KOSMOCHLOR

Adieu 2011, Hello 2012

2011-12-31T01:06:00.000+01:00

Dear 2011,

You've been a bitch.

You've been wonderful (right in the middle of all that rubbish, like an exotic flower growing out of hydroponic sputum).

You brought me to the edge of the cliff and you caught me by the hair in the nick of time. That was cool.

You tricked a neighbour into coming to my rescue and together we killed the Spirit of Gio's Apartment (she bought him off). Supercool.

When I had nothing to eat, you inspired another well-to-do neighbour to give me all her dried tomato soup because she could not digest it, and also half a box of pasta (I think it was Penne). Cool, too. I can digest lyophilized soup, and I've got no problem eating gluten.

I haven't written many stories, but that 's not your fault. I was busy building magical glass-brick walls impervious to tickling.

And I tiled a few walls.

(Let's not forget the tiling.)

And you, Paris, the song was lying: you're not a blonde. You're an angry biker. That's why I stayed out of the traffic.

Fireworks are shooting up. Fire fighters have opened their high-ceilinged halls to dance with the Parisians. They dance a lot. I can hear no car foghorns.

Hey, Tour Eiffel, I've never liked you. Here's to you.

The War of the Worlds, 1953

Hello, New Year,

I'm so excited.

All these photographs (but the image from The War of the Worlds, naturellement) were taken on the way from Rue des Pyrénées to Bercy Village (à Paris, sur la Terre, la Terre qui est un astre--Jacques Prévert)

Essay on Michel Bernanos: The Mountain Dead from Life

2011-11-21T15:30:00.001+01:00

Essay: Michel Bernanos' The Mountain Dead from Life is up at the Weird Fiction Review, along with critiques by Jeffrey Ford and Edward Gauvin.

The Other Side of the Mountain is the strange, horrific, unforgettable story of two sailors, the young and innocent narrator and his unlikely friend, a seasoned ship cook who has seen it all until the two are stranded on an island surrounded by a sea of blood, where a mysterious mountain looms, dead and deadly.

When I was offered the opportunity to translate this novella for The Weird: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Stories, I said to myself: "Oh, oh, it will be quite an experience," as rendering the author's style in English wasn't the easiest of tasks. This masterpiece of French literature of the fantastic fascinated and scared me...

THE WEIRD: I have participated in one of the largest thematic anthology projects of all time, and I'm still alive!

2011-10-31T14:51:00.000+01:00

The Weird is out! Amazon.com

How It All Began

The day was Sunday, the month April, the year 2010, and I didn't know it would be the first day of a several-month-long captivity in the VanderMeers' Donjons (they have virtual oubliettes in their basement; the Dragon is Jeff himself). To put together this mammoth anthology, Ann and Jeff themselves lived like recluses. I suppose they needed a European correspondent to bring a dose of international suffering to the project.

Jeff sent me an email saying "For the big book of weird there is a small chance we might need a re-translation of a short novel of 30k. Is this the kind of thing you could do? From the French to English?

I also have a need for some research on copyright on a book in France."

The short novel was La montagne morte de la vie, (translated in English as "The Other Side of the Mountain"), written by Michel Bernanos, the son of the much more famous Georges Bernanos. The copyright research turned out to be for the same book.

I hadn't read anything written by Bernanos Jr. (when Jeff asked about his short stories, I thought he was asking about Georges' short fiction, and I answered that he had written none). I researched the author and learned that he had published under various pseudonyms, to avoid using the name made famous by his illustrious father. When I read La montagne... (I will comment on this incredible story soon).

As I've been living in France for a longer time than in Italy (where I was born), I enquired about the French and Italian authors who would be in this landmark anthology.

I asked Jeff if he had thought of that great Belgian horror author, Jean Ray. (He had.) And what about Claude Seignolle (a springy ninety-five-year-old French author), an authority in the French literature of the fantastic? Which Italian author? Dino Buzzati, who was a master of the uncanny.

The Rights Acquisition Lottery

And then I plunged into the dangerous world of Translation Rights. My job consisted in finding who owned the rights, negotiating the acquisition and conducting a ballet between Florida (where the VanderMeers' Donjons loom) and Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, ... Jeff, and the Atlantic Corvus people negotiated most rights, but I had the unique pleasure of dealing with the owners of the stories I translated, and a few others, some of which consisted simply in finding who owned what, and who was the right person to call, which surely is a torment invented in some special hell designed for anthologists.

I remember with fondness the hunt across the Netherlands for a lady who had bought from her daughter the rights to all the works of a deceased author. I found her attorney, and he promised to get back to me with news soon. The announced day passed, and still no news (Jeff NEVER put pressure on me. Never ever. He only suggested to tell the attorney that they probably shared common ancestors). I called again, and again, but the attorney didn't have an answer. So I tried to contact the owner over the phone. The nice old lady said, "Listen, I have to go, and I'm late. Why don't you tell me what you're selling, instead of asking if I can sell you something?"

Followed more months spent hunting down contacts, sending emails, calling people on the phone—which made the difference in the end.

Most heirs are represented by agents. If the agency is small, the process is swift. Not so with bigger organisations. Once you get a print or electronic-edition permission, the battle isn't won concerning a new translation, as separate department deal with the estates and the translation permissions. Agents or their assistants steered me through the process. They told me who to contact and volunteered to speak to their colleagues, supporting my demand.

I discovered why a few major pieces written by illustrious (and still copyrighted) deceased authors are still known to the Anglophone audience through translations done fifty years ago, written in a style that doesn't appeal to contemporary readers, and even sporting a few mistakes! In spite of this, the old translation is bought over and over, by anthologists and school textbook editors. Fact is, it is TOO difficult to obtain the permission for a new translation, particularly when your request concerns a single story! In one case (Cortazar's "Axolotl"), I had to convince the heir, via the agent, that the existing translation didn't do justice to the original. The heir and the agent went through my translation, word for word. When the Estate gave the imprimatur, I felt as if I'd conquered a mountain.

I translated for this anthology:

Julio Cortazar, “Axolotl,” 1956 ( Argentina)
Dino Buzzati, “The Colomber,” (Il colombre), 1966 (Italy)
Michel Bernanos, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” (La montagne morte de la vie) 1967 (France)
Claude Seignolle, “The Ghoulbird,” (Le hupeur) 1967 (France)
Georg Heym, “The Dissection,” (Die Dissektion) 1913 (Germany)

THE WEIRD: A Compendium of Dark & Strange Stories
Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer Amazon.com

Foreword: Michael Moorcock
Introduction by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Afterword: China Mieville

Table of Contents

Alfred Kubin, “The Other Side” (excerpt), 1908 (translation, Austria)
F. Marion Crawford, “The Screaming Skull,” 1908
Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows,” 1907
Saki, “Sredni Vashtar,” 1910
M.R. James, “Casting the Runes,” 1911
Lord Dunsany, “How Nuth Would Have Practiced his Art,” 1912
Gustav Meyrink, “The Man in the Bottle,” 1912 (translation, Austria)
Georg Heym, “The Dissection,” 1913 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Germany)
Hanns Heinz Ewers, “The Spider,” 1915 (translation, Germany)
Rabindranath Tagore, “The Hungry Stones,” 1916 (India)
Luigi Ugolini, “The Vegetable Man,” 1917 (new translation by Anna and Brendan Connell, Italy; first-ever translation into English)
A. Merritt, “The People of the Pit,” 1918
Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “The Hell Screen,” 1918 (new translation, Japan)
Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett), “Unseen—Unfeared,” 1919
Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony,” 1919 (translation, German/Czech)
Stefan Grabinski, “The White Weyrak,” 1921 (translation, Poland)
H.F. Arnold, “The Night Wire,” 1926
H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror,” 1929
Margaret Irwin, “The Book,” 1930
Jean Ray, “The Mainz Psalter,” 1930 (translation, Belgium)
Jean Ray, “The Shadowy Street,” 1931 (translation, Belgium)
Clark Ashton Smith, “Genius Loci,” 1933
Hagiwara Sakutoro, “The Town of Cats,” 1935 (translation, Japan)
Hugh Walpole, “The Tarn,” 1936
Bruno Schulz, “Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass,” 1937 (translation, Poland)
Robert Barbour Johnson, “Far Below,” 1939
Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost,” 1941
Leonora Carrington, “White Rabbits,” 1941
Donald Wollheim, “Mimic,” 1942
Ray Bradbury, “The Crowd,” 1943
William Sansom, “The Long Sheet,” 1944
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph,” 1945 (translation, Argentina)
Olympe Bhely-Quenum, “A Child in the Bush of Ghosts,” 1949 (Benin)
Shirley Jackson, “The Summer People,” 1950
Margaret St. Clair, “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” 1951
Robert Bloch, “The Hungry House,” 1951
Augusto Monterroso, “Mister Taylor,” 1952 (new translation by Larry Nolen, Guatemala)
Amos Tutuola, “The Complete Gentleman,” 1952 (Nigeria)
Jerome Bixby, “It’s a Good Life,” 1953
Julio Cortazar, “Axolotl,” 1956 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Argentina)
William Sansom, “A Woman Seldom Found,” 1956
Charles Beaumont, “The Howling Man,” 1959
Mervyn Peake, “Same Time, Same Place,” 1963
Dino Buzzati, “The Colomber,” 1966 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Italy)
Michel Bernanos, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)
Merce Rodoreda, “The Salamander,” 1967 (translation, Catalan)
Claude Seignolle, “The Ghoulbird,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)
Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be,” 1967

Daphne Du Maurier, “Don’t Look Now,” 1971
Robert Aickman, “The Hospice,” 1975
Dennis Etchison, “It Only Comes Out at Night,” 1976
James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Terrible Things to Rats,” 1976
Eric Basso, “The Beak Doctor,” 1977
Jamaica Kincaid, “Mother,” 1978 (Antigua and Barbuda/US)
George R.R. Martin, “Sandkings,” 1979
Bob Leman, “Window,” 1980
Ramsey Campbell, “The Brood,” 1980
Michael Shea, “The Autopsy,” 1980
William Gibson/John Shirley, “The Belonging Kind,” 1981
M. John Harrison, “Egnaro,” 1981
Joanna Russ, “The Little Dirty Girl,” 1982
M. John Harrison, “The New Rays,” 1982
Premendra Mitra, “The Discovery of Telenapota,” 1984 (translation, India)
F. Paul Wilson, “Soft,” 1984
Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild,” 1984
Clive Barker, “In the Hills, the Cities,” 1984
Leena Krohn, “Tainaron,” 1985 (translation, Finland)
Garry Kilworth, “Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands,” 1987
Lucius Shepard, “Shades,” 1987
Harlan Ellison, “The Function of Dream Sleep,” 1988
Ben Okri, “Worlds That Flourish,” 1988 (Nigeria)
Elizabeth Hand, “The Boy in the Tree,” 1989
Joyce Carol Oates, “Family,” 1989
Poppy Z Brite, “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood,” 1990
Michal Ajvaz, “The End of the Garden,” 1991 (translation, Czech)
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Dark,” 1991
Kathe Koja, “Angels in Love,” 1991
Haruki Murakami, “The Ice Man,” 1991 (translation, Japan)
Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements,” 1992
Marc Laidlaw, “The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio,” 1993
Steven Utley, “The Country Doctor,” 1993
William Browning Spenser, “The Ocean and All Its Devices,” 1994
Jeffrey Ford, “The Delicate,” 1994
Martin Simpson, “Last Rites and Resurrections,” 1994
Stephen King, “The Man in the Black Suit,” 1994
Angela Carter, “The Snow Pavilion,” 1995
Craig Padawer, “The Meat Garden,” 1996
Stepan Chapman, “The Stiff and the Stile,” 1997
Tanith Lee, “Yellow and Red,” 1998
Kelly Link, “The Specialist’s Hat,” 1998
Caitlin R. Kiernan, “A Redress for Andromeda,” 2000
Michael Chabon, “The God of Dark Laughter,” 2001
China Mieville, “Details,” 2002
Michael Cisco, “The Genius of Assassins,” 2002
Neil Gaiman, “Feeders and Eaters,” 2002
Jeff VanderMeer, “The Cage,” 2002
Jeffrey Ford, “The Beautiful Gelreesh,” 2003
Thomas Ligotti, “The Town Manager,” 2003
Brian Evenson, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation,” 2003
Mark Samuels, “The White Hands,” 2003
Daniel Abraham, “Flat Diana,” 2004
Margo Lanagan, “Singing My Sister Down,” 2005 (Australia)
T.M. Wright, “The People on the Island,” 2005
Laird Barron, “The Forest,” 2007
Liz Williams, “The Hide,” 2007
Reza Negarestani, “The Dust Enforcer,” 2008 (Iran)
Micaela Morrissette, “The Familiars,” 2009
Steve Duffy, “In the Lion’s Den,” 2009
Stephen Graham Jones, “Little Lambs,” 2009

K.J. Bishop, “Saving the Gleeful Horse,” 2010 (Australia)

How I met Tina Aumont—a mythic actress and an anti-diva

2011-10-29T17:13:00.000+02:00

Tina Aumont, born in Hollywood to film star Maria Montez and French icon Jean-Pierre Aumont. Jean Cocteau wrote a poem for her birth and Marlene Dietrich sang lullabies while cradling her. (From Romanhattan website)

It was some time around the turn of the millennium. Film producer and actor Ivan Galietti, an Italian friend transplanted in New York, had come to Paris for one of his frequent visits to Tina, who was fifty-four or fifty-five and looked ten years younger.

She was one of the kindest persons I'd ever met. How, I wondered, can this woman be a myth of the twentieth century, and be so easy-going, so approachable, like the girl next door.

The first thing that struck me was her eyes, immense, dark, soulful. Age tarnishes most beauties, but her face, dominated by those incredible eyes, remained unlined. Her youthful looks weren't the result of the surgeon's scalpel. Even if she had needed to negotiate with time, which she did not, she couldn't have afforded the cost.

A photograph of Tina, taken
a couple of years before I met her

She could afford pretty much ... nothing. After her glory days, her father's heritage in the hands of her stepmother, an Italian actress, she was reduced to living in a minuscule apartment located in a modest Parisian quarter full of penniless immigrants, and the rent was paid by the city's social services. Tina's flamboyant career had taken a downturn in the late seventies, when she was banned from Italy, her country of adoption, for drug possession. Leaving Italy had broken her heart.

Tina worked with great directors like Fellini, scandalous directors like Tinto Brass, who said she was the most beautiful woman with whom he'd ever worked, and many others. Several among the films in which she starred were intellectual and elegant, other fell into the category of B movies. To all her films, she brought her magnetic, compelling presence.

But Tina loved the needle, and little by little her contracts dwindled to nothing. The French television tried to lure her back into acting, but she seldom kept up with the schedule, and when the dressers prepared her for a scene, they could see the needle holes constellating her arms.

The day I met Tina, Ivan, my boyfriend Pierre and I set off with her for a promenade in the forest of Fontainebleau, half an hour or so to the south of Paris. Before leaving, we had a couple of beers in a café. She had water, an entire bottle. At the time, she was already treated for respiratory problems, but she rolled joints in full sight on the café table, and she smoke the first in a taxi, to the driver's despair. Unabashed, she rolled down the window and puffed on.

The second time I saw her, it was at her funeral in Paris, Cimetière du Montparnasse, on the 18th of November 2006.

Paris had gifted us with one of those wonderful autumn days, sunny and warm. I arrived early, and Ivan was nowhere in sight. Tina's friends had gathered in front of the entrance. Knowing nobody, I waited on the opposite side of the street. The crowd stared at me, a few heads put together, whispering. What crosses your mind when, during a ceremony, a bunch of strangers can't pull their gazes off you? I wondered whether I had picked the right clothes for a funeral. I tugged uncomfortably at my black sweater, glanced down at my long skirt, grey with black arabesques, and light-brown leather boots, but could find nothing wrong with my attire, and tossed my grey shawl over my shoulder, to give myself a countenance.

Ivan arrived at last, in time for the crowd to move over to the grave. As these gatherings go, a few friends recounted their memories of the deceased. Ivan read a poem he'd written for Tina.

I remember the anecdote told by Nadine Trintignant (sister of Tina's first husband, Christian Marquand). In a scene, Tina, standing before the camera, was supposed to start walking to the right. During the first take, she walked off to the left. "Cut!" director Lina Wertmuller ordered. "Tina, you know you should walk to the right." Tina nodded. "Okay." The camera rolled, and Tina walked to the left. "To the right, Tina, please!" Tina smiled. "To the right. No problem." And off to the left she went. Take after take, there was no way to convince her to walk as the script demanded. It's not that she refused to comply, but some daydream held her in a firm grasp. Finally, one of the grips lay down on the floor, out of the camera's view, and gently turned Tina's feet to the right, and she stepped in that direction.

After the funeral, Ivan and I followed Tina's friends to a bistrot. Someone showed me one of her last photographs, taken in the hospital. Despite the oxygen tubes, she hadn't changed a bit. At sixty, she still looked young.

Now was the moment to enquire about the strange gazes pinned on me when I arrived at the cemetery. So I put the question to the woman sitting next to me.

She answered: "You looked so much like her, we thought Tina had found the way to attend her own funeral. It would have been typical of her."

"I look nothing like her." I was going through one of my dark-hair phases, when I dye my reddish-brown hair dark brown or black, with a long fringe (or bangs, my American friends would say), and I'd hidden my eyes behind large sunglasses. But still.

"I can see it now," the woman said. "But the silhouette and the hair were so similar we really thought her ghost had come to say goodbye."

Goodbye, Tina. You aren't forgotten. Walk free, in the direction of your desire. Maybe I'll see you around Paris, some day.

Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: How it charms, tricks and scrambles your mind

2011-10-24T01:24:00.005+02:00

Wax model for eye surgery, Musée Orfila, Paris

I gave my daughter one of my contributor's copies of The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities as a birthday present. It was the first time I presented her with a book. Ever.

She's a compulsive reader, but books are not her kind of birthday present. For her, books are things to borrow from Mum and to give back worn and torn. I am her personal library. Only, libraries charge you when the book comes back in a pitiful state. Mum's library is a forgiving institution. Still, each time my daughter hands me a tattered paperback, I can't help feeling a pang of sorrow to my bookworm's heart. She prefers borrowing paperbacks because she can fold the book backwards, breaking the spine in the process. (She's a barbarian.) This volume was a hardcover, though. And I had my own copy anyway. Ha. So... .... on her birthday, I gave her this thing of beauty:

==> ==> ==> ==> ==> ==>

She looked at me askance. "A book."

"There's a story of mine in it," I said defensively.

"Oh, thank you, Mum!" What else could she say?

The following day, she told me, "This cabinet des curiosités must be splendid."

"It is."

"It would be great to visit."

"You can't. They made it up."

(And by the way, I set fire to that place of evil.

Well, it wasn't me. The governess did it. Oh, buy the book and you'll know the truth.)

Back to the book: my daughter had only read the introduction, which had tricked her into believing that the good doctor's Wunderkammer was a real place.

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have put a rather unbelievable doctor, and the (mostly) deranged people who knew him when he was alive, in an impossible cabinet of curiosities, and they have made it all so real in the introduction that someone who has not read about the current anthology and knows nothing about the previous book (The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases) has no reason to question the reality of characters and place.

Take a look at the gallery of artworks illustrating the horrible, amazing, odd story behind the stories of Thackery T. Lambshead.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinetof Curiosities is fiction disguised in non-fiction. To paraphrase Borges, Dr. Lambshead has passed away, but his cabinet of curiosities will perdure, bright, solitaire and infinite, perfectly immobile, armed with precious items, incorruptible, secret . . .

Julian, a novel by Gore Vidal (and Christians, pagans, Amenabar's Agora, freedom of thought, and lions)

2011-10-15T17:41:00.020+02:00

OMG...

Libanius to Priscus

Antioch, March [A.D.] 380

Yesterday morning, as I was about to enter the lecture hall, I was stopped by a Christian student who asked me in a voice eager with malice, "Have you heard about the Emperor Theodosius?"

I cleared my throat, ready to investigate the nature of this question, but he was too quick for me. "He has been baptised a Christian."

I was noncommittal. Nowadays, one never knows who is a secret agent.

This passage is the beginning of Julian by Gore Vidal. I devoured the novel in a couple of days, but when I got to the point where the protagonist was murdered, and one of his teachers ferreted out the assassin, it saddened me so I set the book aside for a few weeks. I didn't want to meet the man who had killed such an interesting and endearing character.

Then my daughter dropped by, asking as usual for a good read, and I put the book under her nose. She grabbed it.

"What? A historical novel?" she protested after flipping through the first pages. "A book published in 1962? I want something NEW, like the last one! [The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi], or something published a couple of years ago at most, like the one before. [Robert Palmer's Debatable Space]. This Vidal guy isn't even a classic, or I would know [she's a student of modern English literature]"

"Just read it."

She called the day after. "I can't put it down."

I finished reading the last pages since, and I can say it is one of the best historical novels I've ever read.

The novel

Witty, extraordinarily accurate and beautifully written, this best-selling novel retraces the life of Roman Emperor Julian, narrated in first person. Two of his mentors, renowned pagan philosophers, exchange letters on Julian's manuscript, adding first-hand accounts that are both dispassionate and tongue in cheek. The result is a multifaceted and often contradictory portrait of the protagonist.

Julian (331-363) was Emperor Constantine's nephew. After his ascension to the title of Emperor, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity and died at the age of thirty-two during a military campaign in Persia.

Remembered only as "the Apostate" in the following centuries, Julian was a philosopher, a fine essayist and had a charming personality. He tried to preserve the Hellenistic culture and the ancient religious eclecticism crushed by the violence of the New Religion.

In the novel, the characters are penned with all their humanity and flaws. Despite the complexity of the themes, Vidal handles the ideas of the time in a simple and effective way. The novel captures the religious and political ferment of a brutal age and restores the legacy of a ruler who wanted to preserve the ancient tolerance.

This historical reconstruction provides, as all historiography should, a picture of the past that serves the contingencies of the present.

I asked my accomplice and friend Daniel Pasetti, historian specialising in ancient Rome, to chat with me about the book, the protagonist, and his time.

A Roman Emperor speaking in broken Latin?

Gio. What's different about this emperor, Julian?

Daniel. Julian was a Greek-speaking emperor. He spoke Latin, of course, but with a strong accent. He was the first non-Latin emperor in history. There had been an African and Eastern emperors, born in Latin families, though, but Julian is the first about whom we know with certainty that his first language was not Latin.

G. Still, if tradition has left more information about him, it must mean something, that he was more important than others.

Sources sources sources

D. Yes and no. The abundance of sources is based on two fundamental reasons: the importance of the person who wrote about something, and the importance of the contents, which gave the documents greater chances of survival.

Concerning Julian, we have Ammianos Markellinos (Ammianus Marcellinus), the most important historian of the 4th century A.D. Ammianus, born in Syria to a Greek-speaking family (but he wrote in Latin, the language of history) was an officer of medium-high level in Constantius II's and later Julian's army. He was personally present in many of the events later recounted in his Res Gestae, and got out of a few tight spots, barely saving his life, as in the Persian siege of the Roman city of Amida during the reign of Constantius. He was also present in the Persian campaign that cost Julian his life.

Above everything else, in addition to being a witness, Ammianus had a great intellectual honesty. In his narration, Julian emerges as the ideal emperor, for his culture, dedication to public interests, courage, tolerance. Practically a Titan, but not without flaws. Although Ammianus was a pagan, like Julian, and shared his religious views, he criticized a few of Julian's ideas as demagogic. And indeed, they were.

If he did not hold back about Julian's flaws, there is no reason to suspect that he was exaggerating his merits. We must be grateful to Ammianus and Fate, too, which let us get some of his work. Without Ammianus, we would know much less about the 4th century, and Gore Vidal wouldn't have written about Julian with the same historical exactitude.

Religious freedom

G. Ok, but what about the question of religious freedom?

D. It strikes me that the not-so-Christian Gore Vidal was attracted to Julian, who is remembered as "the Apostate." Nor is it without significance that an emperor who remained in office for just two years has been remembered with such hatred for centuries. Sure, he was Caesar (in the late Empire, "Caesar" was the title of the emperor's representative in charge of a few areas; in Julian's case: Gaul, Britain and Spain) and lived in Gaul for six years, but his religion policy was implemented for only two years, when he became Augustus, the emperor's title.

Being Augustus is cooler than being Caesar

G. And why isn't Vidal's interest surprising?

D. Because Julian's action against Christians was not a "real" persecution. It was a clever (from his point of view) attempt to pull the carpet from under their feet. He did not forbid Christians to practise their faith. In fact, Christians have never really been forbidden to worship their God, if not in very few occasions and for a short time.

And the thing about Christians eaten by lions? Medieval propaganda!

G. Hold on. What about persecutions? Christians thrown to the lions?

D. The story of persecutions is very different from what it is commonly believed, and in fact, we can say that Christianity triumphed not despite the persecution, but maybe just because it was not persecuted systematically. The only documented episode of Christians thrown into the arena occurred not far from your home, in Lyon, under the reign of the "good" Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Then nothing... We don't hear about lions eating Christians if not from medieval sources, which are entirely unreliable. It could have happened a few more times, but it is rather unlikely.

A beautiful icon of Ignatius of Antioch, Martyr

Ancient civilisations were violent, and certainly had a taste for blood, but not the way we think today. Where's the fun in watching ordinary people, shaking and shrieking, being devoured by beasts? And how long would the show last? One minute? And then what? Would you sit in the traffic across the city for two hours straight just to watch a thirty-second show? Imagine going to Madison Square Garden to see a boxing match between Mike Tyson and a convicted shoplifter. What fun. What you want to see is a combat, not a severed head flying off over the ropes after two seconds. The ancient audience wanted a good fight not just blood.

G. They weren't afraid of blood, I suspect.

D. They were not, but blood was simply the outcome of action. Action was fun, not blood.

G. All right, but there was persecution, even without lions.

D. Well, it's complicated.

G. It's always complicated with you.

D. No persecution occurred in the way we all imagine, no Christian hunt as such, systematic and over the centuries. There were episodic moments of intolerance, sometimes violent. And laws. Mostly not reinforced, though. In short, we can say that today's widely accepted scenario is that there was a long period of tolerance interrupted by intermittent persecution, limited in time and space.

All this bad reputation... for what?

G. Hold on. This is what you think.

D. No, that's what you can read in any good ancient history handbook published in the last thirty years. Or you can hear about it in a college class in Roman history or history of Christianity. The most severe persecution and perhaps the only deserving the name, happened under Diocletian and the tetrarchs, which included among other things the confiscation of holy books and actions against the clergy (less against the faithful, who were nevertheless forbidden to meet). And the law was applied in leopard spots, so to speak, harsh in some places, moderate in others, and nothing at all in most. Then came Constantine, and things changed.

Julian's campaign to restore religious eclecticism

G. And then Julian arrived, and things changed again.

D. Well, between Constantine and Julian came Constantius. In reality, Julian, though hostile to Christianity, wasn't interested in violent persecution à la Diocletian. He adopted Constantine's policy, but in an opposite way. Constantine, with the edict of tolerance in A.D. 311—actually issued by Galerius (a Caesar) had put all religions on an equal footing; i.e. he had stressed the right to worship all faiths, including Christianity. However, Constantine had clearly favoured Christianity, both giving precedence to Christians in prominent positions around him, and increasing tax exemptions in favour of the clergy. Julian did the same thing, but in favour of the pagans. His was not a persecution with condemnations and executions, but the attempt to push Christianity back within the limits that other religions had, surreptitiously more or less favouring all other cults. Even non-Roman cults . . .

G. Now you're saying Christians were bad . . .

D. Christians weren't bad, but they weren't good either. They were men of their time, neither the best nor the worst. Nevertheless, Christianity carried a virus for which classical societies had no antibodies, a bit like the European diseases brought to America by the Spaniards. The idea that there was a "real" religion, with a real god, one's own (and that the other gods were false and such faiths had to be eradicated) was surreal for the ancient societies.

In this light, your typical uneducated pagan was hostile to Christianity because he believed that "all" gods were real, including the Biblical God. Diocletian, a slave's nephew and a shepherd's son, materialised this sentiment with his persecutory policy against Christians. Just because he was a traditionalist—he was a traditionalist even in the typical pagan's eye.

It is no coincidence that especially the emperors that we could define "progressive" were hostile to Christianity, according to the accepted historical canons. The implications of the Christians' dogmatic conception of religion were clear to these emperors, who were "liberal" in their time. Some practices that have become recurring scourges in the history of Western civilisation were introduced by the Christian Churches. Anti-Semitism? Introduced by the Christians— as in a Freudian Oedipal conflict, where the sons want to kill the father. The burning of books deemed blasphemous? Another Christian novelty. Also, things worsened considerably for women.

One of the first female scientists, victim to Christian fundamentalists

G. I'm thinking of Hypatia, a mathematician, astronomer, physicist and the head of the Neo-Platonist school of philosophy in Alexandria.

D. Yes. She was slaughtered by a mob of Christians—shredded to pieces, literally. Her crime was freedom of thought, with the aggravating circumstance of having the wrong reproductive organs. Her public execution illustrates a new climate, but, as always, one must put the episode in its context. Christian "Taliban" teemed in Egypt and in the East. They were less strong and less violent in the West. Nevertheless, they shared the same ideology.

G. Off topic: Is the Amenabar film a correct historical reconstruction?

D. It is surprisingly correct. I've seen two minor errors only: dust in the street (the streets of Alexandria were all paved: Alexandria was the Los Angeles of the Roman Empire); and the Roman soldiers' uniforms, which had changed by the fourth century (we've seen the same uniforms since the first historical film of all time).

So why did Christianity prevail?

G. Still, it is unthinkable that a religion would become prominent only through the boost of a political leader. There must be deeper reasons.

D. True. In effect, Christianity grew thanks to complex factors. Generally speaking, it was the winning religion in a universal tide of monotheism. At this point, the various traditional cults were looked upon with affection, but few really believed in the gods of ancient time, Jupiter & Co. Monotheism, in its various forms, was prevailing. Christianity however was the best organized and—how should I put it?—the simplest, least -intellectualised religion, more suited to the poorest among the urban strata. A neat opposition between right and wrong gets into the popular mindset easily. And then Christians had a great advantage: a Jesus certainly lived in Palestine.

We know little about him. He was one of several prophets/sages/rebels/mages the East produced steadily. Christianity coalesced around the figure of a Rabbi (teacher), perhaps a rebellious political and religious reformer, and syncretised a universe of elements coming from Judaism, Sol Invictus' cult (Mithraism), other solar deities of Hellenistic tradition, and also from Zoroastrianism. Christianity triumphed, but it could have been some other cult, if a few elements of the jigsaw had come together in a different way. Who knows—a cult with Simon Magus or the God Sol? Or the Aryan version of Christianity.

However, political power has a weight in effecting a push, perhaps not the ultimate push, but one important enough. In fact, Christianity—from which derive the Greek Orthodox Church, closer to the first Christian roots, and the Catholic Church, and the subsequent Protestant variants—is based on the Nicene Creed.

Council of Nicea, A.D. 325, followed by the
Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381
(Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed)

Christians fought over Jesus' nature: is he one with the Father or separate?

G. You mean the dogma of Jesus genitum non factum (generated, not created): "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father."

D. Exactly. It would have been enough at the time to give a strong political thrust in the opposite direction, in favour of the Aryans, and today Jesus would be considered Factum non genitum (created, not generated).

G. I think that today most people would find the debate on Jesus single or double nature strange.

D. After fifteen centuries of monotheism, yes. But at the time, the world was polytheist, although it was changing into monotheist. In the Nicaens' view, admitting that Jesus had been created (a real physical son, a separate person) meant to admit that there wasn't a unique god, that there were other divine entities. In other words, polytheism, kicked out of the door, would come back through the window! The reasoning was correct, in a way. Why was the Aryan Creed adopted by German tribes more easily than the Nicene Creed? Because Aryans believed Jesus was a separate person. Aryanism was a monotheism with a polytheistic angle . . .

Power relations and dogma

G. In other words, behind the clouds of incense, there are often, though not always, power relations—politics.

D. Exactly. In the Church, as the faithful listen to the Pope, the priest or the minister, this past, the Council of Nicaea (which constitutes the foundation of that personal spiritual relationship with the divine) is not apparent, but it happened. Nothing comes from nothing.

G. Are you saying that one should force lessons on the history of Christianity on little old ladies in church?

D. Of course not, but beliefs may be forced on people through the force of habit. Critical thinking is a necessity, to grant an individual the freedom of refusing or accepting these beliefs. I am for freedom of worship but even more for freedom of culture.

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria, Berlin, XIX-century painting

(In fact, we do not know with certainty that the Library was burned,

but the city's main temple, the Serapeum, containing a library,

was destroyed by the Coptic Pope Theophilus in A.D. 391.)

Like the best wines

G. What else have you read of Gore Vidal?

D. I have read various collections of articles, and I very much liked The Golden Age, set during the Roosevelt presidency. I'm curious about Duluth and I've seen enthusiastic critiques of The City and the Pillar, his controversial debut. If the quality standards of Vidal's other novels are half as high as those of Julian, all his work deserves to be read. I am keeping his books on my shelves, to be savoured slowly, as one does with the best wines.

G. I see a problem with your strategy: once you start reading one, you'll devour the rest in no time.

ODD? The oddest of anthologies is out to get you!

2011-10-11T23:55:00.009+02:00

Odd: The sense of "strange, peculiar" is first attested in 1580s from the notion of "odd one out, unpaired one of three" (attested earlier, in the fifteenth century, as "singular" in a positive sense of "renowned, rare, choice"). From the Online Etymology Dictionary

The unique Myster Odd shows one of the possible ways in which your life is going to be oddified (WARNING: includes perverted bubbles, hanged fish and someone who loses his footing):

Today sees the release of the first ODD? anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.
The first? Yes. It's a series.

Each 70-80k volume will contain reprints, previously unpublished stories, and new translations of classic and hard-to-find stories.

Among a wealth of great, great stuff (see the full table of contents here), you will find a new translation of "The Head" by Karl Hans Strobl, concocted by yours faithfully.

See all the uncanny details here: odd odd anthology odd video odd subscriptions odd contest on Jeff VanderMeer's blog.

You can buy the oddity at:

The True Story of the Feejee Mermaid

2011-09-18T00:29:00.015+02:00

The Feejee Mermaid – The original drawing

of the London Exhibition, 1842, now at the Boston Museum

THE MERMAID!!! – The wonder of the world, the admiration of all ages, the theme of the Philosopher, the Historian, and the Poet. The above surprising natural production may be seen at No. 59 Saint-James Street every day, Sunday excepted, from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon. Admittance One Shilling.

In 1822, the Turf Coffeehouse in London displayed a strange mummy, a two-foot tall specimen with a baboon-like head covered in thin black hair, and human eyes, chin, breasts and nails. The face was contorted into an expression of fear or horror.

Juan Cabana's Mermaid

The mermaid had been brought to London by an American sailor, Captain Samuel Barrett Eades. In Batavia (now Jakarta), the captain had seen several curiosities. He was told the mummy had been recently caught off Japan by a fisherman who, without understanding the value of his find, had sold it to Dutch merchants. To purchase the marvel, good Captain Eades sold his ship for the sum of 6,000 dollars. He only owned one eighth of the ship but did not ask for his English partner's permission, so great was his faith in the exceptional value of the sea-maid.

Missionaries believe in the Mermaid

On his way to England, Eades exhibited the mermaid in Cape Town, where crowds rushed to admire it. A missionary and distinguished member of the church, Dr. Phillip, wrote a letter to the London Philanthropic Gazette: "I have to day seen a Mermaid, now exhibiting in this town. I have always treated the existence of this creature as fabulous, but my scepticism is now removed." The small size of the specimen did not worry him, for he surmised that the mummy had shrunk by floating about in salt water.

Wonderful Etruscan statuette (VIIth century B.C. ?)

from the necropolis of Strozzacapponi

(Antiquarium of Corciano, Perugia, Italy)

Bureaucrats want to tax the import
Upon Eades' arrival in London, the mummy was confiscated by Customs, for it wasn't clear whether these creatures should be subjected to import duties or quarantine. When the specimen could finally be exhibited, three to four hundred people a day paid a shilling to admire it.

Eades had called on an anatomist, Sir Everard Home, to certify the specimen's mermaid-nature. Sir Home sent his assistant, William Clift, to examine the mummy. Clift, an expert anatomist, touched the mummy's breasts and found a suspicious thickness below them: the junction of what appeared to be the lower body of a salmon and the upper torso of a baboon. Clift felt with his hands the point where the bones had been sawed to bring them to the proportion of human limbs. The head, too, was that of a baboon. The eyes were artificial, the fingernails made of horn.

Eades was in shock; he exhibited the Mermaid nevertheless, after swearing Home and Clift to silence.

It's real. It's REAL!

The majority of scientists of the time had already discarded the discovery, but one Dr. Price wrote an article in the Gentlemen's Magazine of October 1822, declaring that he had had the opportunity to examine the mermaid at the exhibition (under Captain Eades' jealous eyes) and that he was absolutely certain the specimen belonged to a new species. Several naturalists went to see the mummy and most of them supported Dr. Price.

Imagine Eades' relief when other naturalists (less skilled than William Clift) declared the mummy real.

The Ship Owner treats the Maid like his daughter

Mr. Ellery, the owner of the ship Eades had sold without permission, wasn't happy. He went to see the sly captain and tried to get his money back, but not only did Eades refuse (he didn't even offer a share of the hefty profit made with the exhibition); he threatened to leave the country with the Maid of the Sea!

Ellery appeared before the court of Chancery to obtain a restraining order preventing Eades from leaving the country with the mummy or selling it. His lawyer's argument was that the Maid was in a condition similar to a naive lady who had eloped with her beau, an adventurer who was after her heritage. The young woman's parents could appeal to the Lord Chancellor, who had the faculty of making the imprudent heiress his ward, and the young lady could not marry without her ward's consent. The mummy "be it man, woman or mermaid" had been purchased with the result of the ship's sale, which made the specimen Ellery's propriety, too. The Lord Chancellor released the order. Eades could not leave London.

Antique mermaid mummy preserved at Karukayado Temple,

city of Hashimoto, Wakayama.

Now the increasingly questionable captain was stuck in London with his belle. Everything could have continued for months, maybe years, if not for a mistake dictated by [insert: hubris, stuppiddity—you, know, like in a plot that works only because the character behaves like an idiot]. He boasted about Home certifying the specimen's authenticity. Home's nose prickled with rage, and the gentleman ordered Clift to write an article exposing Eades' fraud. The article appeared in the Morning Herald.

But the Mermaid was not a maid

Other newspapers reprinted Clift article. As we would say today, the scholarly debate went viral. Londoners began to criticise the gullibility of the working classes, and the naturalists who had endorsed the Mermaid.

Certain Mr. Murray sneered at the scientists who had supported Captain Eades. One of Murray's friends, the well-travelled Mr. Morrison, recounted blood-curling stories about the habits of the "yellow tribes," who seized children, tortured them horribly to obtain that suffering-maid facial expression and cut the little bodies in two to sew together the human torsos and the lower halves of innocent salmons.

And anyway, after four months, the Londoners were after new sensational displays.

Toby, the Learned Pig

The Mermaid toured England in the company of Toby, the Learned Pig. Two thugs tried to enter a fair exhibition. Thrown out by the bouncers, they threatened the manager to come back in force and steal the Maid of the Oceans, after destroying the stall.

The manager tucked the Mermaid under his arm and ran to court, asking for protection (the marine lady was the Lord Chancellor's ward after all). This stunt made the headline news and drew more spectators, eager to witness theft and murder.

A voluptuous fishtailed girl

The tour of the provinces continued into 1825. At the Bartholomew Fair, a performer used the drawing of a voluptuous fishtailed woman to lure the spectators into buying tickets (surely a Victorian version of Daniel's Sirenetta).

La Sirenetta by Daniel Pasetti

The Mermaid disappeared until 1845, although William Clift affirmed he had seen it in a French country museum. Other Memaids were exhibited in fairs and museums. Mr. Eades, ruined, had resumed his job as a sea captain to repay the owner of ship Eades had sold to buy the fake. He worked for twenty years. And, a few years after Eades' death, in 1840, a man who declared himself to be the son of the Mermaid's ancient owner met one of Barnum's associates.

Our beauty was ready to begin her American career in the famous circus...

Curious about more curios? Buy buy buy buy!

THE THACKERY LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Source: Read this fantastic book:
The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History, by Jan Bondeson

The ancestor of medieval bestiaries

2011-09-10T08:47:00.027+02:00

Very practical set of arms, claws and tail (no source available)

The forthcoming Bestiary anthology, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (see the post including the ToC) , inspired an exploration of the origins of medieval bestiaries. The bestiary included entries about ordinary, exotic and mythological animals (the authors believed that mythological beasts were as real as the others), offering analogies, symbols and moral parables.

I have found the grandfather of medieval bestiaries in the person of Claudius Aelianus, a Roman author (ca. 175 – ca. 235) who, like many snobs of his time, despised Latin and wrote in Greek.

De Natura Animalium-original title Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος- (On the Nature of Animals) is not a collection of stories about animals. Our Claudius put together descriptions of oddities worth the best cabinet of curiosities. The author's intent was to offer information to those that, in the pursuit of truth and wisdom, strived to explore and understand the wonders of the world.

Claudius Aelianus on Tritons:

It is general knowledge that a species exists, born in the sea, similar to the human species from the head down to the middle of the body.

Though it is hard to believe, they say that when a triton is touched, its scales disappear. The governor of Acaia, wanting to verify the creature's nature, ripped off a swathe of its skin and threw it into the fire; a foul stench burned his nostrils, clearly indicating that it could be neither a terrestrial nor a marine animal.

Triton, 2nd century Archaeological Museum Istanbul
Gigantomachia, Photo by G. Dall'Orto

Unfortunately, all curiosity abandoned the governor when he fell from a small boat into the sea. The citizens of Tanagra interpreted the incident as punishment for the crime against a triton, since the corpse that washed back on shore reeked of the same odour as the triton's burnt skin.

It is shameful for a man of sound principles not to lend credence to Apollo Didymaeus [so called because he was Artemis' twin brother—Yours Faithfully Translator's note], who dubbed the triton "sea lamb" when he sang "A triton, a monster from the depths belonging to Neptune's flock, was captured by nets let down by fishermen."

Apollo was cute
(Lycian Apollo -Louvre)

[doesn't look like a lamb to me, given those mean-looking claws]

Therefore, if an omniscient god declares that this creature belongs to Neptune's flock, we cannot question his words-Claudius Aelianus *

Something in the general tone of the piece tells me that the author himself lent little credence to the story.

The next post will bring you the extraordinary story of the Feejee Mermaid.

----
*This translation is not exactly a first-hand car. The passage was translated to English by yours-faithfully from Daniel Pasetti's Italian translation of Conrad Gessner's Latin translation from the original Greek text (Conrad Gessner was a Swiss scientist and natural historian of the Renaissance). An English translation by A. F. Scholfield has been published in the Loeb Classical Library, 3 vols. (19[ ]-59). Well, I could have handled the translation from Latin, but Gessner's translation was very literal, retaining a lot of Greek phrasing (very convolute).

Weird Tales Summer Issue

2011-08-10T12:45:00.005+02:00

On the Weird Tales site, editor Ann VanderMeer fondly calls WT #358 the "Goes to Hell issue."

Cover art by Carrie Ann Baade. Take a look at her fantastic paintings here.

This issue features my story "The Hand," about a psycho-lover who loves too much. I wrote about this character for the first time when I was fourteen, and it came back to haunt me last year, stirred by a prompt for the Shock Totem Flash Fiction Contest. I'm not really a flash-fiction writer, and I usually rework and expand the initial idea. Since my first participation in the contest (in March 2010), I sold two of these (dark) stories: "The Hand" to Weird Tales and "Playground" to PS Publishing.

Here's the Weird Tales ToC:

THE EYRIE, by Ann VanderMeer
A SWEET DISORDER IN THE DRESS, by Genevieve Valentine
WEIRD CINEMA, by Robert A. Kowal
THE LIBRARY by Cynthia Ward
CARRIE ANN BAADE, Interviewed by Ann VanderMeer
THE DINER ON THE EDGE OF HELL, by Ramsey Shehadeh
JAGANNATH, by Karin Tidbeck
A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SANDCASTLE ALCHEMY, by Nik Houser
LOOK AT THE JAM IM IN, by Richard Holinger
THE HAND, by Gio Clairval
A CONTRACT WITHOUT LOOPHOLES, by Eric Lis
BEELZEBUBS MESSIAH, by Brant Danay
LOST IN LOVECRAFT, by Kenneth Hite

I can't wait to grab my contributor's copy.

Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Finally, the Truth. All is veridicious!

2011-07-13T01:21:00.012+02:00

"Curiosus, cupidus, studiosus" is the definition of curiosity in Trevoux's dictionary, published in 1771: attention, desire, passion of knowledge

Over the years eccentric people would collect odd, strange and fantastic items, to assemble them in cabinets. The richest (or craziest) among these people devoted entire rooms to their collections. In Germany, a collector's room was called Kunst und Wunderkammer, meaning "Chamber of Art and Marvels." In France, the appellation was cabinet de raretés.

Curiositas by Francesco Calzolari (explorer, pharmacist, naturalist and collector, 1522-1609 Verona, Italy)

A few Cabinets of Curiosities came to life during the 17th century, and became very fashionable in the 18th century. Alas, several collections were dispersed after their owners' death, or discarded as silly and unscientific endeavours until in the twentieth century a renewed interest sparked the creation of the first European museums dedicated to old mirabilia.

In 2008, the NY Museum of Modern Art hosted an exhibition titled Wunderkammer--I missed out on it. I would have killed for a catalogue.

Nicholas Lampert: Locus Tank (MOMA, 2008)

In Wunderkammer time of splendour, natural objects were called "Naturalia," and considered the work of God, while artefacts were known as "Artificialia." When we visit such exhibitions, the distinction appears odd. Boundaries are blurred. The fantastical rivals reason. Beliefs and scientific knowledge overlap. Art and sciences are blended together.

Let's take the remora (suckerfish), a popular guest of cabinets of curiosities.

This fish has a modified dorsal fin that sticks to larger marine animals (or your back, if you ask nicely). The Latin word remora means "obstacle." Contemporaries of the Wunderkammer time believed that a tiny remora could stop the course of a ship, sink it, destroy the cargo, and drown the crew (did it work with the insurance company?).

In 1822, an extraordinary find, the famous Feejee Mermaid, bought by American captain Samuel Barret Eades, for the price of a ship, restored the belief in those mythical creatures. Experts examined the specimen and validated it: The old scholars were right! Mermaids really existed. No one remarked on the fact that the original Greek myth described mermaids as half women half birds.

Notwithstanding what I wrote in my previous blog post, Dr. Thackery Lambshead only collected certified items. I am freely correcting my erroneous statement and I hereby declare that I was neither threatened nor forced by editors Ann & Jeff VanderMeer to retract my testimony.

Here's a partial list of the real & veridicious items displayed in Dr. Lambshead's Cabinet of Curiosities, or described by sincere, authoritative & expertful writers:

- Electrical Neurheographiton

- Pulvadmonitor

- Singing Fish

- Olivaceous Cormorant

- Coffin Torpedo

- Decanter of Everlasting Sadness

- Dracula's Testicles

- Harness and Leash for Fly

- Oneyroscope

- Box of Reversed Commas

(and many more!)

You don't believe me? Read the book : link

How I Burned Evil Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities to the Underground

2011-07-07T10:28:00.017+02:00

The Burning Pea

Felicino - You don't strike me as the arsonist type.

Gio – Watch me.

Felicino – I can't. The good doctor's cabinet is in ruins.

Gio – Precisely. I set fire to it myself.

Felicino – Hold on. It wasn't you. The arsonist was Lambshead's housekeeper, one Paulette.

Gio – Yes, but that's one of my characters, and, as Gustave Flaubert put it, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Now, look at him—

Felicino – Who?

Gio – The Jeff VanderMeer. He wrote that Paulette's account was probably false. Liar.

Felicino – I told you not to trust the descendant of the Flying Dutch. Plus, he's been known for allying himself with little green people:

VanderMeer Helps Aliens Invade Earth

So what happened?

Gio – One fine day of July, last year, VanderMeer Himself sent me a prompt, to write a piece for one of his anthologies.

Felicino – That was cool of him.

Gio – Yes, but it turned out it wasn't the right prompt. Ann is the one that sends the right prompts. He's the one that tries to mislead you. Like with this Public Refutation in Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities .

But I did burn the Doctor's cabinet. I did!

Felicino – Calm down.

Gio – So I wrote a story with my friend Daniel Pasetti.

Felicino – The one whose thesis will change the face of History?

Gio – Yes. (The thesis is scheduled for publication in 2058). But Jeff rejected our story, under the pretext that we hadn't used the prompt.

Felicino – The one he hadn't sent you.

Gio – That one, yes. So I thought I'm going to burn your darped cabinet and all the curios. I wrote a new story in half an hour, stopped by the usual Writers' 'Orshop, where all my friends said "Is this a joke?", and sent the new story to Jeff.

Felicino – And he bought it.

Gio – Yes. He said "That pea story is the perfect capper." I was stripped of my revenge!

Felicino – Stop crying. It's a great anthology. Look at that line-up:

Holly Black, Greg Broadmore, Ted Chiang, John Coulthart, Rikki Ducornet, Amal El-Mohtar, Minister Faust, Jeffrey Ford, Lev Grossman, N.K. Jemisin, Caitlin R. Kiernan, China Mieville, Mike Mignola, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, James A. Owen, Helen Oyeyemi, J.K. Potter, Cherie Priest, Ekaterina Sedia, Jan Svankmajer, Rachel Swirsky, Carrie Vaughn, Jake von Slatt, Tad Williams, Charles Yu (and many more).

Aren't you happy?

Gio – Oh, yes, I AM! But in this antho, they all behave like a bunch of Absurdists.

Felicino – What d'you mean?

Gio –Do you believe anything of what they wrote for the anthology is true? Come on. I tell you, the only true story is "The Pea." I was there. I set the place on fire.

I did.

" The Pea," by Gio Clairval, can be found in the wondrous HarperCollins anthology

Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

OUT ON JULY 12!

ODD? (which is not an acronym: "Odd" is odd)

2011-06-29T00:44:00.006+02:00

During the French Revolution, a severed head, fallen into a basket after the execution, retains its consciousness and attaches itself (literally) to the body of a mutilated woman. This union beyond death allows the head to access the woman's memories and witness her repulsive crime. . . ("The Head" by Karl Hans Strobl)

When Jeff VanderMeer asked me if I was interested in translating a story from German for the anthology he and Ann VanderMeer were putting together, I typed: "Sounds interesting. What's the title of the anthology?"

"ODD?"

"Okay, but what does O.D.D. stand for?"

Another ToC, this time including my translation of Karl Hans Strobl's "The Head," from German.

Strobl (Glau, 1877-Perchtoldsdorf, Wien, 1946) was an Austrian writer of fantastical fiction. Discovered by his contemporary public thanks to the novel Die Vaclavbude, this prolific author published a hundred pieces, including novels, novellas and short fiction.

The story selected by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, "Der Kopf,"1899, appeared in the collection Lemuria - Unheimliche Geschicten (Uncanny Stories), in 1917, the edition I used for my translation. It is my favourite, too.

ODD? Table of Contents, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

“Is it odd or are you too normal?”

Amos Tutuola – “The Dead Babies”

Gustave Le Rouge – “The War of the Vampires” (new translation by Brian Evenson and David Beus)

Jeffrey Ford – “Weiroot”

Leopoldo Lugones – “The Bloat Toad” (new translation by Larry Nolen)

Mark Samuels – “Apt 205″

Michael Cisco – “Modern Cities Exist Only to Be Destroyed” (published only in a limited edition previously)

Nalo Hopkinson – “Slow Cold Chick”

Sumanth Prabhaker – “A Hard Truth About Waste Management”

Hiromi Goto – “Stinky Girl”

Eric Basso – “Logues”

Edward Morris – “Lotophagi”

Karin Tidbeck – “The Aunts” (new story; previously unpublished)

Jeffrey Thomas – “The Fork”

Rikki Ducornet – “The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi”

Leena Krohn – “The Night of the Normal Distribution Curve” (new story; previously unpublished, translation by Anna Volmari and J. Robert Tupasela)

Amanda le Bas de Plumetot – “Unmaking” (new story; previously unpublished)

Karl Hans Strobl – “The Head” (new translation by Gio Clairval)

Caitlin R. Kiernan – “A Child’s Guide to the Hollow Hills”

Stacey Levine – “Sausage”

The synopsis of Bride of the Golem

2011-06-21T13:26:00.001+02:00

I have been busy cutting wood and tiles, but here's the synopsis of Bride of the Golem, an Anthology of Humorous Jewish Horror, in which will appear "Toytfogl (Bird of Death)," a story co-written with Daniel Pasetti.

From Mimetic Declination, the blog of the editor, Gus Ginsburg:

Barry Rosenberg “Gershom’s Golem”. World-weary kabbalist Gershom makes a golem to do his yardwork but ends up with a kvetcher.

Norman Rubin “Aunt Bessie and the ‘It’”. A fierce ghostly presence fails to scare a yiddishe bubbie.

Sharon Diane King’s “Feast of the Laughing Cow” is a deliciously anachronistic Rabelaisian romp set in the ancient land of Israel.

Jim Meirose “Deni-al”. Golem Noir. A kabbalist makes a golem. A mobster wants to buy him. A rabbi gets in the way.

Melissa Yuan-Innes “WWWJD”. A satirical story of Joseph Cartaphilus, Wandering Jew.

Liz Coley “Till Death Does His Part”. Death comes for Ms. Edelstein, but she won’t be carted away so easily.

Aaron Simon “My Dog the Dybbuk”. A young man finds his beloved dog taken over by a dybbuk, the spirit of a Yiddish-obscenity-spouting cranky old man

Adina Rosenthal “Succubus-in-law”. A woman’s Passover seder with her new mother-in-law becomes her last supper.

E. Mitchell “I Was a Teenage Yeshiva Boy Werewolf”. A delightful spoof of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” with werewolves.

Eric Joel Bresin “Pig”. A reimagining of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a young and unobservant Greg wakes up one Shabbat morning as a pig.

David Hendrickson “Floater”. Elderly Hiram Silverman is afflicted by a most unusual floater in one of his eyes.

Tonia Brown “Zombie Golem”. A man accidentally kills his girlfriend during a bout of consensual rough sex, then consults a kabbalist to reanimate her.

Mike DiChristina “Mr. Met”. Lenny, a man with a gambling habit and a mystical autocad scanner kills his wife for money, then in a fit of remorse, brings her back, to his misfortune.

Ken Liu “The MSG Golem”. During a space voyage, a Chinese girl descended from the Jews of Kaifeng receives a message from God to make a golem from MSG to save a planet.

David Naimon “Member”. A revised reprint (with permission of Zyzzyva Magazine) of a story of a young man’s dread facing his bar mitzvah.

Anna Taborska “Dirty Dybbuk”. A proper orthodox woman from Golder’s Green, London, is inhabited by the spirit of a deceased nymphomaniac.

A.B.S. Dudevant “The Gingerbread Golem”. A richly-written story of an Ethiopian Jewess who creates a Golem to get rid of her husband.

Gio Clairval & Daniel Pasetti “Toytfogl”. Humorous with an antiquated Lovecraft/Steampunk vibe, the story of two fin-de-siecle professors who unleash an unnaturally evil beast.

Gus Ginsburg “By Way of Explanation”. A newly vampiric Hassid decides to become a mohel to get his blood, while his wife is convinced he’s become homosexual.

G. Miki Hayden “The Cantor and the Ghost”. The ghost of newly deceased Rabbi Wild haunts and bedevils a congregant he dislikes. The Cantor tries to mediate.

Did Stephen Hawking Kill Philosophy?

2011-05-05T08:58:00.029+02:00

Hawking and Mlodinow think that philosophy is dead and that today only science is able to explain reality and the universe (but Umberto Eco disagrees).

Socrates Undead

In 2010, Bantham Books published The Grand Design, by physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

The book was reviewed on the weekly magazine L'Espresso by Italian academic and writer Umberto Eco, widely known for his philosophical-historical mystery novel The Name of the Rose.

I talked with my friend Daniel Pasetti, who is putting the last words to a thesis in history and philosophy.

Is philosophy really dead? (Is this a stupid question?)

Gio Clairval: What do you think of Hawking's book? And of Umberto Eco's opinion?

Daniel Pasetti: You can look at the book's central idea from a general and from a specific point of view. Concerning the general point of view, the end of philosophy is a classic tale of the twentieth century: the announcement of the death of a discipline, an art, a genre, even a civilization. Disasters are cool and provide food for the audience's curiosity. The Western civilization is dead, and so is psychoanalysis, literature, democracy, dictatorship, machismo, feminism, communism, the automobile, ballpoint pens, and so forth.

Is Science Fiction really dead? (Is this a cyclic question?)

G. Many things die in literature—in addition to our characters, I mean.

D. Oh, yes The most successful subgenre of science fiction is the "Rant on the Death of Science Fiction." Hard SF, Space Opera, Post-apocalyptic SF etc. All have had their glory moments. Then the readers' interest declines, to return in waves. The only subgenre never touched by the crisis is "Death of SF,' forever verdant and fresh. It's been around for half a century or more, so present and solid that, even though it's no narrative, we can consider it literary matter; it has all the features, conventions, tropes and variations on the theme, and national schools of thought…More literary than that ... you die.

G. I agree, but things that peter out or lose their usefulness, and then "die," do exist.

D True. The Soviet Union is really dead, and no one talks about it anymore. The quadrille is dead, and nobody has been dancing the quadrille for a few centuries, and it goes without saying, alchemy is dead—

G. I think Alchemy is undead. But can we go back to Hawking and Eco?

D. Yes, yes. But you must agree on the fact that, if we talk obsessively of the death of something, it means that the dead thing is alive, right?

G. Let's leave the cemetery and go back to Hawking.

Those two fellows claim philosophy is dead, but then they go on talking philosophy

D. All right. On the specific level, I think Eco is right. Questions on the foundations of what exists, "How can we understand reality?", "Why is there something rather than nothing?" are exquisitely and traditionally philosophical questions, but the point is that even Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's answers are philosophical.

The answers offered in the book, the fruit of research and the interaction of hard sciences—physics, cosmology,…-- all have illustrious antecedents in the history of philosophy, since the Greeks.

Hawking and Mlodinow invoke a realism dependent on different models that can offer different, satisfactory answers, and, according to the authors, the answers depend on the ping-pong between our models and reality, which depends on the plurality of the models themselves...

G. Fascinating. Now can you say it in English?

D. Well—

G. Okay. As Michael Shermer puts it "None of us can ever be completely sure that the world really is as it appears, or if our minds have unconsciously imposed a misleading pattern on the data. I call this belief-dependent realism. [...] In his new book, The Grand Design, co-authored with the Caltech mathematician Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking presents a philosophy of science he calls “model-dependent realism,” which is based on the assumption that our brains form models of the world from sensory input, that we use the model most successful at explaining events and assume that the models match reality (even if they do not), and that when more than one model makes accurate predictions “we are free to use whichever model is most convenient.” Employing this method, Hawking and Mlodinow claim that “it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation.” The full article is here: Stephen Hawking's radical philosophy of science.

D. Yes, yes. Do you remember Hilary Putnam's "Truth and Ethics" and his internal realism?

G. (Sniffs the air). I think the coffee is boiling. 'Xcuse me a sec.

D. Eco remembers (and I read Putnam, too).

G. That's why I work with you. Because you're the one who reads all the Putnams. One or two sugars?

D. Well, Putnam uses almost the same words Hawking and Mlodinow use.

G. I don't think it's cool to accuse Hawking of being a plagiarist. It'd make you look bad. I'm going to edit this one out.

D. This whole thing is an ancient topic we've heard a thousand times, and not only from Putnam! Kant moved exactly in this direction with what he called "Ich Denke" (I think) and Leibniz, too, with his "Apperception," and so many others. The problem of "perceiving perception" is ancient, the answers uncountable.

Hawking and Mlodinow replicate ancient answers, too. Other issues raised in the book are easily found in the history of philosophy.

G. Most of my friends don't want to read the history of philosophy. That's why they read Hawking.

D. Take the existence of other universes, or the thesis of creation without a "creator." Already done, by Protagoras, Spinoza, Marx, and many others. A crowd of materialists have already questioned the idea of a God creating all things. Come on!

Science seeks answers, philosophy seeks questions.

G. Okay, some of Hawking and Mlodinow's answers repeat century-old theories, but now there are scientific theories to sustain them.

D. Yes, and a few passages of the book relate the particular beliefs of several ancient and medieval philosophers, which often built conceptions of reality very close to the current ones, and sometimes ended up attributing perceptions ... to the seven planets (in their time, they counted the Moon in).

However, philosophy is not about competing with science. Philosophy works on another plane. Philosophy precedes scientific questions by questioning the fundamentals of science. Ultimately, philosophy opens new areas of thought. Science is about researching the answers; philosophy creates questions. Martin Heidegger argued "we should not so much seek answers, but other questions."

On a personal level, you can stumble across answers that seem satisfactory to you. But philosophy doesn't know satisfaction. Philosophy is anxious work that creates more anxiety.

G. I'm editing this one out, too. Never worked in advertisement, have you?

D. In some ways, philosophy has "created" the world as we know it. Though you can also locate philosophical thoughts in Indian and Eastern culture, these are very rarely detached from religious thought.

How Europe conquered the world

[Editorial Note: I suggest skipping this rant and starting with the intriguing question I put just below. Although you may have to come back to read this ridiculously long paragraph if you want to get my question.]

The only area of the world where, historically, explanations of reality became autonomous from religious beliefs, to form what we call "philosophy," is the Mediterranean basin. From there, through the Greco-Roman civilization, this idea of philosophy independent from religion spread to the rest of Europe. And Europe, with all its flaws (but also its merits) imposed this idea on the entire world. Why did Europe succeed? Because it was militarily stronger? Richer? Not so much. Europe became richer and stronger than the rest of the world, but it wasn't so in the beginning. During antiquity and in the middle ages, some provinces of India or China were infinitely richer and more populous than even the major European kingdoms. And they were also more advanced technologically. They had everything to win in a world competition, but they lost. Why Is That? They didn't have everything, that's why. They had many certainties and few questions, those questions from European philosophers and scientists sparked Europe's intellectual development, and therefore its scientific development. Actually, it was Plato who conquered the world, not his Majesty's fleet nor the Grande Armada.

Plato, the first colonialist

G. Do you mean that colonialism is Plato's fault?

D. In a sense, yes, the civilizations originated by Plato conquered the world. But the anti-colonialists are "Plato's children" as well. Ho Chi Minh became a revolutionary in Paris, not in some temple in Indochina. When we use certain categories, we use them in an extensive way, and we often forget what they imply in detail. "Western world" means Hitler, Auschwitz and colonialism, but also their enemies; the ' Western world ' is the Ku Klux Klan, but also Martin Luther King. The modern ideas of human rights came alive in the triangle of Great Britain-France-United States, with all their antecedents in the model of a Roman citizen. What I mean is that Europe, and later on, the Western civilization, by conquering the world, has inoculated it with both its diseases and their vaccines. And behind this conquest stands the continuing interrogation and the feverish analysis that we call philosophy.

G. Let's go back to Hawking and Eco or we will talk football, next.

D. Yes, and—

What about God? Is He dead, too?

G. Wait, wait! I have another question. I read a few reviews of The Grand Design on line, and I noticed that almost none of them focused on the war between science and philosophy. They were almost all about the God-Science issue.

D. True. I noticed, too. That's typical, and I was amused at seeing that Eco discards the little journalistic debate concerning the "scandalous denial" of a Creator God expressed in the book and focuses instead on Hawking and Mlodinow's denial of the usefulness of philosophy, and the way they do it: through a work that's half-scientific and half-philosophical. Umberto Eco points out: if there is one point on which the book can be criticized, it is precisely this one, not the problem of God.

Hawking's book title: Not the main course

Of course, the very title evokes the "intelligent design," and calls into question this design, but it is more an editorial stunt than anything essential. The book confines itself to expounding on the thought shared by 99% of the scientists. And it's the millionth book to do so. If it has made some noise, it's just because of Hawking's reputation, not because it offers anything new about the denial of a Creator God.

In fact, God is an irrelevant argument in scientific and philosophical debates. It can be hard to swallow for American creationists and their European counterparts, but the Creator God rests in the archives, together with medieval catapults, bows and swords.

God and the Divine

Of course, all questions remain concerning the divine, the numinous--which is different from the God-super-wizard Merlin of popular religion. Several thinkers, believers and non-believers, are engaged in the debate, but this reflection, even among Christian philosophers, is infinitely more sophisticated and subtle than the vision of a one-dimensional God, vengeful or benevolent, the vision brought to us by the Bible. And the journalists that find Hawking's negation of God shocking, more often than not know nothing about the current philosophical debate about the Divine, particularly if the journalists are believers.

G. In the endgame, would you recommend The Grand Design?

D. Yes.

Obviously, the book has all the limits of popularization. Some scientists have accused it of being hasty and too superficial; but this is the eternal problem of popularization, which implies simplification. As I am no astrophysicist, I found it an interesting read, if you forget the claim about the death of philosophy.

(If you have just skimmed everything above) In Rabelais' words, this is the substantific marrow:

It's a book that deals with philosophy while denying the legitimacy of philosophy. I think that a more appropriate subtitle would be:

The Ancient Greek Philosopher Parmenides Re-read in the Light of M-theory – a Brief Compendium of Scientific-Philosophical ideas.

G. Book marketing was never your specialty, was it?

The Table of Content of "Bride of the Golem"

2011-04-20T20:28:00.011+02:00

Gus Ginsburg has posted the provisional list of stories: Mimetic Declination

Barry Rosenberg "Gershom's Golem"
Norman Rubin "Aunt Bessie and the It"
Sharon King "Feast of the Laughing Cow"
Jim Meirose "Deni-al"
Melissa Yuan-Innes "WWWJD"
Liz Coley "Till Death Does His Part"
Aaron Simon "My Dog the Dybbuk"
Adina Rosenthal "Succubus-in-Law"
E. Mitchell "I Was a Teenage Yeshiva Boy Werewolf"
Eric Joel Bresin "Pig"
David Hendrickson "Floater"
Tonia Brown "Zombie Golem"
Michael DiCristina "Mr. Met"
Ken Liu "The MSG Golem"
David Perlmutter "The Old Man and the Vampire"
David Naimon "Member"
Anna Taborska "Dirty Dybbuk"
A.B.S. Dudevant "The Gingerbread Golem"
Gio Clairval & Daniel Pasetti "Toytfoygl"
Gus Ginsburg "By Way of Explanation"

In the meantime, you can watch The Golem (Der Golem : Wie er in die Welt kam), directed by Paul Weneger and Carl Boese en 1920. The film is now in the public domain.

It can be seen here: Bloody Disgusting

Bride of the Golem

2011-04-14T21:18:00.007+02:00

Bronze, JAPAN
XVIIIth century, Edo

Daniel Pasetti and I sold a story to Bride of the Golem, an Anthology of Humorous Jewish Horror, edited by Gus Ginsburg.

Mythic creatures, birds and clocks, Danube, Moldau, two particular kinds of Jews, afflictions of the soul, and strange artefacts—what do these things have in common? All of them are in "Toytfoygl" (Bird of Death).

My accomplice Daniel Pasetti studied philosophy and history; his obsessions are the army of ancient Rome and Science Fiction.

The Bestiary anthology

2011-04-06T18:48:00.001+02:00

"Salvador Dali, From 'Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel' (by Rabelais)

Pre-pimping (the ToC isn't complete):

Jeff VanderMeer has been putting together an anthology with his wife, Hugo-winner editor Ann VanderMeer.

Here's the Table of Contents (thus far):

Auricle – Gio Clairval
Bartleby’s Typewriter – Corey Redekop
Counsellor Crow – Karen Lord
Daydreamer by Proxy – Dexter Palmer
Enkantong-bato – Dean Francis Alfar
Figmon – Michael Cisco
Guest – Brian Conn
Hadrian’s Sparrikan – Stephen Graham Jones
Ible – Brian Evenson
Jason Bug – Joseph Nigg
Mosquito Boy – Felix Gilman
Pyret – Karin Tidbeck
Quintus – Michal Ajvaz
Rapacis X. Loco Signa – L.L. Hannett
Tongues of Moon Toad – Cat Rambo
Ugly-Nest Rat – Eric Schaller
Vanga – Rikki Ducornet
Xaratan – Rhys Hughes
Yakshantariksh – Vandana Singh
Zee – Richard Howard

Marcel Proust's Questionnaire

2011-03-31T17:11:00.015+02:00

A few writers use questionnaires to interview their characters. Today I am posting Marcel Proust's famous list of 32 questions, in a new translation, which, I hope, reflects Proust's answers better than what I have seen on line.

Questionnaires were à la mode in every 19th-century European salon; Marcel Proust filled at least two or three during social events spanning a decade (1880-1890).

Several versions of the questionnaire exist. The following is the "classical" version, which the writer filled when he was twenty-one (Proust did not write the questionnaire):

The foremost trait of your personality?

A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired

The quality you seek in a man?

Feminine charm

The quality you seek in a woman?

A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship

What do you most value in your friends?

Tenderness - provided they are exquisite enough to make their tenderness worth having

What is your worst flaw?

Lack of will

What is your favourite occupation?

Loving

What is your dream of happiness?

Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I don't have the courage to say what it is. I fear I would destroy it by the mere action of putting it into words.

What would your greatest misfortune be?

Never to have known my mother or my grandmother

What you would like to be?

Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be

In which country would you like to live?

One where certain things that I want would come true - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining]

What is your favourite colour?

Beauty lies not in colours but in their harmony

What is your favourite flower?

The one my friend loves - but apart from that, all

What is your favourite bird?

The swallow

Who are you favourite writers?

At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti

Who are you favourite poets?

Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny

Who are your favourite fictional heroes?

Hamlet

Who are your favourite fictional heroines?

Berenice

Who are your favourite composers?

Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann

Who are your favourite painters?

Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt

Who are your heroes in real life?

Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)

Who is your favourite heroines of history?

Cleopatra

What are your favourite names?

I can only have one at a time

What do you most dislike?

Whatever is wrong in me

What historical figures do you most despise?

I am too ignorant to say

What event in military history do you most admire?

My own enlistment as a volunteer!

What reform do you most admire?

(no response)

The natural gift you would most like to possess:

Will power and irresistible charm

How would you like to die?

A better man than I am, and much beloved

What is your present state of mind?

Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

Those that I understand

What is your motto?

I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.

Story up at Fantasy Magazine

2011-02-14T15:42:00.000+01:00

Waltzing Lizards - Sheppard Hill

Read my story The Lizard Dance, written with Jeff VanderMeer, Fantasy Magazine, 02/14/2011.

Italo Calvino on Writing

2010-08-15T14:37:00.000+02:00

The idea of this post came to me from the image of a floating city, a poster by French artist Stephan Muntaner (not the artwork displayed here), to be inserted in the forthcoming Bible of Steampunk brought to you by the master of this blog. The poster depicts an industrial city yanked away from earth along with a cushion of soil. An aerial impossibility.

Steampunk is often—not always, but often—set during the industrial revolution, a time that revolves around the heaviness of steel. A weighty century, indeed. Too-heavy ships crossed the oceans. Eiffel’s tower represented Man’s victory over iron. The ponderous consciousness of matter—inevitable—dominated until the late eighties. Asimov imagined immense computers. Arthur C. Clarke let enormous steles fall from the sky.

But today, what fascinates us most in Steampunk? Airships pulled upward by light gasses. Impossibly floating cities.

Calvino’s working method for writing

Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988) is based on a series of lessons by Italian writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985) for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. We only have five of the planned lectures because Calvino never completed the sixth. He died before leaving Italy.

In the first of the five memos, Calvino says about his writing: “[…] my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.”

Calvino describes “lightness” as a “lightening of language whereby meaning is conveyed through a verbal texture that seems weightless, until the meaning itself takes on the same rarefied consistency.”

Our current world invites us to lightness.

“Today every branch of science seems intent on demonstrating that the world is supported by the most minute entities, such as the messages of DNA, the impulses of neurons, and quarks, and neutrinos wandering through space since the beginning of time . . . . .

Then we have computer science. […] The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with “bits” in a flow of information traveling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits.”

Modern science goes beyond the idea of gravity

According to Erik Verlinde, a respected string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, gravity is an illusion. In a recent paper (January 2010), titled “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton,” he affirms that gravity is a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics, which describe the behavior of heat and gases. His point of view, he says, explains the existence of the dark matter that is supposed to hold galaxies together (from an article by Dennis Overbye for the New York Times).

Verlinde’s view: Your hair frizzles in the heat and humidity, because there are more ways for your hair to be curled than to be straight, and nature likes options. So it takes a force to pull hair straight and eliminate nature’s options. The force we call gravity since Isaac Newton is simply a by-product of nature’s propensity to maximize disorder. For Verlinde, gravity is an “entropic force.”

A few scientists disagree; others say that Verlinde is stating what we already know after the works of Ted Jacobson of the University of Maryland.

Before Jacobson, Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University, among others, described a mysterious connection between black holes and thermodynamics, culminating in Dr. Hawking’s discovery in 1974 that when quantum effects are taken into account black holes would glow and eventually explode.

Black holes, in effect, are holograms. All the information about what has been lost inside them is encoded on their surfaces.

Physicists have been wondering whether we are all maybe just shadows on a distant wall. Like in Plato’s famous metaphor of the cavern.

What are shadows if not a substance made of lightness?

The Irresistible Lightness of Metaphors

Going back to Calvino’s lesson: “For Ovid […] everything can be transformed into something else, and knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world. […] He tells how a woman realizes that she is changing into a lotus tree: her feet are rooted to the earth, a soft bark creeps up little by little and enfolds her groin; she makes a movement to tear her hair and finds her hands full of leaves. Or he speaks of Arachne’s fingers, expert at winding or unraveling wool, turning the spindle, plying the needle in embroidery, fingers that at a certain point we see lengthening into slender spiders’ legs and beginning to weave a web.

“In […] Ovid, lightness is a way of looking at the world based on philosophy and science: the doctrines of Epicurus and those of Pythagoras for Ovid (a Pythagoras who, as presented by Ovid, greatly resembles the Buddha). In both cases the lightness is also something arising from the writing itself, from the poet’s own linguistic power, quite independent of whatever philosophic doctrine the poet claims to be following.”

In one classic story I recently translated, a man becomes an axolotl, a silent being that remains stock still at the bottom of its aquarium but can move with incomparable nimbleness (Julio Cortazar, “Axolotl”). In another, which I haven’t translated, a woman is metamorphosed into a salamander (Mercé Rodoreda, “The Salamander”).

The first protagonist is a foreigner, an alien (a South-American) who lives in Paris. The story compares the axolotls of the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle to the Aztec, whose civilization is destroyed, its members enslaved and forgotten. The man becomes one of them, an Axolotl. In the second story, a woman who loves a married man is accused of witchery and burnt at the stake but escapes death by transforming into a creature that walks through the fire. In both cases, the outsiders refuse assimilation and become different. Lighter.

Both stories dress metaphors in robes of sensory details.

For Calvino, the metaphor is a vehicle of lightness against verbosity. As Ryan Werner puts it: “As most descriptive power comes from the truest metaphor, Calvino ends up echoing the Aristotelian idea that the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations. Because word-soup won’t do, metaphor will have to.”

Lightness as a program

Calvino states that unless it is avoided, weightiness will be present—always. Therefore, the writer must seek out lightness. Lightness is a subtraction of weight rather than the pursuit of a pre-existing quality of lightness.

One must chisel away the weightiness.

The ultimate goal is to portray a message in its simplest form while still maintaining emotion, clarity, personality, and above all a world of lightness.

Calvino likens heaviness to the stare of Medusa, which turns us into stone. Perseus of the winged sandals, a creature of the air, defeats the monster of stone and uses Medusa’s head with its terrible, petrifying stare, to overcome his enemies. Lightness dominates gravity.

For Calvino, language is made up of “a fine dust of atoms, like everything else that goes to make up the ultimate substance of the multiplicity of things.”

Nothing new, maybe, but I wonder whether our century is heeding the advice. Simple ideas need to be reminded from time to time.

I’m not saying that I always follow Calvino’s invitation to lightness, but I would like to try.

Comments on this post can be seen at Ecstatic Days - Jeff VanderMeer.

I am guestblogging

2010-07-30T18:15:00.004+02:00

at Ecstatic Days - Jeff VanderMeer.

about the famous Italian writer Italo Calvino's view on lightness in writing.

The Language of Online Book Reviews (Critterese-English Lexicon)

2010-07-02T23:52:00.003+02:00

I have been studying novel critiques and online reviews, and I have finally found the Rosetta stone displaying Critterese and English.

Here's a sample:

I liked it = I hated it

I like it quite a bit = I'm saying this because the author is a friend, but why on earth does she have to write at all?

I recommend it = I wouldn't touch it with a pole, but if you want to read it, go on and suffer.

nice = horrid

Nice (uppercase) = It's better than dental surgery

NICE! = It amuses me when I'm bored

I love it = I like it

I love love love it = I quite like it

I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! = I love it.

P.S.

One doesn't say that the writing could be better. The correct Critterese is "The interest of the novel is not on the paragraph level."

Art: "Human Clothes Hanger"
© Cako_SK

Umberto Eco's Rules for Writing (Well)

2010-02-23T00:29:00.017+01:00

After those lists of 10 rules for writing The Guardian recently published*, I thought Umberto Eco's rules should be on line, too, in English--I haven't found other translations so far...

The rules used to be 40, but four of them bore no meaning for non-Italian speakers. As the saying goes, the worst treason to the original text is literal translation; so mine isn't. The square-bracketed notes are mine. I have also added a few links for the curious and the brave.

From La Bustina di Minerva, Bompiani, 2000.

Umberto Eco: "I've found on line a series of instructions on how to write well. I adopt them with a few variations because I think they could be useful to writers, particularly those who attend creative writing classes."

1. Avoid alliterations, even if they're manna for morons.

2. Don't contribute to the killing of the subjunctive mode, I suggest that the writer use it when necessary
[Subjunctive in English: http://www.ceafinney.com/subjunctive/guide.html]

3. Avoid clichés: they're like death warmed over [Dictionary of English clichés: http://www.westegg.com/cliche/]

4. Thou shall express thyself in the simplest of fashions.

5. Don't use acronyms & abbreviations etc.

6. (Always) remember that parentheses (even when they seem indispensable) interrupt the flow.

7. Beware of indigestion... of ellipses. [this I often do; it's Roger Zelazny's fault].

8. Limit the use of inverted commas. Quotes aren't "elegant."

9. Never generalize.

10. Foreign words aren't bon ton.

11. Hold those quotes. Emerson aptly said, "I hate quotes. Tell me only what you know." [Guilty! It's because of Twitter]

12. Similes are like catch phrases.

13. Don't be repetitious; don't repeat the same thing twice; repeating is superfluous (redundancy means the useless explanation of something the reader has already understood).

14. Only twats use swear words.

15. Always be somehow specific.

16. Hyperbole is the most extraordinary of expressive techniques.

17. Don't write one-word sentences. Ever.

18. Beware too-daring metaphors: they are feathers on a serpent's scales.

19. Put, commas, in the appropriate places.

20. Recognize the difference between the semicolon and the colon: even if it's hard.

21. If you can't find the appropriate expression, refrain from using colloquial/dialectal expressions. In Venice, they say "Peso el tacòn del buso". "The patch is worse than the hole".

22. Do you really need rhetorical questions?

23. Be concise; try expressing your thoughts with the least possible number of words, avoiding long sentences-- or sentences interrupted by incidental phrases that always confuse the casual reader-- in order to avoid contributing to the general pollution of information, which is surely (particularly when it is uselessly ripe with unnecessary explanations, or at least non indispensable specifications) one of the tragedies of our media-dominated time.

24. Don't be emphatic! Be careful with exclamation marks!

25. Spell foreign names correctly, like Beaudelaire, Roosewelt, Niezsche and so on.

26. Name the authors and characters you refer to, without using periphrases. So did the greatest Lombard author of the nineteenth century, the author of "The 5th of May."

27. Begin your text with a captatio benevolentiae, to ingratiate yourself with your reader (but perhaps you're so stupid you don't even know what I'm talking about).

28. Be fastidios with you're speling.

29. No need to tell you how cloying preteritions are [telling by saying you are not going to tell].

30. Do not change paragraph when unneeded.
     Not too often.
    Anyway.

31. No plurale majestatis, please. We believe it pompous.

32. Do not take the cause for the effect: you would be wrong and thus you would make a mistake.

33. Do not write sentences in which the conclusion doesn't follow the premises in a logical way: if everyone did this, premises would stem from conclusions.

34. Do not indulge in archaic forms, apax legomena and other unused lexemes, nor in deep rizomatic structures which, however appealing to you as epiphanies of the grammatological differance (sic), inviting to a deconstructive tangent – but, even worse it would be if they appeared to be debatable under the scrutiny of anyone who would read them with ecdotic acridity – would go beyond the recipient's cognitive competencies.

[Ecdotica:   http://w3.uniroma1.it/cogfil/ecdotica.html]

35. You should never be wordy. On the other hand, you should not say less than.

36. A complete sentence should comprise.

*The Guardian article is here: http://tinyurl.com/ygzq42z

Umberto Eco (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa, 1980), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. Eco is President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici, University of Bologna, and an Honorary Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford. He has also written academic texts, children's books and many essays. He was voted 2nd in Prospect Magazine's 2005 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals.(Wikipedia)

Is it All about Escapism? Tragedy and Catharsis

2010-01-22T16:21:00.010+01:00

Yesterday, I saw Avatar for the second time. With me, a friend. A sixty-four-year old woman who dropped out of school after fifth grade. An educated woman despite her lack of diplomas because, being intelligent and curious (aren't these synonyms?), she has cultivated herself all her life. Still, my friend has never read a SF/F novel. She doesn't know that tales about "coming of age" have been written with more elegance and style. She hasn't heard about myths transposed into stories. And she isn't used to analysing films and spotting repetitions and much-used tropes.

When the lights came on, I asked her, "So?"

"It's powerful." Her eyes glistened. "It's the story of an initiation. And it's so poetic. I loved it."

Why Does Avatar Move People?

These past days, I've read several critiques of Cameron's film. Avatar's message is simple—too simple for those of us who read speculative fictions, and we are right when we criticize the easy effects, the narrative naiveté.

Fact is Avatar moves spectators who are no intellectuals-- but also many who are. It moved me, and it moved other writers I know—guys who can't be accused of being 'simple.'

Besides high-cliché contents and two-dimensional characters, besides the beauty of its images, Avatar carries a message and the message hits its target. Because, despite its flaws, Cameron's film uses the mechanisms of drama in an effective way.

So what are the mechanisms of drama and how can we understand the way drama works?

Tragedy: the most powerful imitation of life

It's one of the two forms of poetical drama (the other one is comedy).

Tragedy, says Aristotle, is more than imitation of nature. It is representation and reconstruction of human actions not as they actually took place (because this is History's task) but following the requirements of plausibility and necessity.

The subject of tragedy is not "true history." Tragedy is about human reality in its rational (understandable) form. It's not our real life. It's our life as it should or could be. It's an illustration of human actions meant to make the spectators emote. Tragedy makes us 'understand' something about humanity and ourselves, through the experience of terror and pity (fear and compassion, we would say today).

Not only does art provide entertainment and pleasure (which can lead to what we moderns call 'escapism'); it's not just the opportunity to feel passions and vent emotional tension via identification with a character and a situation...

...art causes catharsis, according to Aristotle.

Catharsis – Two interpretations:

1) First interpretation: As a spectator of tragedy, the person gets rid of passions by projecting them onto the scene.

Doing so, the spectator finds a new rational balance.

Thanks to catharsis, reason is free from conditioning--all that makes a person passive.

With free rationality, the person can change the world (starting from one's vision, one's behaviour).

2) Second interpretation: Passions aren't eliminated. They undergo a transformation. (This second interpretation is the one I prefer).

As I watch a tragedy, I understand my passions, and where is understanding, there is rationality.

Catharsis is clarification, realisation, enlightenment. As the Oracle said, "Know yourself and you'll know the world and the gods." If we understand our passions, we can access the energy we put in them, and use it for a higher purpose, to be creative, to become better people.

In other words, in tragedy we have a double movement of emotional excitement (compassion and fear), replaced by a new equilibrium. Catharsis, liberation from our passions, brings serenity.

Indian sages called serenity "the queen of sentiments."

That's why Aristotle thought tragedy the most powerful imitation of life. Conflicts and passions. Realization and Resolution. That's how a good piece of popular literature works.

Oh, there's something else I wanted to grump about.

Is Avatar Racist Because the White Guy Saves the Savages?

"It was violent," said my friend (who never sees action movies). "I'm feeling a bit high."

Oh, no, I thought, Hope she's not going to tell me she wants to live on Pandora…

"I hate films with soldiers and big guns," she said, "but violence here serves a purpose."

And this made me think of the cliché about the white boy's dream of "going native." I've read a critique of Avatar claiming that white people always write stories about boys going native and becoming the leaders of the savages. One quotes Dune, and Paul Atreides, the son of a duke that becomes the Fremen's leader on planet Arrakis.

But no.

Jake Sully and Paul Atreides don't become leaders. To help the leaders, they become messiahs. And, by definition, a messiah comes from another world—because nemo propheta in patria sua. No one is a prophet in his homeland (Luke 4:24, John 4:44).After the victory, the rider of the Shadow isn't needed any longer (I guess Jake will content himself with raising scores of blue children).

More than clichés, what we see in Avatar is stereotyping, easy shortcuts used to evoke themes that are much more complex. Of course, stereotypes have limitations. But if a film makes the masses cheer for victims who become victors, guys, the director deserves respect.

"You know, I feel...," my friend said. "I feel better despite all that suffering and death."

In Robert Walser's words:

“Happiness is not good material for a poet. It is too self-sufficient. It doesn’t require comment. It can sleep curled up like a hedgehog. By contrast, suffering, tragedy and comedy are full of explosive energy. One only needs to know how to ignite them at the proper time. Then they rise into the sky and illuminate all the landscape.” Robert Walser, Swiss author (1878-1956).

That's what catharsis is all about.

Allegory of Tragedy. Reynolds' portrait of actress Sarah Siddons, dressed as Melpomene, the muse of tragedy.
Behind her we can spot Pity, and Terror.

This painting held me enthralled when I visited The Huntington Museum in Los Angeles in November 2009.