Many readers of The Night Land, and more still who give up on the book, gag on its prose; The Night Land is a famously “difficult read.” For The Night Land, Hodgson devised an eccentric, faux seventeenth- or eighteenth-century style, convoluted and orotund, which even Lovecraft found “grotesque and absurd.” A few critics have supported Hodgson’s stylistic choice (Greer Gilman in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Nigel Brown in “An Apology for the Linguistic Architecture of The Night Land”), but Murphy mounts an innovative defense. He asks us to see the difficulty of reading as an intrinsic element of weird fiction, a twinning of the reader’s efforts with those of the characters’:
... the labor of the weird and the resistance to it often (but not always) transform the human subject who undergoes them, and those transformations are materially reflected in the language of Hodgson’s tales, imposing a labor of the weird on the reader as well as on the characters.
In Hodgson, the weird is inseparable from its expression and its reception—the reader must be estranged from current reality in all ways. As Murphy stresses, Hodgson’s “stylistic and formal strategies [are] centered on the problem of how to refer to or represent the non-/un-/abhuman.” In so doing, Hodgson reminds me of Christian mystics such as Jakob Böhme, Hildegard of Bingen, and Teresa of Ávila, and of alchemists such as “Basil Valentine” and Michael Maier, who each in idiosyncratic ways contorted syntax and made strange their vocabulary in attempts to represent the interaction of the human with that which is not human and with that which is cosmic. Equally, Hodgson points forward to the varied linguistic permutations of the twentieth century. As Murphy asserts: “weird fiction constitutes an explicitly self-reflexive and experimental genre that is, in its own unique ways, comparable to the broader formal experiments of high modernist and postmodernist fiction that developed alongside and after it.” I agree fully with that assessment, and would love to see studies putting The Night Land in conversation with The Waste Land, Finnegans Wake, Dadaist and Surrealist plays and manifestos, Cortázar’s Hopscotch, and so on.
Posted 8 days ago.
It’s July, which means it’s International Zine Month! Hooray!
I’ve written before, about my, well, I wouldn’t say discomfort with the zine scene, no, I mean, maybe I’d go as high as out-of-placeness, but you put it like that, I mean, I tend to feel out of place just about anywhere I go, so. City of Roses is a number of things, a website, some books, an epic, an oddity, what I do with what time I can spare, but it has always been a zine. So, thinking locally, here’s to the IPRC and the Portland Zine Symposium! And you should go fold and staple some paper of your own.
Posted 12 days ago.
France commissioned the original statue in 1870 after losing the Franco-Prussian War, a glittering likeness of its patron saint to boost morale. It sits outside the luxe Hotel Regina in Paris’s first arrondissement, framed by the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre. Nancy, France; Melbourne, Australia; and New Orleans and Philadelphia all have their own copies made from sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet’s original molds. Though Portland’s souvenir may have the quirk of being the trickiest to access, protected on its humble, grassy loop de loop by an unrelenting swirl of traffic.
Coe commissioned the statue as tribute to veterans of the Great War. The other three monuments he donated to the city—of Lincoln, Washington, and his old hunting buddy Teddy Roosevelt—are in storage after being toppled during protests in 2020. But Joan of Arc remains on her horse despite bouts with vandalism. As the O reported, an “informal and altogether illegal unveiling” a week before the official dedication set a tone. Her laurels and pennant have been stolen and replaced more than a few times. Teens soaked the statue in black paint after a re-gilding in 2002. (She’d gotten a little green.) And in 2012, someone taped a giant drill bit to the horse’s head, turning it into a unicorn and somehow causing $1,800 of damage. Still, Portland generally seems to like its Joan of Arc. Coe’s patriotic motives aside, perhaps the legend of a spiritually inclined teenager subverting gender roles through radical political action serves a different inspiration today.
Posted 27 days ago.
August Clarke
I think, as we’ve discussed before, that uh, there is a startling lack of depictions of lesbian sex in the wonderful moment we’re having where there’s lots of really great Sapphic–writ large–stories and genre fiction. And when there is sex between women, um yeah, they’re never wearing a dick. And I think that this is a pretty critical problem of world building and a lack of ingenuity and interest in the fact that sexuality makes culture, too. If we are world building, a society, a culture, sex and sexuality is part of that culture.
Every culture has sex as a business at some point, every culture has sex at some point, probably. We have neolithic dildos, in fact, right? Like it is a sort of transcultural phenomena that we make prosthesis as a part of our experiencing each other and being with each other, and I think to a certain extent this might be a discomfort with depicting women’s sexuality period. Or women’s sexuality as active.
I think that there is a much greater representation of protagonists, or at least point of view characters who are sexually inexperienced and who need their love interest to guide them into sexuality and show them all of the ropes and do unto them. I really struggle to think of point of view top characters in genre fiction, period.
C.L. Clark
Period. Regardless of genres, genders, or gender pairings or anything.
Clarke
Yeah, it is almost always the perspective of the bottom or—I think assigning top and bottom to men, women couples is weird and doesn’t work, in fact–but it is either the bottom’s perspective or the woman’s perspective, usually. Or occasionally you might get a man’s perspective and drawn her as well and indeed men in genre do have sex here and there.
But I think that with that lack of world building interest, we also have a loss of the technologies we produce as queer people to be with each other. A thing that I was really concerned with in writing this book was making sure that there was a subcultural aspect to the queerness here. Which necessarily pairs with there being queerphobia in this world. If you have a queer normative world, which—that’s a huge thing in itself. But if you have a world where at the very least same gender attraction is not policed, and is sort of normative in this space, and there’s no pushback at all, then you have no reason to make a subculture. And then you, by extension, have no reason to make sex toys that are appropriate for the kind of sex you wanna be having, right?
Clark
I feel like you could still have it, it just becomes a mainstream item like any that you buy–you buy your cups, you buy your crockery, your silverware, you buy your dicks.
Clarke
And indeed, why don’t the couples in fantasy also have dicks that they wear? Get into it.
Posted 41 days ago.
Since the renovations hereabouts, we’ve been re-running the novelettes from the start on the usual Monday–Wednesday–Friday schedule, and as we speak the tenth novelette, “Surveilling,” is just about done; the eleventh, “Rounds,” will begin appearing next week, and—well. There are eleven novelettes per volume.
So let’s celebrate! Commercially. —For the next week (through Friday, 30th May), any paperback copies of “Wake up…” bought through me are available for the deeply discounted price of twelve dollars US (ten pounds sterling), plus shipping, and any ebook copies of “Wake up…” are available for three dollars US from myself, and the outlets where I can reach the pricing: itch.io, Payhip, Smashwords, and Google Play. So go! Treat yourself! Put the start of the epic on your shelves!
Posted 59 days ago.
To my mind, it’s how you do the world-building which is really significant; in other words, it’s in the execution of world-building, just as in the execution of every other aspect of storytelling, where the other strategies come in. Fan-service–oriented world-building will tend to create material which feels like a comfortable fit for the setting and a logical outgrowth of stuff we already know; Lower Decks is fantastic at this, coming up with novelties like the idea that the Daystrom Institute has an entire wing where they keep all the megalomaniac computers that Starfleet captures. World-building oriented towards creative freedom will offer surprises and novelty, showing us something we never expected to encounter in the Star Trek galaxy which at its best can shake up our assumptions and open up fresh possibilities, at worst simply looks incongruous and silly and gets ignored and glossed over by later writers. (To take an example from the golden age, remember when The Next Generation established that fast warp travel was unravelling the universe and all Starfleet ships had a speed limit imposed on them they could only break with special permission? No shade on you if you don’t, I keep forgetting it too and I didn’t watch the relevant episode that long ago, and no subsequent Trek show has seen fit to yes-and that particular bit of world-building.)
Even if you could come up with a world-building approach which perfectly split the difference between fan service and creative freedom, all you’re doing is kicking the can down the road, playing for time without addressing the core dilemma any new Trek thing must address—where is it going to lie in that spectrum between honouring the franchise’s past and trying to establish its own legacy?
Posted 60 days ago.
No. 46 has been cracked, but it’s slow going, at the moment, with occasional bursts of activity interspersed with occasional sloughs of, well, not despond, no, not exactly, but not exactly exuberant, either, and all the while the draft of no. 45 ferments in its fallow. —No. 45, which, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is or was or will end up having been a much more straightforward tale, a take on that basic plot-kernel in which a stranger comes to town; no. 46 is intended to be or at least it will maybe have been a rather more relaxed and (seemingly) shapeless affair, a hang-out, I believe, is the term of art—an aimless stroll through thirty-two short films, though, in retrospect, it might well turn out our flâneur was rather more slyly pointed that perhaps, at first, it had seemed. But aimless strolls are, well, aimless; difficult as it may be to know where they might end up, no matter how pointed they end up having been, it can be just as difficult to know where, exactly, to begin them, and sometimes precisely because one wished to engineer the point.
But that’s a me-problem, I suppose. Otherwise? I still haven’t managed to do what justice I owe to Spear Cuts Through Water; I got distracted, I admit, by re-reading Lud-in-the-Mist, which has been—instructive? —And also Empson, on the pastoral, yes, of course, as always, and, but, what else? I’ve watched the Pitt, we’ll probably finish that tonight, and I’m intrigued by the notion that it’s a DS9 show, at heart, but that all has little enough to do with what’s going on here. Andor next, but also ditto, and anyway, I need to get back to work.
Posted 79 days ago.
Surrealism may attain to the supernatural (e.g., Magritte, Breton) but is only one of its forms, and not perhaps its most satisfying one: Rembrandt, Cézanne, Giotto, Homer, Shakespeare, Dante satisfy more deeply, they engage the reason as well as the unconscious intuitive, and the more elements common to us all that a work of art draws upon the more totally it can move us. And that term “move” should be thought of very literally—i.e., parts, or all, of our being are set in motion by works of art.
Since I believe there is a most intimate relationship between the quality of a person's life, its abundance or sterility, his integrity, and the quality of his poetry, it is not irrelevant to say that, judging by some—not a few—I have met on my travels, the people who write banal poetry and, to almost the same extent, those who in desperation make up a fake surrealism, usually seem to be the same academics who talk a liberal line concerning education and politics (and often, as teachers, are genial and popular) but who, when it comes to some crucial issue, such as a student protest, will not commit themselves far enough to endanger their own security. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Is their poetry banal because their lives are banal, or vice versa? I think it works both ways. If these people committed themselves, took risks, and did not let themselves be dominated by the pursuit of "security," their daily lives would be so changed, so infused with new experiences and with the new energy that often comes with them, that inevitably their poetry would change too (though obviously this would not ensure better poems unless they were gifted in the first place). But on the other hand, if they could manage to put themselves in a new, more dynamic, less suppressive relationship to their own inner lives and to the language, then they might discover their outer lives moving in a revolutionary way. So the process is dual, and can be approached from either direction.
And for myself—not without anguish, not without fear, not without the daily effort of rousing myself out of the inertia and energy-sapping nostalgia that would cling to old ways, to that dying bird-in-hand that's falsely supposed to be worth two free ones chirping in the bushes—I believe our survival demands revolution, both cultural and political. If we are to survive the disasters that threaten, and survive our own struggle to make it new—a struggle I believe we have no choice but to commit ourselves to—we need tremendous transfusions of imaginative energy. If it is indeed revolution we are moving toward, we need life, and abundantly—we need poems of the spirit, to inform us of the essential, to help us live the revolution. And if instead it be the Last Days—then we need to taste the dearest, freshest drops before we die—why bother with anything less than that, the essential?
Wallace Stevens wrote, “The poet feels abundantly the poetry of everything.” We must not go down into the pit we have dug ourselves by our inhumanity without some taste, however bitter, of that abundance. But if there is still hope of continued life on earth, of a new life, the experience of that abundance which poetry can bring us is a revolutionary stimulus. It can awaken us, from our sloth, even yet.
Posted 89 days ago.
I’m grateful the queer community has talked more about consent in recent years. I know one of the challenges I faced when I started dating as a queer person was learning how to say no. And, unfortunately, I encountered more experienced people who took advantage of that inability. But I also know that’s just one type of encounter. The movie fantasy of Desert Hearts doesn’t give queer people a carte blanche to ignore verbal cues—I just think we can learn something from Cay Rivvers and this scene.
When I watch Desert Hearts now, I think of a few people. I think of the (older) baby queer I matched with on Tinder who disappeared and who I followed up with a month later anyway. I think about how, because of that follow-up, we spent a night together where, following her lead, we stopped at making out with clothes on. I think about how that person is now so much more settled in their queerness—with their sexuality and their gender.
I also think of the married mom I met in a small midwestern city. I think about how she secretly identified as a lesbian even though she was trapped in a marriage to a shitty man. I think about our two nights together and how she grasped at me like a life source even as she expressed her guilt and doubts. I think about how I hope there are more women in her future, more opportunities to be herself that are less fleeting.
And I think about my Cays. I think about the queer woman who offered me the lipstick. I think about the queers I hooked up with when I was new to queer dating. I think about the ones who kissed me when I was too scared to kiss them, of the ones who touched me in ways I wouldn’t know how to ask for, and who stopped when they could tell I wasn’t ready. I think about the ones who kept going when they knew I was.
Posted 97 days ago.
Jason Bergman
The original Why I Hate Saturn release was, like 1990, yeah.
Kyle Baker
Yeah, so that was digital lettering. Again, at that time I was not that focused on comics. I came out of Milton Glaser Studio. It was my first job coming out of college. He was an instructor at college, at SVA, so I was working there, and like I said, my dad was in advertising. So I'm just used to that world of dealing with type. Back then we used to glue it on boards, you know with the rubber cement and razor blades and all that stuff and overlays. You have what they call Rubylith. I'm not even gonna explain what Rubylith is. Do you know Rubylith?
Jason Bergman
I have no idea what that is.
Kyle Baker
Yeah, it's a long story. But yeah things like that and waxers and artographs and all that was the world I was excited by. I can't remember the question now, what was it?
Jason Bergman
Digital art?
Kyle Baker
Oh yeah. So again, I was always used to those kinds of processes. Like when I was working on The Shadow and things like that, I used to work with Murphy Anderson who was the color separator at the time. I can't remember the name of the company he was working for, but he would come by and do the color separations for these comics. And I would give them these crazy overlays and we'd sit down and we'd work out these instructions for how we were gonna get these cool airbrush effects or knocking out type. Things that are much easier now. And again, much easier with computers. I'm looking at that poster behind you. You had a painting that you had to combine with type which had to combine with this 3D logo. And it was probably some kind of goofy photographic process where guys are printing out photos and cutting them out and putting them onto some kind of board. I used to love that kind of crazy stuff.
—“Right now I’m just trying to get the stories done”:
Catching Up with Kyle Baker
Posted 103 days ago.
