s unofficial headquarters on Southeast Belmont, as fine a Tower as he’s ever likely to fall from. —The real name of the joint is Hanigan’s Tavern, but it’s been called the Vern by just about everybody ever since the night somebody parked a tall truck a little too close. Or, at least, that used to be the real name: couple of years ago a couple of entrepreneurs added this dive to their portfolio of reclaimed watering holes, remaking the interior with tchotchkes salvaged from other dead bars, redoing the menu and the liquor shelf, and renaming the new joint officially as the Vern, which seems to miss several important points all at once.
In the meanwhile, my coffee cup’s (once more) almost empty, which means the cat asleep on my lap is about to be rudely awakened (again), and I’ve yet to hit today’s word count. Happy November, y’all.
—posted 1104 days ago
(Originally posted on the Patreon.)
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the dew.
It is a fine new day and the suns are bright. Dew glistens on the robot and the axe. The robot says Good morning, or perhaps it is the axe, which you stole as a child from the secret fortress in the mountain, and which looks very grave today. Suddenly a mother ship of the enemy pierces the upper atmosphere, blotting out a sun. The axe begins to sing. Nothing could be finer than to live inside an opera, just before the aria of the war.
—posted 1110 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of wonder.
Whatever, in short, occurs to us we are fond of referring to some species or class of things, with all of which it has a nearly exact resemblance: and though we often know no more about them than about it, yet we are apt to fancy that by being able to do so, we show ourselves to be better acquainted with it, and to have a more thorough insight into its nature. But when something quite new and singular is presented, we feel ourselves incapable of doing this. The memory cannot, from all its stores, cast up any image that nearly resembles this strange appearance. If by some of its qualities it seems to resemble, and to be connected with a species which we have before been acquainted with, it is by others separated and detached from that, and from all the other assortments of things we have hitherto been able to make. It stands alone and by itself in the imagination, and refuses to be grouped or confounded with any set of objects whatever. The imagination and memory exert themselves to no purpose, and in vain look around all their classes of ideas in order to find one under which it may be arranged. They fluctuate to no purpose from thought to thought, and we remain still uncertain and undetermined where to place it, or what to think of it. It is this fluctuation and vain recollection, together with the emotion or movement of the spirits that they excite, which constitute the sentiment properly called Wonder, and which occasion that staring, and sometimes that rolling of the eyes, that suspension of the breath, and that swelling of the heart, which we may all observe, both in ourselves and others, when wondering at some new object, and which are the natural symptoms of uncertain and undetermined thought. What sort of a thing can that be? What is that like? are the questions which, upon such an occasion, we are all naturally disposed to ask. If we can recollect many such objects which exactly resemble this new appearance, and which present themselves to the imagination naturally, and as it were of their own accord, our Wonder is entirely at an end. If we can recollect but a few, and which it requires too some trouble to be able to call up, our Wonder is indeed diminished, but not quite destroyed. If we can recollect none, but are quite at a loss, it is the greatest possible.
—posted 1118 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
Another secret of magic.
Approached differently, the construction of science and religion as antagonists implied a third position representing where the categories both convene and collapse. In my last book I deployed this trinary in a genealogy of the category “religions,” but here I want to follow the third term. Negatively valenced, it is understood to be superstition and in this respect appears as the double of either religion or science. Hence, a certain cross-section of scientists trumpeted the power of their respective domain by suggesting that all of religion was a superstition. Positively valenced, the third term is magic, which was often supposed to take the best elements of religion and science together or to recover things suppressed by “modern” science or religion. Indeed, most of what gets classified as contemporary esotericism or occultism came into being as an attempt to repair the rupture between religion and science.
—posted 1197 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of Collections.
And though a Collection is not esteemed to carry with it a Proof of Genius and Understanding like a genuine Composition, yet the Labour must be allowed greater, as ’tis certainly more easy for a Person to pen his own Thoughts, than dexterously to select and range those of others; more especially if he has them to seek, compare and correct from a large Variety of Authors in different Languages. This has been my Task. And I wish my Performance may be looked on like the Bee’s Industry; as Honey will not lose its Taste or Virtue, by reflecting that that Insect was only a Collector, not Author of its Sweetness.
—posted 1208 days ago
