Reading, Short And Deep #404
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Virtuoso by Herbert Goldstone
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.
Virtuoso was first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1953
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The SFFaudio Podcast #725 – Prince Alberic And The Snake Lady by Vernon Lee – read by Evan Lampe. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novella (1 hour 35 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Evan Lampe.
Talked about on today’s show:
without fixing mistakes, two sessions, a damn hard book to read, mispronouncing many words, so many times, tap-es-tree not tape-ess-tree, its fantasy Jesse, you have to understand I didn’t speak to anyone until I was 22 years old, Evan is very dry, you pronounce words like someone who only gets them out of books, isolated, orgy, or-ghee, reading Hustler, is this where the orgy happens, draught is draft, still listenable, Brother And Sister by Donald E. Westlakes, Mr. Adam, Nudist Camp, the dedication, The Yellow Book, July 1896, to H.H. the Ranee Brooke of Sarawak, True Adventure, True Man, mens sweats magazines, a guy with his shirt off getting attacked by wild animals, “Weasels Tore My Flesh”, The White Raja Of Sarawak, Brunei, Indonesia, mercenary work, for about 100 years the was a royal family that was quasi-British, married to the king of Sarawak, their marriage wasn’t so great, pawned her diamond ring, married into money, Oscar Wilde, people they’re clubbing with, fin de siècle, 1890s, Violet Paget, Purple Paget, when clubbing with Oscar Wilde, what that plays into the story, related, is Vernon Lee saying don’t raise your kids badly?, the setup not the payoff, its all setting, the castle, the furniture, porphyry, nick-nacks, all setting detail, things that happed, stories within stories, the tapestry itself, the unicorn tapestries, the hunting of the unicorn, 1495-1505, Public Domain Review, monkey looking tigers, rabbits, a lot in setup like The Alchemist, Maissa is not a Lovecrafter, The Silver Key, no male will live past the age of 30, a family curse, a person alive for centuries, the setup is similar, the payoff is different, Paul, Maissa, Marissa, Terrance and Julie, very like a fairy tale, folk tales are really short, a paragraph or 6 pages, this is a novella, fairy tales vs. folk tales, folk tales written by an individual are fairy tales, Hans Christian Anderson, stones coming down the river forever, The Bros. Grimm, Puss In Boots is a fairy tale, psychology, Christian folktales, grandmas pass it on to grandmas, Cinderella, some folk tales are in every culture, almost based on a real tapestry, Prince Alberic And The Snake Lady, a snake lady kissing a knight, lamia, a mother of monsters sort of creature, the outside edges, John William Waterhouse, the outside edges, what’s going on in the middle, the story where the tapestry came from, a neglected locked away child, his clothes, his nurse, this is a job for me, full of image, intertwining figures, position of body parts and distances between things, rich in detail, a lonely kid locked in the basement, falls in love with the Romper Room lady, very very Biblical, the opposite Bible story, had a snake made it through to the end, the debauchery of this duke, a parallel Eden, neglect is very important, exposure to plants and animals, castle of sparkling waters, which is eden, seeing the borders, romantic couple, a functional marriage, conceptions of romance from media, romantic comedies, why the story is long, ancestry, growing up, the kid had to evolve, The Outsider as a little kid, a serpent in the Garden, the serpent has been cursed, backstory for Ladyhawke, Matthew Broderick, the Mouse, the evil church, self-narrating, adjacent to it and appreciative of it, his ancestor, recreates the attempt to free her, it fails, infidelity, outside forces, the family interference, make something of it, undergraduate essays, wholly focused on the gender identity stuff, readable into it, dressing like a man or a boy, male pseudonym, interpret the story, Victorian repression, interesting unto itself, engaging with the snake, turning Eve into the snake, Lilith, more Lilith than Eve, Princess Albercca, an Eve/Lilith story, a lot of speculation about how many lovers she had, weird dynamic, the grandfather, playing a game with his courtiers, who’s going to be the boss, to frustrate the main story, to contrast, mundanity, base and flat vs. art and literature and teaching and play, reading it subversively, does he just have a pet snake?, a fantasy figure, is he just an autodidact that imagined all that?, a weird story in the family, a problem at the end, I gotta wait ten years, fidelity for ten years to liberate the snake lady, a young man who’s gone nuts, a castle tale, he went crazy, his line is over, after that terrible storm, blows and saber cuts, rumor, I dreamt all of this, can you confirm my dream?, weird fiction done as a fairy tale, A.A. Milne’s The Green Door, a fantasy door, you look a little bit like him, the prince is dead, go off into Eden together, free from the trappings of their royal requirements, the jester, the cleric, the dwarf, the three wise men, Hop-Frog by Edgar Allan Poe, different loyalties, the Pope, the emperor, Spain, court favourites, 1780, who is that guy in Spain who gets blamed for the decline of Spain, the target for why things go bad, cabinet shakeup, things are going to change now, is it about giving advice to the royal highness of Sarawak?, pawn your kids off to other royal people, competition, Gaspar de Guzmán (Count-Duke of Olivares), globally common in courts, some backdrop here, historical context, Alberic is distances from these figures, when they spy on him, the jester hides in a high spot, where the fall happens, like a family curse story, our viewpoint on the more interesting story, she’s half snake half fairy, folk tales, The Doll Princess aka Doll I’ The Grass, to pass the test, spin and weave and sew a shirt in one day, the skills involved are all very practical skills, fairy tales are from a class perspective, the skills of a peasant, to ride, use a weapon, farming skills, plowing skills, donkey selling skills, ventriloquism skills, he kisses her and the curse is broken, the eclipse, the right magic items, where the Mouse comes in, an evil priest, a wolf by night a falcon by day, attempt number 3?, the monks got him, lots of threes here, all rumours are always true in Lovecraft, is she ultimately dead?, sever her head from her trunk, the dead grass snake, the body of a woman naked and miserably disfigured with blows and saber cuts, slithering around with nobody, did Balthazar meet the snake lady?, what’s up with him, he’s a little suss, he hates the snake lady and he hates the devil, his duchy ends and becomes extinct, another historical process, the consolidation of states, moreover, the mosaic chapel, the rockery, the porphyry rhinoceros, certain chairs and curtains, various pieces of an extremely damaged arras, the story lives on in the furniture, the true protagonist, she grooms this boy, reading it naturalistically, friends with a grass snake, getting this stuff from the villagers, the old man, how Lovecraft did it, a tweet from the Lovecraft Bot, it’s heaven!, imprinting on whatever is there, raised by ladies with afros, white suits, watched a lot of Miami Vice, imprinting on this snake, a naked rabbit, neglect, locking away a kid, the heir, we should probably do something about that, come in and turn his TV off, Romper Room is his whole world, I don’t want to watch Newhart, I get Scooby-Doo, the Duke with his permanent youth, prince-worthy, you’re stuck with who you got, the family line going, you don’t need a family line if you’re immortal, a shocking state of neglect, rustic is the 1890s version of on the spectrum, this kid is definitely weird, he doesn’t behave normally, a wild child, a princess worthy to be his wife, to fashion his manners, the subtle things, so he knows how to have sex, break his heart, an attack, we’re going to groom him, he hates the snake and he hates the devil, change the tapestry, Alberic the Blonde, the chronicles of the crusaders, enlightened mind and delicate taste, improbably events, D&D will send you to Hell, he’s under his own curse, he cut Susanna and the elders into strips, writing distraction, a red herring, three Biblical days, the Book of Daniel, paintings of this, an approved naked lady in the pool, she’s just trying to clean herself, one of the spies from a tree, the jester!, why he cuts it up, take out the bad things, he saw the rabbit denuded, rabbits are all about fertility, you don’t need to be fertile if you’re immortal, heirs are threats, Christians and Jews, what’s in and what’s out, placed in the apocrypha, useful for edification but non-canonical, a gender reversal, to get power, explaining why the French Revolution happened, the Emperor needs to bring his rivals close to him, dukes and counts need to be brought close so they don’t rebel, then they neglect the lands that they’re from, control his kingdom better, focused on court intrigue, the traditional job of kings is to be judges, the ‘let them eat cake’ moment, let them inject insulin, the parliamentarian, that one bad senator in Arizona, meanwhile, corruption, the rustic people don’t exist in this story, 17th and 18th century states, all going bankrupt, constant war, building things, showing off their power, London after the fire of 1667, investing all this money in the grandeur of court life, state lotteries, alliances, passing troops, War of the Spanish Succession, doochy vs. duchy, most Christian king, who does he think to marry?, let some bad blood into the royal family, chemicals, bourgeois families, nobility of the rose vs. nobility of the sword, good historical context, the description of the tapestry, the only thing on his wall, the border of fruit and flowers, red, yellow, orange, even green, ghosts, indeed it was only as he grew bigger, little by little he could see them always, he closes his eyes and he can see them, imagination, memory, a remnant of redness, a knight, doing an Evan, no wig, a helmet with big plumes, bare legs a kilt and a wig, she’s having it both ways, rich reading, a thick circular garland, very lovely, a chest of drawers, so rubbed, tapestry shouldn’t get worn out like that, embraced the lady with the other arm, all about gaze, we’re looking at him looking at it and other people are looking at him, the deep depths of this story, I’m you godmother, one hour everyday, she’s immortal too, only ages while in human form?, this is what this guy looks like, little Alberic models himself on this guy, what the Duke looks like, whose thoughts are those?, an omniscient narrator, the ignorance of the characters, outsider looking at it, the very simple thing, they can’t live their own lives to be their own sexual beings, very few female characters, maybe some peasants, ten years to become a woman, as a person of value, some of that in there?, she wrote this with a pseudonym, Vernon as her name name, she lived in Italy, what else it could be, the description of her dress, so very pale and faded, the colour of moonbeams, the ladies who got out of the coaches to the court of honour, no clothes at all on their upper part, little by little, all over her bodice, we are given some colours and some words and we read in, to see her skirt, it was probably very beautiful too, the inlaid chest of drawers, a large ebony and ivory crucifix, a great deal too heavy, why is the church so heavy?, when Alberic was 11, loud talking in his dreams, this is mine now, that nice pious crucifix, he’s being stolen from, a wonderful thing, now the TV’s not blocked anymore, a walk on the terrace, she’s naked!, riveted to the grown, oh nurse dear nurse, Evan’s German girl voices, she ended off in a big snake’s tail, green and gold, the snake part, against herself against him, he’s friends with her even though she’s not friendly, holy virgin! why she’s a serpent!, he loved the beautiful lady all the more, why the knight was so very good for her, Jervas Dudley, The Tomb, The Silver Key, this biblical element, set in Europe, Luna’s not a real place, fictional France, sexualized Victorian menstruation blood, she dances with the devil [The Moon-Slave by Barry Pain], The Big Book of Classic Fantasy edited by Jeff Vandermeer, J.R.R. Tolkien is the barrier between the two, “the ultimate collection”, chronologically, the gaps can be huge, how are you picking these?, all the handwringing that goes into choosing the stories, a systematic method, there are too many stories, everything has to be published somewhere, interesting and well written and put together carefully, she has a number of other stories, from the same period, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper gets way too much attention, Herland, where to start with more Vernon Lee, so many books, novels and non-fiction, In Praise Of Old Gardens, a long list of works, 1881, novella, A Ballet Of The Nations, a goldmine, The Hidden Door, 1887, More Deadly Than The Male, W. Scott Poole, Wastelands, so very classicist, how Vernon Lee had the ability to do this, she’s not a Conan Doyle, they’re crass, rustic, a prince right in the title, hey lady, whatchu doing later?, what’s the nice lady doing?, she is also of the upper class even though she’s a snake lady, from the lower classes, these stories are read by the middle classes who are aspirant to the upper class lifestyle.
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Reading, Short And Deep #342
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Tinder-Box by Hans Christian Andersen
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.
The Tinder-Box was first published in Fairy Tales Told For Children, 1835.
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The SFFaudio Podcast #674 – The Cats Of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft – read by Steve Mann. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (8 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Trish E. Matson, and Jason Thompson
Talked about on today’s show:
The Tryout, November 1920, Weird Tales, Fantastic Novels, Hannes Bok, a girl or a young woman, cats looking very satisfied with themselves, 3 pages or 8 minutes, 88 shows mentioning The Cats Of Ulthar, most of them are not in English, the best introduction to Lovecraft, a lot of little things that work as an introduction, witches, wandering weirdos, foreigners, geographies, are the couple witches?, they’re witch-ish, ogres, frightening, can this be read subversively, sorry Trish, why is this such a popular story, the narrator is present, a murder mystery, The Tree by H.P. Lovecraft, popular to least popular, At The Mountains Of Madness, this fictional list, Old Bugs, The Wicked Clergy Man, a scultping contest, this story sucks, the sound of the bees, the beekeeper tells the narrator, who tells the story, we know, what do you remember?, the reason people don’t like that story is they don’t get it, telegraphed from the beginning, the wrath of Bast, super-simple, people love cats, has cats in the title, not that much racism in it, the mysterious dark foreigners are the good guys sort of, catskins nailed all over the wall, eating them?, a meanspirited old couple, what people in the town are saying, hiding the truth, we gotta burn these manuscripts, a push pull, the beetles, scarabs, Dreamlands, what of their spirits?, did the cats steal their souls?, sucking the baby’s breath, activating the cats, the circularity, who is the narrator?, purring before the fire, the last image of the story (in Jason’s adaptation), sexily vs. hungrily, the dog lies patiently until it starves to death, the cat will eat you, a village full of cats ate a couple, the heroes are the cats, the moral simplicity of an EC comic, questioning the validity of the human eating cats, all he did was jaywalk, The Terrible Old Man, home invade a pirate from 3 centuries ago, gypsies vs. travelers, the Roma people of Europe, India and Alexander the great, the India connection, where the word Egypt comes from Menes, pre-Egyptian, another possible source, the dark wanderers in Idle Days On The Yann by Lord Dunsany, turban wearing, such frightened and passive people, live in a hovel, they’re treated like witches, The Witch-Cult In Western Europe by Margaret Murray, Christians who believe in , a fairy tale, Diodorus Siculus heard it from some crocodile god priests, all the things that are being described, not only Bast, their quiet mien, the referent is missing, the mother of all these cats?, before and beyond human Earth history, definitely (kind of) in the Dreamlands, Polaris on its own, Meroe, Nubia, a lost port mentioned in the Bible, the connections come later, ex post facto in the Dreamlands, resurrect them?, every cat was back, dead or busy feasting, telling fortunes, investigate the cotter’s cottage, still extant cats, cats on a mission, dream like, dream logic, reason to be skeptical, the villagers are always getting it wrong, sacrificed, coyotes are a serious issue, real life experience, gossip, baseless, the villagers sicced this little boy and his magic on that couple and got even though they are innocent, gullible gods, tricking the gods, they show up in the sky, Scooby Doo, no Nancy Drew activities, the follow up to the Cats Of Ulthar, the gods fucked up, the fallibility of the divine, the Greek gods every day of the week, I want vengeance, a devotee, his parents are already dead, almost like a storm, the gods are obedient to those who are believe in them, vernacular tradition, non-institutionalized beliefs, passed on by spoken words, the common people know about it, the Esoteric Order Of Dagon has some metal plates they pass around, folktales before they get written down, the opening sentence, Skai, the Yann river, no man may kill a cat, the species is male?, who are we?, retconned around Kadath time, the past vs. a dream, if only the dream had been set not in ancient Greece, the fairytalishness, the realm of myth, long ago and far away as many fairy tales say, who the narrator is usually matters, the wagon leaving the town, a tour of Innsmouth, the burgers, why are you telling me all their names, look at the list of characters who show up, sustaining a mood, he’s trying to tell us about the purpose of this law is, why?, the burgers pass a law, it becomes a folk belief, mouths to feed, bag in the river, the story of Moses, this Egyptian quality, Egypt is the breadbasket for Rome, food is wealth, the mousers vs. the pets, eatin the rodents that will eat your grain, myth vs. propaganda, what a stan is, Lovecraft is a cat stan, not the dogs of Ulthar, what do dogs do, dogs bark, bears three days a week, there to protect to the property, hungry bears, many many odes to cats, cat love, propaganda for cats, a wish fulfillment story, that tiny black kitten, cat lives are worth more than human lives to Lovecraft, the roving folk, Egyptians in all but name, their magic, their magic show, Evan’s story about losing his cat, knowing how devious Lovecraft can be, The Rats In The Walls has a cat, Delapore eats another man, still defending them, a swarm of rats, the cat is the hero, you’re crazy man, “I, as a cat, will not support this cannibalism”, Jesse derailing, The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, your house burned down because of a cat, The Raven, working on a psychological level, why does it take so long to get to the point, so obviously put together that way, an untrustworthy story, Evan is neutral, the townspeople are dumb, no police arresting people for killing cats, what scarabs were, we don’t know what scarabs are, amulets placed in the wrappings, tradable items, we don’t know why they’re there, Egyptology, Egytpomania, another Egypt-ism, eating of the dead, a cleansing of the evil of what they did, the cleansing mechanism, not a memorable story,
On a verdant slope of Mount Maenalus, in Arcadia, there stands an olive grove about the ruins of a villa. Close by is a tomb, once beautiful with the sublimest sculptures, but now fallen into as great decay as the house. At one end of that tomb, its curious roots displacing the time-stained blocks of Pentelic marble, grows an unnaturally large olive tree of oddly repellent shape; so like to some grotesque man, or death-distorted body of a man, that the country folk fear to pass it at night when the moon shines faintly through the crooked boughs. Mount Maenalus is a chosen haunt of dreaded Pan, whose queer companions are many, and simple swains believe that the tree must have some hideous kinship to these weird Panisci; but an old bee-keeper who lives in the neighboring cottage told me a different story.
a shared studio, the townspeople report, such good friends, the story of the fall,
However, the Syracusans obtained after a while a very splendid statue in Athens, and the Tegeans consoled themselves by erecting in the agora a marble temple commemorating the gifts, virtues, and brotherly piety of Musides.
city vs. country, one is better than the other,
But the olive grove still stands, as does the tree growing out of the tomb of Kalos, and the old bee-keeper told me that sometimes the boughs whisper to one another in the night wind, saying over and over again. “Oida! Oida!—I know! I know!”
hiding the truth The White Ape The Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, to hide the truth, his grandma was a monkey, there’s sometimes a key, sometimes they are straightforward?, half more again as complex as this one?, The Street, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Whisperer In Darkness, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Lurking Fear, pay attention, beefy guys, he needs a lot of meat, The Strange High House In The Mist, a lot of weird stuff happens, not straightforward but simple, this outside frame, we’re not supposed to trust, picky about his own work, Philip K. Dick, a personal favourite, S.T. Joshi, walks in the forest, letters about cats, the College Street address, a gang of feral cats living on his roof, if Lord Dunsany the dog guy meets the cat guy, Dean Spanley, a great sense of humour, The Book of Wonder, a randy centaur, Bride Of The Man-Horse, its the getting there that’s fun part, how men should court women, how centaurs get their brides, a Dunsany imitation in terms of style, 7-10 minutes to read, ebullient detail, once per week, The Idler, filling pages for the idle rich, not the ideal Weird Tales story, a Clark Ashton Smith adaptation, The Dreamquest Of Unknown Kadath, a retconned cosmology, The White Ship and Celephais, a cats themed comic anthology, a comic twist at the end, these smiling cats, ambiguous intent, lest they kill us, who is this law for?, how the Ultharians feel about it, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, the most dreamlandsy one, chronologically, its before people, almost like he’s talking to Robert E. Howard in that one, the psychology is implicit, sometimes a story is just a story, readers in the 1920s, that level of morbidity is day to day for us, extra gross for 1920s readers?, Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe, too gross, Wastelands by W. Scott Poole, horror has its birth after WWI, the symbolists, The Troop by Nick Cutter, PG-13, this is not supposed to be a horror story, folktales and household tales, more than humans, add more magic to the story, drag out linger, so much detail, Sergio Aragonés, some guy with nemes on, a German beer stein, there’s beer, what they’re making with those crops, a pseudo Germanic look for Ulthar, the curls of an Egyptian, ankh everywhere, two gods, Ibis, the staff is an open mouth with teeth, Lovecraft foreshadows with a magic spell, repetition a symmetrical thing, all the animals are playing cutesy roles, a wellness check, a kind of horror, a mode, terrible youth trauma, return to the Dreamlands role playing game, their giant noses and their blank eyes and their implements, for the people are simple, four cats suckling, a sphinx, all ayres book of dallaire book of Greek and Norse myths, Echidna the mother of monsters, weird slug woman, the baby hydra and the baby sphinx, exiled to a cave, Cerberus is a they, tentacles, gimme milk gimme milk, added blood, you have to love them anyways, licking their genitals, motherhood is difficult for humans!, firm but gentle, the cats of Saturn, a gamification thing, Jason’s drawing game, Mangacon Cartooner, like Pictionary but producing comics, get the most fame points possible, you have to sell out to whatever trend, so meta, Evan made a huge mistake, fan service, obsession cards, giant sword, three point landing, gamifying his own letters, worldbuilding, the Lovecraft industry is a huge industry, uncountable unnameable, you play dreamers, drawn from Dunsany, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, the sanity mechanism, go mad or die, memory resources, spend memories, performing marvels, Randolph Carter lost his memories of Providence, creating monsters out of the air, dream logic, Carter remembers he can speak nightgaunt, he always spoke nightgaunt, coincidental magic, conjuring cats, what’s the core activity?, go on dream quests, fairy tale style quests, breaking the pillars of Dreamland, as a responsible dreamer, a plague of fairies, word currency, 300 word cards, make little speeches, blasphemous, wonder, and road, an excuse to be eloquent, the Jack Vance role playing game, The Dying Earth, interesting and fun, dialogue with each other, why don’t you try to make friends with these ghouls?, Horror On The Hill, charisma rolls, neanderthals on the team, DREAMRPG.com, look at this art, its stunning!, that lady with a mask, the watchseller selling digital clocks!, The Call Of Cthulhu: Dreamlands, modern tech doesn’t work, its infinite, continually expanding, the distance between spaces grows greater and greater, like the distances between the stars, low tech vs. modern tech, in Jason’s headcanon…, stuck in the Dark Ages, an existential ramble, a zoog hiding in curtain by the hookah, some lich guy hanging out, the attention to tiny details, “yeah, she’s a medusa what of it?”, where I go to get my equipment for my dreamquest, this is awesome awesome dreamstuff, semi-announced, an Edgar Allan Poe module, an Oz module, Dreamland, Ulalume, a list of dreamers and stats for them, outside of time, they’re dreamselves, established in Celephais, a message in a bottle from two centuries later, Fungi From Yuggoth: Continuity, dream psychiatrist stories, Dreamscape, Inception, trying to tap into deep time (eternity), the Jungian dreamlands, Lovecraft’s conception of the cosmos as an eternal machine, mechanistic, grinding towards the heat death, paradoxes, all night and all day, Jamieson by Margaret St. Clair, just happy to be there, a kind of a Jorkens style story, through the hole in the wall, tiny little grape press, forever cursed to walk the earth, basuto wood and moon grapes for the moonwine, straight out of dreamquest, Dunsany style, epic mythological vs. Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman goofy, Paul’s play by email diceless RPG: Strange Bedfellows, set in the world of Roger Zelazny, expanding into a dreamspace, stealing shamelessly, contact the dreamer, Kij Johnson’s Dream-Quest Of Vellitt Boe, a complete stylistic pastiche, The Riverbank by Kij Johnson (a stylistic doppleganger of The Wind In The Willows), when those letters come out, his family is very rich, what dirt he has, is there anybody that’s better documented than Lovecraft?, thank you, kid oriented D&D stuff.
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Reading, Short And Deep #300
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Princess And The Tin Box by James Thurber
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.
The Princess And The Tin Box was first published in The New Yorker, September 29, 1945
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The SFFaudio Podcast #617 – The Untamed by Max Brand; read by Richard Kilmer. This is an unabridged reading of the novel (7 hour 21 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Trish E. Matson, and Jonathan Juett
Talked about on today’s show:
a serial in All-Story, 1919, WWI, Canadian Army 1915-16, 1917 $150,000, the US Army in 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the state of the magazine industry, four sequels, when Juett was a little kid, a perfect vacation novel, a poncho and a dog, maybe a werewolf, western werewolf novel was a romance, a member of the fey, the Wild Hunt, Connor Kaye, all in reference to The Geat God Pan by Arthur Machen, whistling superpower, animal control, where all the panisci come from, super-rapey, Whistling Dan is zero rapey, a horse named Satan, Black Bart as a pet goat, preternaturally good with his hands and a gun, SFFadjacent, maybe when Dan’s in a coma his spirit is in the dog, under the current, trickles it along, underpainting, following the geese, very mythic, orthogonal migration, snatched from migration, a Clint Eastwood movie with a romance, Italian Spanish American production, Spaghetti Western, the uncanny stuff, his muscles were bigger like those of a caveman, like a mule, bones are bigger, quasi-supernatural, how old is he?, around 10 or 8, a young boy, tame him, lock him in with his daughter, risky, this thing that can’t be tamed, the daughter has a calming effect on all the characters in the novel, Max Brand has a whole bunch of ideas about how women and men interact, ‘women in general are hell, women in particular are heaven’, Buck’s mother, she’s the MacGuffin, he tasted his own blood, where is this supposed to be located, the Black Hills?, Dakota Territory?, high desert, Westworld, putting our something people really wanted to have, Steam-Man Of The Prairies, neo-Westerns, the premium entertainment, overseas fans, THE American literature, Henry James, Quigley Down Under (1990), Paul didn’t understand Westerns, The New Yorker, Paul’s better now, a question about the Western, who read the western?, the working class, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels And Working Class Culture by Michael Denning, think about the reader, unreachable life, living in Kentucky, Kentucky heritage, Jesse and Frank James, Kit Carson’s farm, Boonesborough, pioneer people, The Crossing, Carradines, two reasons, Germans in the mountains, Karl May, a German immigrant to the West makes friends with a native Indian and travel the land like Kung-Fu, The Lone Ranger, persistently popular, Stephen King, Edgar Rice Burrough’s tomb, Karl May’s tomb, influence on the Nazis, noble savage, German interest in Indians, hiking in the nature of the West, Leavenworth, Washington (state), the Mountie, Argosy and All-Story, pulp hero, western outlaws in Canada, a northern west, the Klondike, Death Hunt (1981), Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson, Louis Riel, the Northwest Rebellion, super-religious, less exciting a hero, people should be treated nicely, mental illness, a massive shitshow, the Black Hills and the Dakotas, Deadwood, like the Kurds, Jesse psyched himself out, disenfranchised like the Metis, including Canada in America, our attitude as settler colonists, Allan Quatermain, colonial literature, this strange other place for the guys on the bus going to their factory job, Andrew Jackson, Farmer In The Sky, transplanting sci-fi stories to western motifs, Han Solo’s low slung holster, Wagon Train to the stars (Star Trek), Firefly/Serenity, race never comes up, good guys are white guys, The Efficiency Expert, the lynching that their planning, he’s a criminal and they’re fed up, transplanting this story to Mars, Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick, steer rustlers and bank robbers, the strangest creature under the sun, an unoccupied mars, no dying race there, these Bleekmen, Australian aborigines, a Dreamtime sort of culture, long riders in the Pampas, on the other side of the planet, the Mongols, South Africa, sheep in Australia, a samurai story, Red Country by Joe Abercrombie, a settler colony, colonial literature, wholly artificial, a confection that could appeal to regular romantics, all the set dressing of a western we think of, a lot of talkin’, colonialism without genocide, no Civil War, the first ever gunfight (duels), innocence of our protagonist, he becomes a fighter, is this how naive you really are?, a natural creature, pulled out of nature, the werewolf chapter, was he a wolf who was turned into a man?, he doesn’t understand human emotion, the story of Dexter, traumatized, gave him a code to build his psychopathy around, he’s got a sister, blood daughter, the two actors hooked up, you were raised together, he’s like your brother he’s not your brother, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, super-ego advice on screen, James Remar, he’s OP, you really rolled up this character, he’s definitely a fake, he’s not human, a DEX of 20, WIS level 4, Once Upon A Time In The West, A Fistful Of Dynamite, The Good The Bad And The Ugly, Luke Short, Louis L’Amour, Celtic origins, Zane Grey, the Asimov and the Heinlein and the Clarke, overlapping, he fought in WWI twice and died in Italy in WWII, William Hope Hodgson, artillery officer killed in WWI, a massive output in 15 years, their background stories, eerie similar deaths, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Chief Dan George, he plays the Indian, a southern outlaw bandit who used to be a confederate, a little something extra, High Plains Drifter (1973), a ghost, ‘he was a ghost the whole time’, this weird false reality created by books just like this, where Whistling Dan lives, its a mythic plane, a hyper reality, the Harry Potter world of the West, a supervillain matched by a superhero, arcs of hyperbole, largely the appeal, the same disposibility and the same addiction, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo, pre-western, proto-western, there’s no state, there’s no capitalism, the Wild West was a colonial enterprise, kind of ridiculous, what do the readers get out of this?, Michael Mann movie The Last of the Mohicans (1992), those cattle are going to market somewhere, what year is it set?, before the Civil War?, the perpetual old-west, what Westworld is all about, a re-creation of a steady state fantasy West, the saloon gets knocked down/burned down, he feared its influence, the whole revenge thing, at the end when he takes the disc out of his pocket, one of the coins, what is he whispering, waiting for that other coin to drop, an ideological deus ex-machina, Marshals can do no wrong in Portland, what congress is, every time there is some sort of problem they add a new bureaucracy, a massive list of acronyms, Marshals Service, the reason Canada has its shape, all in reaction to what the United States is going to do, 54-40 or Fight, North-West Territory, squad of troops, the state police for the country, government bounty hunters, trail outlaws, he’s on a case, he’s supposed to bring in Jim Silent, in the middle, a little corrupt, Wyatt Earp, outlaw/good guy, the colour of the badge, Justified, based on the Elmore Leonard story Fire In The Hole, the Lexington Court House, filmed in L.A., The Dukes Of Hazzard, a modern western, The A-Team, mini-14, G.I. Joe shooting down Cobra airplanes, ultra-fake violence, Bo and Luke Duke were moonshiners?, bows and arrows because they were on probation?, what replaced the pulp magazines, a continuous stream, Ward Shelly’s The History Of Science Fiction poster, the imagination of what the printers are selling to the easterners, go west young man, Karl May never came here, the trick-shot, the four coins, the Sheriff’s department at Midway, three bottles, the crazy figures, Joe Arpaio, you’re going to go out back and shoot bottles, Jesse’s time-stop dream power, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, you can’t stop time in a multi-player game, story based vs. massively multiplayer, western themes in Fallout, a fantasy sub-genre not recognized as such, Buck Daniels, tamed him, where was he?, his other wild things, Pan induces panic, his presence, what did that?, Buck is the villain in the second novel, why you dont read the second book in the series, The Call Of The Wild by Jack London, its almost like racism, house dogs and yard dogs, he’s not a lapdog, he’s not a hunting dog, he’s a favourite of the judge, a journey of self-discovery, I don’t need masters, I need to be wolf, a dog-wolf story, White Fang as a reversal of The Call Of The Wild, influenced, typically Star Wars writing, ohhh the turn, the wild geese, symbolically joining them again, assembling a menagerie, the horse, the birds, the wolf-dog, that whole idea of Kung-Fu, mixing a dying genre with a very hip genre, well see the Chinese knew kung-fu, right back to the comics, Shag-shi, Fu Manchu, Iron Fist, exoticizing, where everybody makes you have face tattoos, putting a lei around your neck isn’t stolen valour, oooh a real Indian to play an Indian, like Tonto, they thought that was awesome, they loved wrestling, that *IS* awesome, who is being exploited, that’s a great character, that’s a great role, Sandra Locke and Clint Eastwood and Chief Dan George, where’s the harm, dressing up in costumes is cool, its the bad fucking that’s bad, bulldozing land, when politicians are seen wearing headdresses, trying to curry sympathy, we’ll treat you like family, politician are bad actors, eradicated from the landscape, what makes it so fantastic, there are no Apache, no Blackfoot, cultural motifs, cultural ammunition for empire, not as innocuous as Jesse thinks, more fantastic that Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time Slip, more fantastic that A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, movies based on this book, Tom Mix, Paint Your Wagon (1969), a native character would disrupt what is going on, Dan and his animals, Dan’s animals are happy slaves, a psychic beat-down, a sought after horse, I want the dog, the pieces of Dan, they want to colonize Dan, who is The Untamed?, all of Eastwood’s characters, Yojimbo or The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa movies, 1950, five years after WWII, they go back in time, there is not Japanese Empire, western tech in a medieval kingdom, Toshiro Mifune, perfectly adapts to a western, A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), Yojimbo (1961), a border war, where’s the trauma coming from to make this western fantasy?, friendless nameless, changes things up and leaves town, the period staying in town, this neighbourhood needs cleaning up, killing all those Indians in the west, fairy tales, not based on a real person, the fantasy to cover up genocide or covering up what the West actually was, megacorporations, cow punchers replaced by ranchers, a couple of decades, your grandfather or great-grandfather, our perspective of WWII, Inglourious Basterds (2009), a fairy tale about WWII, the Sundance Kid, bank robberies happened, train robbery, Jonah Hex is real and still wandering the west, not a future Hex, bad ideas, Conan the Barbarian with a laser sword, Jesse’s not having it, 70s and 60s western comics, a lotta superhero comics, straight up westerns coming out of Marvel and DC, the Rawhide Kid, a Wolverine berserker rage, in trouble in his own head, a Stan Lee character, western characters, cops are there, cops are a hindrance to the action, the comic code authority, turning super-heroes into the big thing they were, superheros as propaganda for law and order, Billy The Kid, Spider Man is an outlaw, Captain America, cops took over TV, lawyer shows, so many cop shows, all of these cops are good, the 87th Precinct novels, murders, con men, New York turned upside down, NCIS shows, Law & Order shows, NYPD Blue, Cop Rock, the solution to all problems is more cops, private detective stories and shows, breaking the rules, the cops themselves become the ruler breakers, Dirty Harry, NYPD Blue normalized torture, a standard thing, the bosses knew, 24, bad cops, 24 was theoretically about foreign policy, small scale, we built him until he confesses, The Shield, Homicide: Life On The Streets, based on a book, based on a reality, Will should be stepping up here, the powers of the state are such they’ll get you, you don’t need to beat anybody, people don’t want to be pressured, false confessions, where’s Will in all this?, circle it back to the book we just read, the stateless west, free men doing their thing, a few women, wifes or prostitutes, crooked sheriff, bring the state to be with them, Tex, when he throws down the tin star, an agent of civilization, a stateless place, what we know about civilization, so trusting, the marshals are different, the dignified congressional types, the passing of the marshals’ badge, deputization and posses, you take the lynch mob and they become a posse, power conferred, all the beatings, all the murders were in the name of the law, indemnified, deep down, the core idea, fantasies of what future we can make, what past we can recreate, fantasizing about a time that didn’t exist, what was actually going on, the people will not be restrained, why sequels never help, The Night Horsemen, Dan Berry’s Daughter, cowgirls are fun too, a tragedy, about loss, in the shadow of a famous western hero, regional hero, tall tale people, Wild Bill Hickok, Daniel Boone, a famous figure, Jonah Hex didn’t actually exist, Jesse James, his mother’s hotel, the blood of this dude is still on that floor, any class going on in this story?, no race, no class, basically wholly about the romance of this dude, the way people fawn on him being interesting, one’s a whistler and one’s silent, neither of them are talking, descriptive passages, slightly back to our SFF theme, astronaut Dan Berry discovered it was impossible to whistle while on a moonwalk, the language in this book, poetic scene setting, clear and plain, poetic without being florid, Richard Kilmer (the narrator), unadorned, his Dr. Kildare books, mythologies about the west, Robert E. Howard’s letters to H.P. Lovecraft, violence in its cultural context, when a mob broke into the jail, what was the difference between a hanging and a shooting, this person must die under the law, poisoning vs. shooting, the difference was treachery, they push so hard for Assad and gas, dropping bombs on people vs. gassing people, your boy was killed right and proper, poison gas vs. electric chair, its not the proper forms!, completely unthinking, Raytheon has been deputized by the government, Little House On The Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, a western vs. a story that takes place in the West, a lone man doing something, cooperative action, The Big Valley, The Ponderosa, Lorne Greene, everything’s going to be fine, momless three boys, The Wild Wild West, the Desilu production, secret service, Deadwood with George Hearst, the Hearst magazines, a fantasy genre, a really strange subgenre, the romance of the setting vs. the romance of the setup, they were loosed in the void of the mountain desert, the power which struck, Three In One?, Baby Is Three by Theordore Sturgeon, fantastique, Riders On The Purple Sage by Zane Grey, a hooded man, modern weird westerns, Saladin Ahmed, Rebecca Roanhorse, Riders Of The Purple Wage by Philip Jose Farmer, pastiche of Ulysses, UBI, a dense novella, Silver On The Road by Laura Anne Gilman, Algis Budrys, the Dark Tower novels, Maine, Dead Man’s Hand edited by John Joseph, more and more less and less, an exercise in self-indulgence, Bone Tomahawk, Hell Or High Water (2016), The Sixth Gun, their truck is their horse, neo-western, a life under horrible capitalism western, no more talk about the book.
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