tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91568936160991453082024-02-07T00:21:04.051-08:00Mark Fuller DillonMy stories have been published in Barbara and Christopher Roden's ALL HALLOWS; in John Pelan's ALONE ON THE DARKSIDE; in WEIRD FICTION REVIEW #4. These and others can be found in my second ebook, IN A SEASON OF DEAD WEATHER. My latest collection, ICE & AUTUMN GLASS, is now available from Leaky Boot Press. I also have a Youtube channel -- check the sidebar below for a link.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.comBlogger425125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-42801768076274780282024-01-27T11:02:00.000-08:002024-01-27T11:02:59.573-08:00As the Biden administration, France, Germany, and the UK scoff at the International Court of Justice....<P>Nowadays I am consumed by seething anger, by an almost paralyzing rage, and the only idea that allows me to sit back and to breathe is the realization that so much of the world feels exactly as I do.
<P>My absolute hatred for the dishonesty, hypocrisy, spineless cowardice and parasitical complicity of our Western politicians, our Western corporate media, our Western institutions, is echoed and reflected by the testimony online from people all over the world that they, too, are appalled; they, too, can see, with a non-tribal clarity, that the West has lost whatever moral authority or gravitas it might once have had; that they, too, can recognize the evil of proxy wars, of endless bombings, of genocide.
<P>As the West falls apart from its own internal contradictions, I have to wonder if this might not be for the best. Perhaps our time has come and gone; perhaps we are no longer of any use to the planet and its peoples. Yet I maintain, and believe to my core, that so much of what the Western world created, that so many of its ideals and aspirations, were fundamentally good, and remain beautiful. I can only hope that whoever follows us will respect the best of what we did, and forgive us for the worst.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-86682333757113140122023-12-05T13:54:00.000-08:002023-12-05T13:57:54.341-08:00Certain Joys<P>Between the Scylla of Netanyahu's genocide and the Charybdis of Western collapse in the face of challenges that our corporate-owned governments cannot confront, these are terrible days.
<P>Only two things give me pleasure, now: music, and bringing to light illustrations from the past. Certain joys deserve to live.
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/markfullerdillon/36508483296" target="_blank">John Schoenherr. Cemetery World.</a>Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-89607564870074351612023-11-30T12:07:00.000-08:002023-11-30T12:09:04.969-08:00"The Mechanical Theatre of Sebastian von Schwenenfeld," by Jason E. Rolfe<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7-TMNCxIgkxxKba1jHLzSpumx6H6_gwL4rl6JJUD_Kc5f91DxpM3oCIUynMR3ILRGuNB7yhvqPQGxdTBg-FAXhNQsh1-WW4OGx67Xeg7DhcPCLOX3SoEG9x3QWh14PlQJXnI_xg_0_WqLiBHweBGkIISuqJiFAIOIOKtRt1Ful_DETSZw7lsnY0Vz0WSZ/s1499/Triple%20Obscura%201.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1499" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7-TMNCxIgkxxKba1jHLzSpumx6H6_gwL4rl6JJUD_Kc5f91DxpM3oCIUynMR3ILRGuNB7yhvqPQGxdTBg-FAXhNQsh1-WW4OGx67Xeg7DhcPCLOX3SoEG9x3QWh14PlQJXnI_xg_0_WqLiBHweBGkIISuqJiFAIOIOKtRt1Ful_DETSZw7lsnY0Vz0WSZ/s400/Triple%20Obscura%201.jpg"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5010501.Jason_E__Rolfe" target="_blank">Jason E. Rolfe</a> has long been one of Canada's best-kept secrets, and for years, now, I have loved the melancholic wit, charm, and laughter of his short story collections.
<P>TRIPLE OBSCURA ONE, a recent anthology from Gibbon Moon Books, reprints a few of these Jason E. Rolfe tales, but also provides a new one that surprised me in several ways. Like his other stories, "The Mechanical Theatre of Sebastian von Schwenenfeld" testifies to his love for absurdist literature and his fascination with obscure corners of European history, but unlike the rest, it gives off a sinister glow of mad scientist conspiracy and technical artistry gone wrong. The result is not so much horror as a kind of conceptual unease:
<blockquote><P>If the automatons somehow sensed his presence, they paid him no mind, allowing Schubert to reach the edge of the open grave unopposed. Within the grave lay a closed casket. The Haarpuder puppet stepped forward, and when it spoke the artificial voice chased a chill down Schubert’s spine. 'You act as though you have never attended a funeral before,' it said.
<P>'Certainly not a puppet funeral,” Schubert replied. He spoke without thought, only pausing after the echo of his words had faded to study the automaton more closely.
<P>The machination laughed mirthlessly. 'They are all puppet funerals, my friend.'
<P>Schubert poked the automaton’s left cheek. It gave way like a silken cushion beneath which lay the cogs and gears that articulated its slightly crooked smile. 'You are clearly a puppet,' he said. 'You are a work of art, to be certain, but you are nevertheless a puppet, an automaton, an artificial construct. How can it be that you speak and act so much like the real Sebastian Haarpuder?'
<P>'You act as though you have never attended a funeral before,' the automaton said, repeating, perhaps, the only words it had been programmed to speak.
<P>'Certainly not a puppet funeral,' Schubert said, echoing his earlier assertion.
<P>It elicited the same dour response from the automaton.
<P>'They are all puppet funerals, my friend.' It turned suddenly, with a smoothness that belied its cog-and-gear nature. 'Why that song?' it asked.
<P>'What song?'
<P>'The automation looked at him, cocked both its head and its mock smile and said, 'You act as though you have never attended a funeral before.'</blockquote>
<P>As I read this quiet story about the quietly unsettling life to be found in dead objects, I wondered how it might wrap itself up. One option was the obvious ending, but Jason E. Rolfe has never been an obvious writer; his equally quiet, equally unsettling solution caught me off guard. It made perfect sense in the context of the story, but also implied a level of strangeness that I had not seen coming. It also reinforced my admiration and respect for its author.
<P>A story like "The Mechanical Theatre of Sebastian von Schwenenfeld" could easily fall out of sight through cracks of genre expectation and readers' assumptions, but it calls for much more: it deserves to be read, appreciated, and praised.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-8680493937581170432023-10-31T08:11:00.000-07:002023-10-31T08:11:51.018-07:00"Self-Hating"? That's a Moronic Thing to Say<P>Since the years of Trudeau the First, I have criticized, openly and loudly, every Canadian federal government and many provincial governments, yet in all of these decades, no one has called me "anti-Canadian" or "a self-hating Canadian."
<P>Why not? For the simple reason that citizens of democratic nations have a responsibility to keep their governments honest and humane. For the simple reason that voters have little power to influence or to modify the behaviour of elected officials, yet must not remain silent. For the simple reason that governments come and go, while people and principles remain.
<P>I can think of another simple reason, perhaps the most compelling: here in Canada, anyone who called someone else "anti-Canadian," or "a self-hating Canadian," would become an instant butt of everyone's laughter. Only a fool would try it.
<P>Why, then, if we are not fools, if we are not idiots, do we stand by in silence while Jews are called "anti-Semitic" or "self-hating" because they reject apartheid, occupation, genocide? Why do we never laugh such nonsense out of the room and out of existence?Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-67158758104621632622023-10-01T11:43:00.003-07:002023-10-01T11:46:32.872-07:00Murnau's FAUST<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQFRUfQjSsyHtWCAY8SbiSJYBIt-0uUoBWR8hKgRU2-avREg2IAJLYo3CY_ZRmTcdxnzzQlWRkUK5sJwUxqthC7asfPd2ZQHxwH6nzVDojfjCkVKKzepk9jZVZTcTJODmeMxOJh2i1RT4bTykVD33Av5qf8_Td_NQ9tFZUl04cUGrZPPxKxV67qp9qAlsw/s3250/Murnau%20Faust%201926_Plague_Auto.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="3250" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQFRUfQjSsyHtWCAY8SbiSJYBIt-0uUoBWR8hKgRU2-avREg2IAJLYo3CY_ZRmTcdxnzzQlWRkUK5sJwUxqthC7asfPd2ZQHxwH6nzVDojfjCkVKKzepk9jZVZTcTJODmeMxOJh2i1RT4bTykVD33Av5qf8_Td_NQ9tFZUl04cUGrZPPxKxV67qp9qAlsw/s400/Murnau%20Faust%201926_Plague_Auto.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P>Because our corporate-media Petri dish has no memory, no sense of perspective, no desire to learn from the past and no courage to be compared with it, the rest of us need to search actively for greatness. When we find it, the impact can often hit us with unexpected force.
<P>One such knock-out came with Murnau's 1926 adaptation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust_%281926_film%29" target="_blank">FAUST</a>. Having now seen the restored print from the "Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung," I wish I could have seen it years ago, but good things arrive on their own terms and in their own time.
<P>So much has been said about this film that I have little to add, beyond urging you to see it. As a work of high-budget expressionist Gothic cinematic magic, it compels from start to finish, even if the central portion of the film is more comic than nightmarish (but still well-directed). No need for qualms: the nightmare surges back. The screaming face of Gretchen that hurtles over trees and mountains is merely one of the images that will stay with you long after the film has ended.
<P><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh970_THmd6yY2xRypy6AbwpI3ST4WOUZR6c51xgna1hWwE99AXUosZu2X5MQ45WScIaTjYGfrWBb0BIUN9O4WgRU1_uAE5vE-xDcjVqhlQRXTRxv2o4zn8bRH8GpgXkUM06j3jnor_LheYfAHpBaIAWVmUx7Xl_US_Y_AE5HztuJg_rMILVKAiFVRr3cc/s1440/Murnau%20Faust%201926_Gretchen.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh970_THmd6yY2xRypy6AbwpI3ST4WOUZR6c51xgna1hWwE99AXUosZu2X5MQ45WScIaTjYGfrWBb0BIUN9O4WgRU1_uAE5vE-xDcjVqhlQRXTRxv2o4zn8bRH8GpgXkUM06j3jnor_LheYfAHpBaIAWVmUx7Xl_US_Y_AE5HztuJg_rMILVKAiFVRr3cc/s400/Murnau%20Faust%201926_Gretchen.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P>For a film almost one century old, FAUST makes many of the current films I've been unhappy enough to see look pale and dull. Enough time has passed to turn its traditional silent-film methods into startling innovations, which allows FAUST to shock in ways that post-modern films cannot. Every technical aspect, from lighting and set design to miniatures and optical effects, stimulates the head and heart while serving the story without fat. As a combination of pure spectacle with pure story, FAUST cannot be anticipated; it can only be seen.
<P><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghiWTShL6snX_qw4IeEOcQbNQamvlPqp0S3afvTTbNKFXJxWiMyzABjAq4tKRuGLYClWKpuzsq_xrAeUPystGz7JoPTfnOoPFnMQo8AwrGuETyukCOWX0-YEs1ElhiO9DWWKEcr5oMWBMdHkYBoqtBw35WOoS6uOnkWwdxNz-KX3G8U6EkkYM6IHdSo5ZQ/s1440/Murnau%20Faust%201926_Flames%2001.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghiWTShL6snX_qw4IeEOcQbNQamvlPqp0S3afvTTbNKFXJxWiMyzABjAq4tKRuGLYClWKpuzsq_xrAeUPystGz7JoPTfnOoPFnMQo8AwrGuETyukCOWX0-YEs1ElhiO9DWWKEcr5oMWBMdHkYBoqtBw35WOoS6uOnkWwdxNz-KX3G8U6EkkYM6IHdSo5ZQ/s400/Murnau%20Faust%201926_Flames%2001.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-31273041089445196782023-09-30T06:59:00.001-07:002023-09-30T06:59:45.145-07:00TEOREMA, 1968, written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjfHARzVyXAJTXXsN-TYZs331cPsH6rOnX746iSUDncWDQL1pF93v5v_TvW-Em84JVClc3rrEIe3atrWRWlnGac-q5NjVDNvnMfTR7ieaweXSFaY7a8mQFi0iHAnDodK49eVRLrXTkFaguf8zw0k-s6gTH9qTwzbPky7msCdCNRngDZQ_wKeXu2mxsO9W/s1920/Teorema_vlcsnap-2023-09-30-09h47m00s462.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjfHARzVyXAJTXXsN-TYZs331cPsH6rOnX746iSUDncWDQL1pF93v5v_TvW-Em84JVClc3rrEIe3atrWRWlnGac-q5NjVDNvnMfTR7ieaweXSFaY7a8mQFi0iHAnDodK49eVRLrXTkFaguf8zw0k-s6gTH9qTwzbPky7msCdCNRngDZQ_wKeXu2mxsO9W/s400/Teorema_vlcsnap-2023-09-30-09h47m00s462.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P>PIETRO:
<BR>
<blockquote>Nobody must realize that the artist is worthless, that he's an abnormal, inferior being, who squirms and twists like a worm to survive. Nobody must ever catch him out as naive. Everything must be presented as perfect, based on unknown, unquestionable rules.
<P>
Like a madman, that's it. Pane after pane, because I can't correct anything, and nobody must notice. A sign painted on a pane corrects, without soiling it, a sign painted earlier on another pane. But everyone must believe that it isn't the trick of an untalented artist, impotent artist. Not at all. It must look like a sure decision, fearless, lofty and almost arrogant. Nobody must know that a sign succeeds by chance, is fragile, that as soon as a sign appears well made, by a miracle, it must be protected, looked after, as in a shrine. But nobody must realize that the artist is a poor, trembling idiot, second-rate, living by chance and risk, in disgrace like a child, his life reduced to absurd melancholy, degraded by the feeling of something lost forever.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7aS6TbMQBpRHAnKeLNXfK1lo47gEH20X8rIKgdOf2tFt4YDDGp6inkvqtaAHhr6zr3jFG6SwbwLotUc7lNJfnyFcxUg4Z1sPki3melYYIwtUyoGR2OW1kzEJlLlO7iTbg-UG12cC7882J-pZwVWihydf_kqVYLIYG_ECRuyFjKD7Xl8eNfeLjCJukCYXp/s1920/Teorema_vlcsnap-2023-09-30-09h45m21s827.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7aS6TbMQBpRHAnKeLNXfK1lo47gEH20X8rIKgdOf2tFt4YDDGp6inkvqtaAHhr6zr3jFG6SwbwLotUc7lNJfnyFcxUg4Z1sPki3melYYIwtUyoGR2OW1kzEJlLlO7iTbg-UG12cC7882J-pZwVWihydf_kqVYLIYG_ECRuyFjKD7Xl8eNfeLjCJukCYXp/s400/Teorema_vlcsnap-2023-09-30-09h45m21s827.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-51849203491451274972023-08-09T13:47:00.002-07:002023-08-09T14:41:14.991-07:00When These Woke Awaken<P>For me, the most shocking aspect of sudden social crazes would be how quickly they arise and how quickly they die. We, the survivors, look back and say, "How could people have acted like this? How could they have allowed this to happen?"
<P>The past offers many examples of "here today, gone later today" mass delusions. The New England witch craze tore life apart, until, one day, the craze vanished. McCarthyism took a wrecking ball to American society, until one day, it ran out of gas. It simply stopped.
<P>One example from my own lifetime would be the great Satanic Panic media craze. No one mentions it now, but many people were sucked into mass hysteria. Where are these people today? What prompted them to stop shouting, "We must believe the children," and to stop spreading false memories as gospel truth? Do these people look back and wonder, "What the hell was wrong with me?" Do they ever look back at all?
<P>What if they never look back? What would this reveal about human beings and the force of human denial? And what would this imply for tomorrow?
<P>I suspect that, ten years from now, students of history will stare back at our times and wonder how on Earth we could have seen the castration of boys and the genital mutilation of girls as therapeutic; how the hell we could have believed that people are defined not by character or class or learning or achievement or compassion or thought, but by the colour of their skins; how in the name of all that we hold true we could have cancelled people not for their actions, but merely because they disagreed with us on topics where people have always, and always will, disagree?
<P>At the same time, I have to wonder if people in these corporations, governments, and institutions caught up in the current madness will shake themselves, wake up, and wonder, "How could I have believed this?"
<P>Or will, they, instead, move on and never look back... until they fall prey to the next mass delusion?Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-51961735084967166032023-04-29T05:10:00.004-07:002023-04-30T21:22:52.804-07:00LES DIABOLIQUES and the Curse of Previous Greatness<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGuF5C6IsBieJ-THZsv4R8DYiK30G9zfc_01fjPJOEKex99CH93rb3JtwuxXg7AhoWnF-6dYdJCrxqZvwyrzSO5NS06Oi0_hJV-ftZltkrfkxzisw1dU6QWQvjSZTeMtWoRNvaDbZ6FPqTI_RxW80N4yjLc1QyaOHZtpheQ12tJ6ZkKhDVbQ_1uD46lA/s2048/Les%20Diaboliques%20poster%20facebook.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1473" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGuF5C6IsBieJ-THZsv4R8DYiK30G9zfc_01fjPJOEKex99CH93rb3JtwuxXg7AhoWnF-6dYdJCrxqZvwyrzSO5NS06Oi0_hJV-ftZltkrfkxzisw1dU6QWQvjSZTeMtWoRNvaDbZ6FPqTI_RxW80N4yjLc1QyaOHZtpheQ12tJ6ZkKhDVbQ_1uD46lA/s400/Les%20Diaboliques%20poster%20facebook.jpg"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Georges_Clouzot" target="_blank">Henri-Georges Clouzot</a>'s LES DIABOLIQUES has never worked for me.
<P>You can understand my confusion. This film has been revered as highly as anything from Hitchcock. Its director has all the indications of cinematic genius. Two of his previous films, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbeau" target="_blank">LE CORBEAU</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Fear" target="_blank">LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR</a>, I would call unsettling, compelling, and extremely effective in the art of torturing nerves. Indeed, many people have been tortured by LES DIABOLIQUES. Why, then, does it bore me?
<P>Without spoiling any details of the plot for the five or six people on this planet who have not seen the film, I would guess that it fails for me in being too long and too tidy.
<P>The trouble, here, is escalation beyond the actual murder. Up until this point, the film sets up its characters, their problem, and their scheme to solve that problem, with a certain efficiency. Beyond this point, complications arise -- too many, I think, and with diminishing returns. We have the pool, and then the suit, and then the hotel room, but then we also have the newspaper article, and then the intrusive old man, and then the punished schoolboy, and then the school photograph, and then the typewriter: these are too much, they take up too much time, and they reduce the tension through sheer weight of delay.
<P>A similar escalation was used in LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR, but with a difference: the protagonists of that film faced a risk of death at every second, and the more complications that arose, the more likely these people were to die at any moment. This gave the film a tension that made my clenched hands ache, a mood of dread that few films can match. In contrast, escalation makes LES DIABOLIQUES drag onwards into tedium. It should have been turning thumbscrews, but instead, it kept me glancing at the clock: "Are we there yet?"
<P>This bulging pile of escalation comes with a starkness of plot that seems too contrived, too neat, with every i dotted, with every t crossed. In its messiness and panic, LE CORBEAU seems like a nightmare; with its rising tension, LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR seems like a truck out of control on a mountainside. These films are dangerous; they disturb me; they trouble me long after their endings. When LES DIABOLIQUES finally ends, whatever effect it might have had vanishes in the daylight. (Yes, we have that coda, but instead of disturbing me, it makes me embarrased for the script writers.)
<P>My opinion, of course, is nothing more than one opinion. The film has long been famous, and is often cited as the masterpiece of a great director. In my view, however, the merits of his previous films leave this one pale and weak.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-15542242517427177872023-04-04T06:43:00.005-07:002023-04-30T21:23:51.425-07:00Remove One Letter From a Film's Title; Summarize the Story<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZAsuM1o3znWEdO3SsD0dmFidZ1FAmijpMG8ukYD-kT9sWRLV3eGUIMeNxYhdNpk9Ul9gsI7eGvf-fE7JKVnyYwd3d5BkWjZOSHZhSIajcwgVToR6Lg3UmKv69QybNWt5NC_fE-rKAMpAuqjiJ2ycM55gxxu0QJ2uYSTe-E1-NxKkj0ysThOGWWwmNdw/s1920/Buster%20Keaton%20The%20General%2001.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZAsuM1o3znWEdO3SsD0dmFidZ1FAmijpMG8ukYD-kT9sWRLV3eGUIMeNxYhdNpk9Ul9gsI7eGvf-fE7JKVnyYwd3d5BkWjZOSHZhSIajcwgVToR6Lg3UmKv69QybNWt5NC_fE-rKAMpAuqjiJ2ycM55gxxu0QJ2uYSTe-E1-NxKkj0ysThOGWWwmNdw/s400/Buster%20Keaton%20The%20General%2001.jpg"/></a><center><i>Buster Keaton. Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P>LA RÈGLE DU JE.
<BR>An illiterate man has one code of conduct, which limits everything he does and thinks.
<P>STAGCOACH.
<BR>A catering company must cross the desert to bring a cake to a party, but the stripper inside the cake is not at all happy with travelling conditions.
<P>PSYCH.
<BR>A man with a split personality cheats on a university exam by peeking at notes written by his dead mother.
<P>THE LON IN WINTER.
<BR>On christmas day, 1183, a man with a thousand faces fights with himself for the English crown.
<P>THE GENERA.
<BR>During the American civil war, a humble curator must take back the natural history museum collection of mutated flies that was stolen by enemy agents.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-26096925926301377642023-03-19T13:00:00.003-07:002023-03-19T13:06:23.885-07:00Nigel Kneale's THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT Revisited<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5LERK9C5k1aiBCsWz9IW1uI3nCP1VrudrC-LyISWkViysBJCRYTbZDByqk3tn7yunKoK16zhjAB5CNXvn8ipPHbqj5MCx9Pm5olagTbXQ0Xs1rxZZF1kSz5DoskzmxeeVc2QtzW4F05C5q1geM07lvv9ZMvvnKI4SFuw8KLZ_SYX6P0LDYdwsvLocg/s1905/Nigel%20Kneale%20Quatermass%20Experiment%201959.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1905" data-original-width="1164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5LERK9C5k1aiBCsWz9IW1uI3nCP1VrudrC-LyISWkViysBJCRYTbZDByqk3tn7yunKoK16zhjAB5CNXvn8ipPHbqj5MCx9Pm5olagTbXQ0Xs1rxZZF1kSz5DoskzmxeeVc2QtzW4F05C5q1geM07lvv9ZMvvnKI4SFuw8KLZ_SYX6P0LDYdwsvLocg/s400/Nigel%20Kneale%20Quatermass%20Experiment%201959.png"/></a><center><i>From 1959. Click for a better jpeg.</i></center>
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<P>For the first time since at least 1980, I went back to revisit THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Kneale" target="_blank">Nigel Kneale</a>'s teleplay published as a <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?9144" target="_blank">book</a> by Penguin, then republished by Arrow.
<P>Beyond, "It's brilliant," I have not much to say, but a few stray thoughts might be worth consideration.
<P>I read this long before I saw the Hammer film, which struck me as less an adaptation than a desecration. The film tossed away the most disturbing and conceptually interesting of Kneale's ideas, and turned his biological threat against all forms of life on Earth into a typically-tentacled space blob. It also rejected Kneale's ultimate solution to the teleplay's problem, but more on that later.
<P>The film in itself might not be at fault in this. To function at his best, Kneale required time and room to develop his ideas. In shorter forms (like the stories of TOMATO CAIN, or the teleplays of BEASTS), or even in film adaptations written by Kneale himself (especially in FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH), Kneale's best qualities vanished, but in THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS, THE ROAD, and the longer Quatermass teleplays, his ideas and their implications were given space to grow, with a result of greater scope and greater tension.
<P><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeaj4lIvytAor94A1ecojDW5O6wPswtJ4VcfS-gY9gC77h-Cxg5lGdsUH2iRh3_tDbGlYa-_LoAxi2c9ygfbogmYDiYAtlHafS9rxRzWSpDUTj74oHhfabcCryc84IUbCLKCWOaFW1frwW7At25hlRB0Ohp_D7B2Rqc46YenP64WsmmxpjxSdIfX7Wdg/s2058/Quatermass%20Experiment_Kneale%20built%20this%20with%20Judith%20Kerr.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="2058" data-original-width="1450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeaj4lIvytAor94A1ecojDW5O6wPswtJ4VcfS-gY9gC77h-Cxg5lGdsUH2iRh3_tDbGlYa-_LoAxi2c9ygfbogmYDiYAtlHafS9rxRzWSpDUTj74oHhfabcCryc84IUbCLKCWOaFW1frwW7At25hlRB0Ohp_D7B2Rqc46YenP64WsmmxpjxSdIfX7Wdg/s400/Quatermass%20Experiment_Kneale%20built%20this%20with%20Judith%20Kerr.png"/></a><center><i>Creature model built by Nigel Kneale and Judith Kerr. Click for a better jpeg.</i></center>
</div>
<P>For all that I admire Kneale's development of his ideas, the ending, here, has never quite convinced me. Yes, it is original and unexpected (even if it has been foreshadowed earlier in the play), but is it believable? Even after the passage of decades, I have no firm opinion. It is what it is.
<P>In his introduction to this book, Kneale writes, "It has been pointed out that I don't really write science-fiction at all, but just use the forms of it. I suppose that's true." But is it true?
<P>One thing is clear: Kneale has done his research. His multi-stage rocket and its re-entry process, his correct use of terms like braking ellipse, apogee, centrifugal force, show that he understands the language and basic principles of rocketry. He also understands how to go beyond ideas into their implications, which seems to me a fundamental component of any good science fiction, in print or on film. So yes, Kneale was indeed writing science fiction.
<P>Excellent science fiction. I would call THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT the best alien invasion story since <a href="https://markfullerdillon.blogspot.com/2020/09/vast-and-cool-yet-sympathetic.html" target="_blank">Wells</a>, but Kneale would surpass EXPERIMENT six years later, with <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?9146" target="_blank">QUATERMASS AND THE PIT</a>. That one is magnificent.
Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-53782652732605615582023-03-19T11:53:00.018-07:002023-05-08T10:21:05.664-07:00A Principled Sadist -- Puss In Boots: The Last Wish<p>
<blockquote><b><i>WARNING: These comments contain SPOILERS.</i></b></blockquote>
</p>
<p></p>
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<p>
Critics and viewers alike have praised PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH, and at
least from comments online, the most notable character in the film has turned out
to be the enigmatic Wolf. I can see good reasons for this.
</p>
<p>
The Wolf lacks a complex personality; much of his impact, instead, owes to the surprise of his unsettling presence in a film for children. His brutality and scorn bring a genuine chill to the narrative, but for all of the pleasure he takes in cruelty, he operates from clear motives; he follows a harsh yet moral code of honour, despite a personal resentment that, he admits, drove him to bend the rules -- "Sh! Don't tell!" This paradox of sadism held in check by principle becomes the key to his actions.
</p>
<p>
Another part of his fascination is the role he plays. The
film sets him up as the enemy who cannot be defeated, and to its credit,
solves the problem he poses without any last-minute twists or turns, which
makes his final confrontation all the more haunting.
</p>
<p>
All of this can be recognized with one viewing of the film, but watching it
again, I noticed two elements that took me by surprise.
</p>
<p></p>
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<center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center>
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<p>Consider how much the Wolf has in common with Perrito:</p>
<p>
Both make a first appearance in disguise, and are mistaken for something else.
Perrito seems to be a cat; the Wolf appears to be a bounty hunter.
</p>
<p>
Both become unwelcome pursuers. Puss In Boots eventually begins to like
Perrito, and eventually comes to respect the Wolf.
</p>
<p>
Both give back to Puss In Boots the sword that he has left behind, even if
Perrito only gives back a stick sword.
</p>
<p>
Both wear clothes associated with death. The Wolf wears a cloak and hood;
Perrito wears the sock in which he was meant to be drowned.
</p>
<p>Both emphasize the need to treasure life as a gift.</p>
<p>
"I find the very idea of nine lives absurd," says the Wolf, "and you didn't
value any of them."
</p>
<p>
Perrito, for his part, says, "I've only ever had one life, but sharing it with
you and Kitty has made it pretty special. Maybe one life is enough?"
</p>
<p>
Notice, too, that of all the main characters, neither Perrito nor the Wolf has any interest in the wish. This lack of need gives Perrito an easy trail through the dark forest, and allows the Wolf to come and go without interventions from the map.
</p>
<p>
A final point of comparison: as Perrito had wanted, but very much against the
Wolf's intentions, both become therapy dogs. Despite his frustrated rage --
"Why the Devil did I play with my food?" -- the Wolf understands, in the end,
that his pursuit has taught a lesson about death and life, and that he cannot
justify his personal vendetta. "I came here for an arrogant little legend who
thought he was immortal... but I don't see him any more. Live your life, Puss
In Boots. Live it well."
</p>
<p>
These connections between Perrito and the Wolf are so strong that the two
could almost be said to reflect each other. Given the obviously
thoughtful craftsmanship of the film, nothing would surprise me if the writers
had intended such parallels right from the start. They knew what they were
doing.
</p>
<p>
The writers also made clear just how much the Wolf differs from the other main
characters. Like him, these characters learn to see their flaws and mistakes. And so, Goldi recognizes that her failure to appreciate the family right in
front of her has hurt this family. Kitty realizes that her quest for someone
she can trust has been crippled by her own lack of trust. Puss in Boots
finally understands that his arrogant lust for glory has led to reckless lives
and lost loves. All of these revelations, prompted by outside clues, have to
be discovered internally. (Even if Puss in Boots must be jolted awake by the
boorish words of his previous jerk selves, he still comes to this recognition
by himself.)
</p>
<p>
But unlike the others, who return to the people they love with a new
generosity and a new commitment, both of which are understood and acknowleged
by their loved ones, the Wolf never apologizes. When Puss in Boots affirms,
with a quiet respect that has grown beyond his previous arrogant dismissals,
that he and the Wolf will indeed meet again, the Wolf says nothing; he walks
away.
</p>
<p>
In a film where the characters are so eloquently expressive in their cartoon
fashion, the final expression of the Wolf is hard to read. His ferocity, his
gleeful sadism, his predatory stare: all are gone, but what remains?
</p>
<p>It might almost be regret. It might even be shame.</p>
<p></p>
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Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-70849706997239860052023-02-14T05:26:00.002-08:002023-02-14T05:26:25.641-08:00The Hard Light Of Religion, The Shadows Of Art<P>A long time ago, I loved a sincerely religious woman. "I don't believe," she told me, "I know."
<P>She had also studied mathematics in university, and once told me that she loved equations because "they have a correct answer." For her, a religious concept, like an equation, could be a form of proof.
<P>For me, religious feelings arise from the same mental connections and spontaneous associations that give us art, poetry, music. I tried to convey this to her during one of our long night-time discussions that often lingered after we had made love, hours that I treasured then and hold close in memory now.
<P>I went on to say that many religious "visions" and "insights" are perhaps as real, subjectively, as the connections that give rise to art, and that people who experience these events are faced with a challenge similar to one that artists usually take for granted: mental signals like these are often ambiguous, often more suggestive than definite, often hard to pin down, but all the more powerful because of this elusive nature.
<P>Yet artists and poets have a great advantage: they have no compulsion to "believe" the signals from within their skulls; they feel compelled merely to explore and to convey these things. They can remain at ease with ambiguity, with uncertainty, with not knowing exactly what the signals "mean."
<P>An acceptance of ambiguity, of confusion, might also be found in sincerely religious mystics who try to express what the signals from their heads have told them, but how often is it found in priests, or in church committees, or in televangelists? Unlike artists or poets, church people want mental signals to be real, with implications and consequences in the real world.
<P>I love art, poetry, and music for many reasons, but especially because art, poetry, and music tend to recognize and accept the unreality of their essence. Religions (and those arts associated with religions) want, instead, to be real, and this drives me away from them -- far away.
<P>This woman I loved had been steeped in religious doctrine, but she had no great feeling for poetic writing or poetic methods. She wanted the mental signals of her favoured religious writers to be true; she wanted to "know." She was not at all comfortable with my comfortable acceptance of "not knowing," and perhaps worst of all, of "not caring."
<P>Eventually, she went away and left me on my own. I miss her terribly, but I recognize that not even long discussions in her welcoming bed, in the lingering after-warmth of love, could have reconciled this fundamental difference between us -- a difference between the hard light of religion, and the playful, powerful, poetic shadows of art.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-66674909300699113732023-02-10T07:00:00.004-08:002023-02-10T07:00:49.292-08:00When Does Writing Matter?<P>For me, the steep challenge of writing is to allow myself to spend effort and time on work that will never be seen by anyone.
<P>Between the end of high school and the approach of my thirties, I wrote invisibly. I was ashamed of my weak skills and determined to get better, even if I had no idea of what better might mean in my circumstances. All I could see was the pallour of my style when compared to the stories and poems of actual writers, and so I kept it all hidden.
<P>Still, I wrote almost every day, if only because I needed maps to roads that I could never see and could hardly define. This drive to improve kept me going.
<P>Since then, I have written stories and even verses that seem good to me. I have learned to enjoy the process of writing and the meticulous fun of revision, yet now something holds me back, something makes me deny myself this pleasure. Is it a lack of confidence in my skill? No. A feeling that I have nothing left to say? Never. Then what is it?
<P>For all of the years that I spent in secret study and practice, I could justify this effort by promising myself the eventual prize of readers. Now that I no longer need to prove my skills to myself, I still have no readers, and I have no hope of gaining them. No matter what I do, no matter how capably I do it, I remain unread.
<P>This condition of crippling invisibility would seem typical for most writers of our illiterate day, and we must all find our own reasons to go on. Yes, I love to write, yes, I still have much to say, but are these, in the hard light of morning, reasons enough?
<P>I can think of only one reply.
<P>Write to explore within your own skull or to step outside of yourself, write for the challenge of new techniques, write for the secret pleasure of words and clauses at play. Discover what you need to keep on working, but remember this:
<P>Writing matters when we make it matter.
Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-59390197078699971052023-01-28T09:48:00.002-08:002023-01-28T09:48:36.645-08:00We Might As Well Make The Best of Isolation<P>People who discover, on their own and for themselves, half-concealed pathways of art, often end up isolated by their own passionate pursuits: a fate so unavoidable that life's major question becomes not, "How do I steer away from isolation?" but, "What should I make of isolation?"
<P>Taking isolation as an opportunity for learning and growth might seem a pale comfort, but the alternatives, resentment and bitterness, are no comfort whatsoever.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-23069058188591319722022-12-31T00:00:00.000-08:002022-12-31T00:00:02.408-08:00Dawn of the Digital Warnings<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZoqL07bmeCNpYaFVeJ81DPfk34ewBU2c5e_qhgIYuxgBsKhDLYHEbmmQfRYUozjrNKWjnk2ixOYQj5PJZDvuUfqBLJ5ZabfP1DuRQ5OHYiABYNjtcPFm-slEt1eiqmU-RrZ-8ksn88t0I4SVgqPIX36eYznL3SPHk0xa47-Ohory4W-pE8iDfdD3mmw/s1902/Sibelius%20Symphony%206%20Jarvi%20BIS%20Warning%20Label%201984.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1902" data-original-width="1899" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZoqL07bmeCNpYaFVeJ81DPfk34ewBU2c5e_qhgIYuxgBsKhDLYHEbmmQfRYUozjrNKWjnk2ixOYQj5PJZDvuUfqBLJ5ZabfP1DuRQ5OHYiABYNjtcPFm-slEt1eiqmU-RrZ-8ksn88t0I4SVgqPIX36eYznL3SPHk0xa47-Ohory4W-pE8iDfdD3mmw/s400/Sibelius%20Symphony%206%20Jarvi%20BIS%20Warning%20Label%201984.png"/></a><center><i>From 1984. Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P>Do you remember those glorious early days of digital recording, when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIS_Records" target="_blank">BIS</a> albums would feature hot red WARNING labels on the front, and, in the back, a long list of hideous medical disasters that could result from unprotected playback? I remember that list:
<P>-- Brain implosion
<P>-- Torrents of blood gushing from ear canals
<P>-- Bursting eyeballs
<P>-- Teeth exploding from the upper jaw and embedding themselves in walls, pets, or other people
<P>-- Disruptions of the space-time continuum and the entry into this world of raging undead abomination monstrosities.
<P>Nonsense, most of it. No, my brain hardly ever imploded, and even if I ruined a few pairs of headphones with gore spills, had to pry a few molars out of brickwork, and fought off, with a woodshed axe, weirdly shrieking non-human intruders, you never heard me complain -- because you never heard me. The music drowned out everything.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-75214976889985722122022-10-11T04:34:00.003-07:002022-10-11T04:44:41.819-07:00Hitchcock faces THE BIRDS<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9eU2xt9GgGQVclq6w19ErI1uRCCYaPN366ZEheu9bewnv9c8dCjnyM7xKIuWztNFitNLpdvLAnAv4osXdL2mY8FtHhjJq0uS4_chI15xQA6MksJ9GsxHDIw6mM3R06D4fuDw7l_bnEMHo3K9O38WXuIp1iHop_mTFQzjM0pZpx4mOPdv80ycHcz5RPA/s1920/the_birds_blu-ray_10%20Jessica%20Tandy.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9eU2xt9GgGQVclq6w19ErI1uRCCYaPN366ZEheu9bewnv9c8dCjnyM7xKIuWztNFitNLpdvLAnAv4osXdL2mY8FtHhjJq0uS4_chI15xQA6MksJ9GsxHDIw6mM3R06D4fuDw7l_bnEMHo3K9O38WXuIp1iHop_mTFQzjM0pZpx4mOPdv80ycHcz5RPA/s400/the_birds_blu-ray_10%20Jessica%20Tandy.jpg"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P>THE BIRDS. A few observations....
<P>-- I have never been a fan of Hitchcock. I see him as a technician who sometimes focused on superb set-pieces at the expense of the film as a whole (FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT), or as a director who often shied away from the implications of his films and sabotaged their endings (VERTIGO). Something must have changed by the 1960s; I consider PSYCHO and THE BIRDS easily the best of his films, and ones that embrace their implications with courage.
<P>-- THE BIRDS also vindicates the slow and methodical approach of Hitchcock's technique. By the time of the first bird attack at 25 minutes into the film, we have a good preliminary sense of the characters, of their circumstances, of the setting and its layout, of how one place connects (by road or by sea) to another. As the escalation occurs, the film can speed up transitions without our losing any sense of where we stand.
<P>-- Jessica Tandy had the perfect eyes for a horror film. Alert, searching faces and skies, always glistening with anxiety to the point of near panic, they tell us almost everything we need to know about her character. I wish the horror field had recognized this quality and used her more often.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-58679524407748791382022-09-05T12:56:00.000-07:002022-09-05T12:56:43.835-07:00What Do I Want?<P>As I sit here to stare at the blank page and to worry about the upcoming book, I ask myself: What do I want?
<P>What do I really want?
<P>I want to show different ways to write horror fiction. These ways are not better than approaches used by other people, and -- I hope! -- not worse, but they are my ways, and they do the work I ask of them.
<P>Along with methods, I want to show an imagery that is mine, based on dreams, on hillside wanderings near midnight, on things half-seen beyond the pines and aspens but felt right down the spinal chord. I trust my obsessions, even as they force me to question my competence in describing them.
<P>I want to satisfy readers impatient with easy tricks and cliched concepts, readers with no tolerance for show-offs, bores, and fakes. Readers who toss books aside in disgust at such things are the people I respect as my friends and allies.
<P>Above all, I want to be known as a writer who did his best even if the odds were against him, even if he had no patience for the postmodern smog or the zeitgeist of corporate consumerist fairy tales that guarantee public acceptance. I want to make other people with similar allergies and doubts feel less odd, less isolated, less alone. You are not the only ones who feel this way.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-37174273986413590142022-09-04T15:04:00.004-07:002022-09-04T15:14:48.773-07:00De Heredia versus Dr. Seuss<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjhqCh4EKpkgj2hQcLCHcDRMBjdWwz5aDHuZaHujwWWKPuT9VEO1Lk5P5Abkam8dW6PT-hIAS-sWIGuyNtT6CSEBTal-JuJWiWtYmr1UB8CU_LOfkxT92VHd4WKOMI3ee8zz_IKFoPFEH_2k5QPoNDcqchRzuGJ0FSJXIaDD1X1pjxvmGntADUsbFU8Q/s2756/Mark%20Dillon_Dr%20Seuss%20Quelle%20est%20l%27ombre%20qui%20rend%20plus%20sombre%202_Sh.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="2756" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjhqCh4EKpkgj2hQcLCHcDRMBjdWwz5aDHuZaHujwWWKPuT9VEO1Lk5P5Abkam8dW6PT-hIAS-sWIGuyNtT6CSEBTal-JuJWiWtYmr1UB8CU_LOfkxT92VHd4WKOMI3ee8zz_IKFoPFEH_2k5QPoNDcqchRzuGJ0FSJXIaDD1X1pjxvmGntADUsbFU8Q/s400/Mark%20Dillon_Dr%20Seuss%20Quelle%20est%20l%27ombre%20qui%20rend%20plus%20sombre%202_Sh.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg, but don't expect a better parody.</i></center></div>
<p>"Quelle est l'ombre qui rend plus sombre encor mon antre?"
<BR><i>-- From LES TROPHEÉS, 1893.</i>
<p>As much as I respect the sonnets of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9-Maria_de_Heredia" target="_blank">José-Maria de Heredia</a>, I do find some of his lines (unintentionally?) funny. That question from "Sphinx" would fit right into a translated book by Dr. Seuss.
<p>I can admire his economy of means, his control of language, his refusal to pad the sonnets with images or metaphors that do not contribute to his planned effect, but at the same time, I don't sense any person behind the words, and I feel as if his focus on classical topics were an evasion of modern life.
<p>In contrast, when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leconte_de_Lisle" target="_blank">Leconte de Lisle</a> writes about distant cultures and distant places, I do get a sense of who he is, and this impression is reinforced whenever he denounces the modernity of his time, or stares into the future and sees a world without human beings. For all of the distance and objectivity that he shows in his work, Leconte de Lisle is <i>there</i> in his poems, while de Heredia seems absent in the sonnets
<p>Am I being unfair? Am I missing a nuance of personality in the work? Perhaps I am... but I can't shake this feeling of concealment, of refusal to stand forward and to be himself.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-66982716004306492452022-09-01T05:41:00.004-07:002022-09-01T05:41:52.472-07:00Never Put Yourself DownA friend of mine once told me, "Mark, you should never put yourself down, because there is a long line of people ready and waiting to do it for you."Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-16031981074057244782022-08-20T15:04:00.000-07:002022-08-20T15:04:20.116-07:00If There is Any Reward at all to Writing....<P>For me, there is no challenge to understanding why a story falls apart; the mystery is to understand how a story moves beyond competence (in itself, easy to explain by technical terms) into the mysterious realms of truth and beauty that mean so much to the individual reader.
<P>Anyone can learn to write with an acceptable degree of clarity, as long as that person understands the value of clarity. A few other people can learn the tricks of construction, pacing, euphony, tonal consistency, economy of means, all of the methods that bring fire to clarity, that make a story worth reading to the final page. Again, these techniques can be recognized, studied, and learned, but only if a writer wants to learn. Many, it seems, have no desire to gain this competence.
<P>Beyond competence lies the realm of personal resonance, and writers have no control over their choice of readers. Even the best writers and the most attentive, thoughtful readers can fail to connect, because they simply do not share the same emotional tonality, because their sensibilities are not quite aligned, because they have lived utterly different lives with different experiences.
<P>Given the troubled circumstances, what can competent writers do?
<P>They can study themselves, know themselves. They can remain faithful to their memories, their moods, their tastes, obsessions, and outlooks. They can speak to themselves while writing as clearly and as engagingly as they can for strangers. They can pull up dreams and threads of their lives, while adding a narrative context that might help readers to see and think and feel in similar ways.
<P>The odds are against them. Sometimes very good writers can fail to gain readers, and this might sour their efforts; it might even compel them to stop writing. But even as they strive and fail, writers can meet the challenge of being themselves. If there is any reward at all to writing, it might be this.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-45102332041680462842022-08-20T03:51:00.002-07:002022-08-20T03:51:30.005-07:00Lessons From Garbage: Pour It On, La Spina!<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8kRA8tQfMwguiDaMcQTKhsZ697aXyw5WD26V4hIgE1sHvVE_S-bfNlWW-Kf-1LeVZel2bfIv0sLnqg1ebxJKh1wx9HhMW4hkXOijeCEo0kWcDhPwj9GSW5yhQzQPdccV6LwL5Q1ifWzEIgGiWFszRgVDO-QcZLU_eWc0hJO37bLQJAim9whXSPlnv4Q/s2080/Boris%20Dolgov_Weird%20Tales_September%201942_Red%20Hair.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="2080" data-original-width="1752" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8kRA8tQfMwguiDaMcQTKhsZ697aXyw5WD26V4hIgE1sHvVE_S-bfNlWW-Kf-1LeVZel2bfIv0sLnqg1ebxJKh1wx9HhMW4hkXOijeCEo0kWcDhPwj9GSW5yhQzQPdccV6LwL5Q1ifWzEIgGiWFszRgVDO-QcZLU_eWc0hJO37bLQJAim9whXSPlnv4Q/s400/Boris%20Dolgov_Weird%20Tales_September%201942_Red%20Hair.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.<BR>Illustration by Boris Dolgov, who deserved a better story.</i></center></div>
<P>Things I have learned by reading garbage in WEIRD TALES, Lesson Three.
<P>Never hunt for the single right verb or noun. Instead, bloat entire paragraphs with fumbling abstractions and needless qualifications:
<blockquote><P>"Being older than either of my two guests, I had, possibly, learned to be diplomatic; sufficiently so, at least, not to have thrust myself unnecessarily into a situation <i>à deux</i> where my tactful absence would have been better appreciated than my presence. I had seen nothing, after all, but Peter's restraining hand on Hank's restive shoulder, and the disappearing swirl of a girl's abbreviated skirts and long cloak into a part of the woods where the low undergrowth was not yet entirely denuded of foliage. All I had heard had been Hank's exclamation, coming almost directly upon the girl's scream. Peter must have been quick in his reaction.
<P>"'Take your hand off me, you damned young cub!' had shouted Hank, with uncontrolled passion for which I did not at the moment entirely blame him. No man relishes the admonishing restraint of a youngster, in front of a woman particularly, no matter how much he may have deserved it."</blockquote>
<P>You can darken this narrative smog by avoiding the simple past tense or even useful infinitives, and by gumming up the prose with present participles:
<blockquote><P>"We three men were hugging the open fire closely. The raw chill of that November night had closed in around us and the blazing logs yielded grateful warmth.
<P>"Peter Murray was leaning forward in his chair, looking absent-mindedly into the leaping flames that sent flickering shadows to dancing on the walls behind us. Hank Walters was staring at Peter and I was watching both my guests with curious speculation that had risen in me since that afternoon’s encounter."</blockquote>
<P>Never use a clear, simple verb like "to say," when you can type anything else along with an adverb:
<blockquote><P>"'She's done it! I knew she would!' cried out Peter frantically, and that gripping hand of his began to draw me forward through the woods recklessly."
<P>. . .
<P>"'Poppycock!' I retorted tartly."
<P>. . .
<P>"'You know perfectly well he didn't mean it,' I objected lamely."</blockquote>
<P>Lamely, yes, but remember -- if one adverb is good, then two or even more can be just dandy:
<blockquote><P>"That reddish luminosity was bobbing unevenly up and down, as if it came from a lamp borne upon the head of a person walking rapidly, swimmingly, across uneven ground."</blockquote>
<P>Did you notice that awkward repetition, that almost-end-rhyme? Stylistic gold!
<P>Above all, avoid any straightforward account of a story's narrative. Complicate, complexify, discombobulate:
<blockquote><P>"Knowing Hank's proclivities, I could reconstruct the scene fairly well. He must have come upon the girl before she realized his proximity, and mischievously pulled off her pointed cap with the tassel that hung to her shoulder, confidently relying upon his vaunted masculine charm to smooth over the situation if it should unexpectedly tend toward the unpleasant.
<P>"The girl had sprung to her feet, snatched for her cap, which Hank had thrust tormentingly behind him. Whereupon she had let out that eldritch scream. And the scream brought Knight-Errant Peter tearing out of the woods behind them, to remonstrate with Hank, who had naturally resented the interference. The girl had taken advantage of Hank’s momentary unguardedness to snatch, vainly, for her pointed cap, then had fled incontinently without it.
<P>"With dismayed astonishment I had heard her scream, for it was not a scream of surprise; it was a cry of pure anger, of such depth and intensity that it started shivers running up and down my backbone. It was almost un-human in its expression of thwarted fury; arousing in me a powerful curiosity to see this girl who was so capable of such a strength of emotion. At the same time, I felt a dread of seeing her, as if she might prove to be more than my old eyes would care to take in."</blockquote>
<P>Be your eyes old or be they young, may they soak up our lesson of WEIRD TALES garbage to the dregs.
<P>-- Quotations from
<BR>"Death Has Red Hair," by Greye La Spina.
<BR>WEIRD TALES, September 1942.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-43855860395987212092022-08-17T04:12:00.003-07:002022-08-17T04:15:49.736-07:00Combined and Reduced Characters in "The Cat Jumps"<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP9z4b-gXdIYnUcaU8RsKYbX7pC_vRs42UafXvIfyW9bpWO-NbeLLpXq8cm7Q7p89X1Wq9eknf-k-MsNbPbCYwsd9D7P4swmmi4ZjvA28cPSvBbnYtHmIHehCmqgF3u-6GSeiY-koLrOzLC0ykAw4uMhgRDjtgqEyGxJsUy4bwQZBz8VGWk6ze1uswBw/s3045/Elizabeth%20Bowen_The%20Cat%20Jumps_Opening.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="3045" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP9z4b-gXdIYnUcaU8RsKYbX7pC_vRs42UafXvIfyW9bpWO-NbeLLpXq8cm7Q7p89X1Wq9eknf-k-MsNbPbCYwsd9D7P4swmmi4ZjvA28cPSvBbnYtHmIHehCmqgF3u-6GSeiY-koLrOzLC0ykAw4uMhgRDjtgqEyGxJsUy4bwQZBz8VGWk6ze1uswBw/s400/Elizabeth%20Bowen_The%20Cat%20Jumps_Opening.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.</i></center></div>
<P>Those of you who read my complaint about an <a href="http://markfullerdillon.blogspot.com/2022/08/lessons-from-garbage-combine-and-reduce.html" target="_blank">August Derleth story crowded by too many characters</a> most likely thought for a moment, and then said to yourselves, "Wait a minute, Dillon, what the hell are you talking about? What about Elizabeth Bowen? What about '<a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?94241" target="_blank">The Cat Jumps</a>'?"
<P>I agree with you! What about "The Cat Jumps?" Eight pages long, with at least thirteen characters (a few merely mentioned, but most of them active on the page), it somehow lets me process all of its people, and it keeps their story-functions clear.
<P>Why does Bowen succeed where August Derleth fails?
<P>In the opening pages, Bowen sets up two couples (the Bentleys, the Wrights), and establishes them immediately as two groups in opposition; in effect, she reduces four people into a clearly-divided pair, and makes their difference a central point of the story.
<P>On page three, the Wrights welcome several guests. Here also, Bowen sets up two groups in opposition: Muriel (nervous, imaginative, and by the standards of everyone else, morbid), and the rest, who form a single unit of rational intellectuals not at all prey to the fears of Muriel.
<P>(You could take this further, and say that we have only three groups to keep in mind: Muriel, the Bentleys, and everyone else who is unafraid and unconcerned.)
<P>What we have, then, are thirteen people, but reduced into clear groups with clear differences between them, so that the reader has no need to stop and think about who is related to whom, or how so-and-so must not be confused with someone else. At the same time, the opposition of these groups, and their differing mental energies, turn the wheels of the plot.
<P>The lesson, here, is that a crowded mess in one story can become a driving force in a second.
<P>This, too: Almost any potential downfall in a story can be avoided or even justified by a writer's intentions and a writer's craft. Never underestimate the healing magic of skill.
Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-32225444525175181042022-08-14T15:58:00.004-07:002022-08-15T03:23:22.075-07:00Lessons From Garbage: Combine and Reduce the Characters<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWA0PCmDf1SugZM35IeBwTVWYOCH_oDSFOOrElCYKY76K_fsJ5AgrV2fgODlXCfiGcvSoxrhiQ5yvWnCl6MzSSzwZ7t_psi2Wgf5DIPbUv502H38HKzGUhV-K6DjF5-SP0YcQF0zPeBh7Zumj_oFl_XRM7K4fmbU1HLcFqoubd8Tctn2bbqIMzVabuiQ/s2132/August%20Derleth_Drifting%20Snow_Weird%20Tales_1939-02.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="2132" data-original-width="1736" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWA0PCmDf1SugZM35IeBwTVWYOCH_oDSFOOrElCYKY76K_fsJ5AgrV2fgODlXCfiGcvSoxrhiQ5yvWnCl6MzSSzwZ7t_psi2Wgf5DIPbUv502H38HKzGUhV-K6DjF5-SP0YcQF0zPeBh7Zumj_oFl_XRM7K4fmbU1HLcFqoubd8Tctn2bbqIMzVabuiQ/s400/August%20Derleth_Drifting%20Snow_Weird%20Tales_1939-02.png"/></a><center><i>Click for a better jpeg.<BR>Henry? Which one was Henry, again?</i></center></div>
<P>Things I have learned by reading garbage in WEIRD TALES, Lesson One.
<P>Every character mentioned in a short story asks the reader to make a mental checklist of who is who, of who is related to whom, of who is doing what. This mental dogwork tugs the reader's attention away from details that might be more essential to the story; it also turns reading into a school assignment.
<P>Combine. Condense. In a story five pages long, five characters could become three, or two. Even a longer short story can gain by having its characters reduced only to those needed for conflict.
<P>Any reader willing to pick up a story deserves consideration. Be courteous and welcoming. Do not be <a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?68983" target="_blank">August Derleth</a>.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-54163327072099231602022-08-12T13:49:00.001-07:002022-08-12T13:49:13.846-07:00Roy Fuller, THE SECOND CURTAIN<P><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Fuller" target="_blank">Roy Fuller</a>, THE SECOND CURTAIN, 1953, soon to be reprinted by <a href="https://www.valancourtbooks.com/the-second-curtain-1953.html" target="_blank">Valancourt Books</a>.
<P>A few stray thoughts....
<P>Every now and then, with reluctance, I begin to read certain novels if they are well under 200 pages long. Most I never finish, but Roy Fuller's Graham-Greenesque thriller kept me going to the end. How?
<P>Fuller has never been one of my favourite poets. His war-time poems hold my interest by dealing with his own feelings and impressions; those written after the war seem less personal, and more preoccupied with other poets, other books.
<P>THE SECOND CURTAIN is very much a book about a bookish life, but one that takes a hard look at its novelist hero as it dismantles him. The effect is both cruel and honest: this man, who fancies himself smarter and more insightful than most people, finds himself swamped and over his head in a crime that expands in both complexity and threat, and what is more, a crime that he has no competence to solve. Fuller shows the price paid for a life of emotional detachment and full devotion to books, art, and music at the expense of personal growth: a price too severe, a life too shallow.
<P>The book moves rapidly, with a genuine, "pull the carpet from beneath your feet" surprise three-quarters through, an impressively-described pursuit through a crowded football stadium, a looming sense of risk. As a thriller, it functions through pacing and plot, and as a literary novel, dissects its protagonist and his delusions without mercy.
<P>Still, from start to finish, what kept me reading was the solid British competence of the prose. Having squirmed and scowled through too many badly-written blobs, pulp and modern, I was held by Fuller's confident refusal to be "poetic" or convoluted, to sacrifice economy and clarity to market demands for bloated illiteracy. A modern writer, Stephen King or even worse, would have pumped this book into a 972-page mound of toxic waste, and made it dull, dull, dull. Fuller, to his credit and to my relief, wrote as much as the book needed, but nothing more.
<P>As for the book's ending, I feel conflicted. The final pages are honest, which makes them perhaps grimmer than most readers would prefer. Yet as I lay in bed afterwards and thought about this ending, I realized that, from a certain perspective, it might actually seem hopeful. For the protagonist of THE SECOND CURTAIN, as for that man in a song by the Rolling Stones --
<P>"You can't always get what you want
<BR>But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
<BR>You get what you need."
<P>This, too, can bring a hint of necessary change.Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156893616099145308.post-89606795152598825592022-08-06T07:37:00.007-07:002022-08-06T07:52:04.092-07:00Protonicus Moronicus<blockquote><i><P>From the diary: Tuesday, August 2, 2019.
<P>
Last night, exhausted after a five-hour bike ride in this midnight heat, I took a shower, went to bed, and dreamt immediately that I was reading a play attributed to Shakespeare, called (and I kid you not):
<P>
PROTONICUS MORONICUS.</i></blockquote>
<P>
<b>And now, three years later, for no good reason --</b>
<P><UL>THE SPASTICALLY TRAGICAL HISTORY OF PROTONICUS MORONICUS.</UL>
<BR>
<P>PRINCE AVOCADO:
<BR>How fragrant are the roses of our state,
<BR>How dignified the columns and the laws;
<BR>Yet much, I fear, is undermined by day
<BR>And toppled in the dusk.
<P>GRISTLE:
<BR>Beware, my prince!
<BR>These nagging undercurrents are the work
<BR>Of but one man, a blot upon the realm.
<P>PRINCE AVOCADO:
<BR>Moronicus! Indeed, a warning cry:
<BR>For as the light of intellect will scatter
<BR>The scuttling roaches of the cellar crowd,
<BR>So too the pratings of an errant fool,
<BR>The bantam dance of squat, priapic bastards,
<BR>The twirlings of acephalic imposters,
<BR>Shall gad the wary mob to celebration.
<P>GRISTLE:
<BR>Indeed, my prince. The blatherings of one
<BR>Incite the emulations of the many.
<P>PRINCE AVOCADO:
<BR>Contagious are the dull, and dullest dire
<BR>Is he, Protonicus Moronicus!
<BR>Bring here this armpit of the nation state!
<P>GRISTLE:
<BR>Bring forth Protonicus!
<P>PROTONICUS MORONICUS:
<BR>Doy doy, doy doy!
<P>PRINCE AVOCADO:
<BR>And thus I hear a simpletonic twang,
<BR>A string untuned upon a pea-brain's lute,
<BR>A siren call that turns our noble crowd
<BR>Into a hive of pixilated thick-ohs.
<P>GRISTLE:
<BR>See how the common people prance and drool!
<P>PRINCE AVOCADO:
<BR>Backbones of our grandeur! Citizens!
<BR>What would you have as pilots to your barque:
<BR>The pensive iambs of a bardic wit,
<BR>The dithyrambs cathartic of the great?
<BR>Or would you rather shuffle to a thud
<BR>Pounded by a pustule-minded clod?
<P>CITIZENS:
<BR>Protonicus Moronicus! We want him!
<P>PRINCE AVOCADO:
<BR>Oh fuck it all, this era falls apart!
<BR>The pratings of a dope are now anthemic,
<BR>High bugle tones for sheep and sheepish lice.
<P>GRISTLE:
<BR>Hasten, Prince, an exit!
<P>PROTONICUS MORONICUS:
<BR>Doy doy doy!Mark Fuller Dillonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00913217677399118759noreply@blogger.com0