HB MES and Publications

Back from a fantastic trip to P-Con. With luck I can get a con report up soon, but I have to give a talk to the digital humanities doctoral students at the Moore Institute tomorrow, so I better get that completed first. Many thanks to Pádraig, Catie, Deirdre and all the organisers as well as to Maura for taking me under her wing, the lovely Sarah for all the laughs, Suzanne and Juliet for great craic, the Talbots for my signed copy of Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, John Connolly for buying us all dinner, the tango dancers for giving us a cause -- oh, and so much more. Anon.

My publication: I have a piece "Before the Watchmen Palaver" in the latest issue of Drink Tank (309). The editors have turned the entire issue over to discussion of the proposed Watchmen prequels. There's a wonderful and terribly unsettling cover, too. Read the full issue in PDF form here: it includes Pádraig and Laura Sneddon, too. Thanks, James, for asking me to contribute. UPDATE: I don't think I remembered to post yet that the collection that includes my essay on reading Lost Girls as post-Sadeian text is also out:



Last but very much not least, fifty-five years ago in a dark corner of Manchester, the lighting flashed, the skies opened up and Mark E. Smith was born. All right, I'm only guessing about the lightning and rain, but it's bound to be likely. My muse, my role model (LOL) -- well, he has inspired me in several stories of late and what better example of sticking to your guns and succeeding on your own terms do you need? So while I might post perennial favourites like "Bill is Dead" or "Touch Sensitive" or "Tempo House" I'll share this instead for those not yet up to speed on The Fall or if you'd prefer a story, snuggle in for storytime with MES and Lovecraft.

Haunted, Spies & a little Melancholia

Angela Carter: she's been a kind of spiritual mother to me since I first read The Bloody Chamber and knew I'd found a kindred soul. This week I finally started writing the novel that's been brewing in my head for some time now inspired by Carter and to some extent also by Kingsley Amis. Hard to imagine two writers more diametrically opposed, but there it is. They fit together in this project. So my head snapped back a little to see this story in the Guardian about Carter's postcards to her friend and literary executor Susannah Clapp. All kinds of resonance from the details in that story from her love of sending postcards to other coincidences that make me wonder just how much of Carter's life will intertwine with my story. Maybe it will only be at the start. Owl Stretching began the day I realised there would be no more sad, funny novels from Kurt Vonnegut, but his ghost only hung around now and then to remind me. He didn't really poke his nose into the proceedings much. Carter died far too soon (and about the age I am now). I feel a responsibility to write the kind of stories she might have written -- or at the very least, as fearlessly as she always sought to write. It's a goal. There's a slide show of the cards. Check it out.

I've got an interview up over at Ben Sobieck's blog, where he suggests I might really be a spy. It's funny how that theme keeps recurring: the first novel I ever wrote -- way back in high school -- followed the adventures of a wannabe spy. The title I'm sorry to say was Ace Spies Incorporated and the plot followed a similar path to just about every film from North by Northwest to The Man Who Knew Too Little with the innocent main character getting caught up with the real thing and quickly getting in over her head. The novel also featured thinly veiled versions of my teenage crushes, the Beatles (ah, that 70s resurgence of second wave Beatlemania). I don't think I have a copy of this anymore, although my old friend Carla might.

I finally saw Melancholia, but I'm not ready to write it up. Harrowing, I can say that much. Amazing, incredible visuals and powerful drama, yes -- but harrowing. And I start teaching Wednesday. Eek!

Friday's Forgotten Books: Between the Angels and the Apes

Not so much "forgotten" as -- what? Aborted? Headed off at the pass? The initial news was wonderful: Alan Moore writing an opera on John Dee with Gorillaz! What's not to love? It sounded like a match made in an alchemical lab somewhere with the potential of turning into gold. There was just one problem: Gorillaz couldn't be bothered to come up with some artwork for Moore's magazine Dodgem Logic despite having the issue held for them several times.

Really? Is it so hard to give a little quid pro quo? Apparently, so that was that.

Well, if you're Alan Moore, you just get on with the billion other projects you have going and publish what you have in Strange Attractor, and if you're Damon Albarn, you make your own opera on Dee anyway.

The lovely thing about Between the Angels and the Apes is how the notes reveal (once again) Moore's structural approach to composition. Consider the opening section of the outline:

If we're to create an approximately ninety-minute piece on the subject of Greatest Dead Englishman John Dee, then a solid and conventional place to start structurally would be a classic three-act construction with sections of a half-hour each. This also seems to fit nicely with the triangular Greek delta symbol (which is how Dee identifies himself in the facsimile notes presented in A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr John Dee and Some Spirits [Meric Casaubon, 1659] and is also the elemental symbol for fire, which is in turn the element that represents the highest spiritual component of the magician or, indeed, the ordinary human being).

Moore further breaks down each section into subsections with flashbacks and the opening and closing scene of the dying Dee in Mortlake with his daughter. It almost seems as if Moore comes up with the idea of breaking the fourth wall as he writes, suggesting that the magician can sense the audience as "spirits of futurity" watching him from the time to come. His take on Queen Elizabeth is that she's a kind of Faerie Queen and he suspects "that Dee's devotion to Elizabeth was at least partly erotically inspired" so imagines her  as more "otherworldly and erotic" than traditionally envisioned. It's a fascinating look at a show that will doubtless never be. Yes, it includes some of the text as well as the notes for the piece, although it remains unfinished.

You can buy this issue of the journal, which also includes Moore Bumper Book of Magic collaborator Steve Moore, no relation, but subject of his performance piece, Unearthing.

Find this week's round up of Forgotten Books over at Sweet Freedom, next week back at Patti's.

Last week's FFB included Todd's write up of our comic Jane Quiet for which he's given me and Elena the best pull quote ever:

Laity might be the literary child of Angela Carter and Peter Cook and Italo Calvino, and Steier the artistic child of Trina Robbins and Gahan Wilson and Jules Feiffer, and not a little dash of Joan Aiken.

Yes, I plan to employ that one.

UK Trip Week One: Part Two

Alright, so Friday of the first week it was off to Northampton for the Angela Carter conference. A nice bunch of folks there; right off the bat, I learned that Carter had written a lot of poetry before she became well known as a novelist, in fact she had thought that's where she would make her mark.

I was talking the afternoon of that first day about Lost Girls, the Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie three volume comic that brings together kiddie lit heroines Alice, Wendy and Dorothy in a series of erotic adventures, which I was arguing followed the projections of Carter's own study, The Sadeian Woman.

I had had a delightful interview with the two of them back in March and they said to be sure to call when I was coming to Northampton. I called on Friday but got the strange message that their number was "not accepting calls" so I thought, oh well. After all, I had been a bit nervous about their being there for the paper -- as a medievalist I seldom have to deal with living authors who might take issue with my interpretations of their works.

The paper went well and generated some interesting questions, including one post-graduate student who pressed me on several aspects of my argument, but seemed satisfied with my further explanations. A handful of people came up afterward to make sure that I knew they had enjoyed the paper, but also that I knew Alan Moore lived in town, which I assured them I did. They shared some stories about seeing him around town; one student said he had talked to Melinda but was too intimidated to talk to Alan.

The next day it finally occurred to me to double check the number and found that I had left out a digit, so I called and this time reached Alan, who said that they had a visitor up from London, but that they might stop by the conference (he and Melinda are big fans of Carter). As it turns out, they wouldn't have been able to come on Friday anyway, as they had a number of unexpected events that week.

So I was sitting in a panel listening to folks talk about The Passion of the New Eve when I saw one of the grad students at the door to the seminar room, looking anxiously through the glass. Seeing what he was looking for, he slipped into the room and crossed over to where I was sitting to whisper in my ear, "Alan Moore is here to see you!"

I have to say it was one of the more agreeable ways to be summoned in the midst of a conference. I gathered up my things and followed him, trying to be unobtrusive (well, not much chance of that, eh?). As we walked back to the lobby, he gushed quite nervously about talking to Alan, which made me grin. Sure enough, out in the lobby was Alan in his "Cthulhu 2008" t-shirt ("Why vote for a lesser evil?") with another man, who turned out to be Steve Moore, his co-author on The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic. Alan gave me a big hug and a kiss and apologized for not being able to make it to my paper, though he, too, thought it might have proved more distracting to have them there.

He said they didn't have much time, but of course we then sat for an hour or more chatting. He was just getting through chapter 27 (of 30) in Jerusalem, his latest novel. The chapter follows Lucia Anna Joyce around the grounds of St. Andrew's Hospital in Northampton where she was hospitalized for schizophrenia. The chapter unfolds in her father's singular style, which Moore said was finding difficult to write (no surprise there, eh?). Because I had both Moores there (Steve said at once point that he was "Alan's evil twin") I quizzed them about progress on the Bumper Book, which had been going slowly, and found that was mostly because Steve had been caring for his dying brother, which I was sorry to hear. But they were both looking forward to getting back to work on it, which was the reason why Steve had come up from London.

Part of the project includes a new tarot deck the two designed, with some notable changes, e.g. gems instead of coins or pentacles, because they had greater resonance, as well as blades instead of swords, so they could use spades as the iconic image, like playing card decks. There's going to be so much in that book, including profiles of notable magicians over the years as well as discussions of ethics and magic (which digressed into a little snarkiness about chaos magic and many of its practitioners who have not impressed them). They thought there wasn't really enough attention paid to intention among modern practictioners. Love charms, Alan said, are "only slightly less reputable than a roofie in baby cham."

Well, I know Pádraig in particular will yell at me, but I didn't think to take a picture of us together, nor to record the conversation, but we were just having a great time chatting, so it never occurred to me -- although I did remember to get him to sign my copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1910 which I'd purchased at Gosh on the off-chance that I would see him. And I did get another hug and kiss when at last they decided it was time to toddle on. I did get a chuckle out of the surreptitious attention from the other conference goers when they came out during the break, too, whispering and trying not to look like they were staring. Hee hee. I promised to send a copy of the paper once I got back and typed in all the hand-written changes I had made on the train on the way up while listening to the interview again, so I'll send that off this week. Hope they like it!

A Jam-Packed Spring Break

Spring break is meant to give a little breather mid-semester, but somehow it always ends up packed with things I can't do during the semester proper. Things were off with a bang on Tuesday as I interviewed Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie about Lost Girls for the Angela Carter conference in Northampton this June. Thank you, Pádraig, for hooking me up!

How was it? In a word: brilliant!

They were both so terrific: friendly and expansive. We chatted quite comfortably, which is amazing considering how nervous I was before hand (about getting the questions out, about the tech side failing (Skype + GarageBand + wireless), and oh, I don't know what -- sounding like an idiot, I guess. I will try to put up some snippets when I get a minute to edit them out of the raw recording. A lot of it was specific to my project, but some will be of interest to all. The Bumper Book of Magic is coming along, and so is Melinda's autobiography -- that's an exciting project that builds from her early life in San Francisco, surrounded by the Beats and as one of the folks in the nascent underground comix movement.

It's funny how everything connects. Wednesday I headed off to Connecticut to see an exhibit at the Beinecke with the Queen of Everything and Elena. The exhibit featured books on alchemy. Thanks to the Joey Zone for mentioning the exhibit in the first place -- it was well worth the trip (and yes, we won't mention Garmin's unfortunate insistence on trying to get us to go across a bridge that was out).

It was an excellent exhibit, with a wide variety of volumes spread across two floors and following the influence of the alchemists up to the present day. The QoE has written about the food already, so I'll be lazy. It's been years since I have been in New Haven, so it was interesting to re-orient myself again.

The food was good, of course! Even better when we got back to Elena's for a little zubrowka, of course! Bialistock this time, which I didn't like as much as the classic Bison Grass -- but all Bison Power is good! I brought some good cheeses, too (mmmm, tilsit!). It was hard to believe that we could talk ourselves into a meal later, but Mavi was indeed delicious. Oh my, that duck l'orange was like BUTTAH!

On Thursday, Elena and I went to the Wadsworth Atheneum to see the Ballet Russes exhibit, featuring costumes as well as design sketches and paintings from artists as varied as Cocteau, Picasso, Gris, Miro, and Ernst. One of the featured ballets of course was the Rite of Spring; its premiere plays a pivotal role in Lost Girls. It was quite wonderful. I loved all the costumes and sets. They also showed DVDs of clips from recent productions based on Diaghilev's ballets. I bought a print of Leon Bakst's painting of Nijinsky as the Faun.

Then we were off for more food (of course!) so we had lunch at Lena's which was very tasty. I had pizza but I was very tempted by the split pea soup. Elena had one of the other soups with sausage and potato that looked very good. On a whim, we stopped at A. C. Petersen's for ice cream, though I must say I hardly needed it (but mint chocolate chip and hot fudge sauce -- how could I say no?).

Then I had to say good bye to my little buddy Shaq and to Elena and hit the road back to Albany, already late enough to hit traffic in both Hartford and Springfield, but hey -- I wasn't in a hurry. It was still spring break!