A Kind Of Nothing

John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi.

The most chilling passage I've read in recent months, and one that creeps up on me when my thoughts are elsewhere, is the final scene of this play, with Bosola and the Cardinal on the verge of death.

Even as he dies, even with only seconds left to him, Bosola cannot let go of his hatred for the Cardinal:

"I hold my weary soul in my teeth;
'Tis ready to part from me. I do glory
That thou, which stood'st like a huge pyramid
Begun upon a large and ample base,
Shalt end in a little point, a kind of nothing."

As a man who had been badly used and cheated, Bosola is crippled with resentment; and this resentment, a constant motif during the play, will not let him rest, not even at the end.

"Revenge for the Duchess of Malfi murdered
By the Arragonian brethren; for Antonio
Slain by this hand; for lustful Julia
Poison'd by this man; and lastly for myself,
That was an actor in the main of all
Much 'gainst mine own good nature, yet i' the end
Neglected."

Neglected. The word rings out like an epitaph.

As for the Cardinal, who can be angry "without rupture," who conceals his emotions even as he burns with hatred, his final words are even more disturbing:

"Look to my brother:
He gave us these large wounds, as we were struggling
Here i' th' rushes. And now, I pray, let me
Be laid by and never thought of."

At the very least, Bosola can be seen and understood, but the Cardinal is not a man to reveal himself. In the end, he not only wants to die, he wants to be erased from human history.

Ford Madox Ford on Impressionism

"The passage in prose which I always take as a working model... occurs in a story by de Maupassant called 'La Reine Hortense.' I spent, I suppose, a great part of ten years in grubbing up facts about Henry VIII. I worried about his parentage, his diseases, the size of his shoes, the price he gave for kitchen implements, his relation to his wives, his knowledge of music, his proficiency with the bow. I amassed, in short, a great deal of information about Henry VIII... I then wrote three long novels all about that Defender of the Faith. But I really know -- so delusive are reported facts -- nothing whatever. Not one single thing! Should I have found him affable, or terrifying, or seductive, or royal, or courageous? There are so many contradictory facts; there are so many reported interviews, each contradicting the other, so that really all that I know about this king could be reported in the words of Maupassant, which, as I say, I always consider as a working model. Maupassant is introducing one of his characters, who is possibly gross, commercial, overbearing, insolent; who eats, possibly, too much greasy food; who wears commonplace clothes -- a gentleman about whom you might write volumes if you wanted to give the facts of his existence. But all that de Maupassant finds it necessary to say is: 'C'était un monsieur à favoris rouges qui entrait toujours le premier.'


"And that is all that I know about Henry VIII -- that he was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a door."

-- From
"On Impressionism," by Ford Madox Hueffer.
In POETRY AND DRAMA Volume II, edited by Harold Munro. The Poetry Bookshop, London, 1914.

Stifled By The Darkness

Because I think of WILD STRAWBERRIES as one of Bergman's most positive and life-affirming movies, I chose it as a doorway to introduce his work to my last girlfriend. She hated the film, called it "too dark," and could not be persuaded to watch anything else by Bergman.

I have to concede that the film's warm, serene ending comes at the cost of great struggle by the characters. Anxieties, bleak memories, losses, nightmares: all of these are pitfalls on the way to reconciliation and peace, so much so that any viewer coming into the story halfway through could easily mistake this for a horror film.

What is horror: a result, or a process?

Many stories and films deal with a process of horror, but reach a happy ending -- a well-deserved, painfully-gained sense of closure in the daylight. I would never suggest that such films are less fascinating or beautiful than films that result in horror. BLUE VELVET, INLAND EMPIRE, ORPHÉE, VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS, VAMPYR, CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, THE QUEEN OF SPADES: these end in daylight or in peace, but I still consider them great films that would appeal to horror viewers.

On the other hand, I think of horror as a result, as a mood that remains and overwhelms a story. My favourite horror films leave me in the dark: DAY OF WRATH, DEAD OF NIGHT, SECONDS, LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, PSYCHO, THE BIRDS, THE INNOCENTS, L'ANNÉ DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD, SOLARIS, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, THE BODY SNATCHER, LEMORA.

Many of Bergman's films also lead into darkness: WINTER LIGHT, SHAME, HOUR OF THE WOLF, PERSONA, THE SERPENT'S EGG. Other films are equally horrific, but end with a hard-won mood of hope: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, WILD STRAWBERRIES, and perhaps even THE SILENCE.

As my last girlfriend made clear to me, for some people, a happy result might not cancel out an unhappy process. For them, a story might end in daylight, but their memories of that experience are stifled by the darkness.

Broken-Back Sentences

How to write badly with broken-back sentences: take a weak verb, add a present participle afterthought. Repeat until the reader pukes.

Examples from "Sandkings," by George R. R. Martin.

- - - - - - - - -

The reds were the most creative, using tiny flakes of slate to put the gray in his hair.

The small scarlet mobiles were frozen, watching.

The lines closed around it, covered it, waging desperate battle.

He stopped at her table briefly and told her about the war games, inviting her to join them.

He waved it back and forth, smashing towers and ramparts and walls.

Sand and stone collapsed, burying the scrambling mobiles.

He watched for a moment, wondering whether he’d killed the maw.

“Easy,” he said, holding his head.

The shambler came peering round a corner to see what the noise was.

Kress went through the house room by room, turning on lights everywhere he went until he was surrounded by a blaze of artificial illumination.

He paused to clean up in the living room, shoveling sand and plastic fragments back into the broken tank.

The body shifted once again, moving a few centimeters toward the castle.

He retreated upstairs, returning shortly with a cleaver.

The screen began to clear, indicating that someone had answered at the other end.

He listened for several uneasy moments, wondering if Idi Noreddian could possibly have survived, and was now scratching to get out.

The black castle was glittering with volcanic glass, and sandkings were all over it, repairing and improving.

He stood his ground, sweeping his misty sword before him in great looping strokes.

One landed on his faceplate, its mandibles scraping at his eyes for a terrible second before he plucked it away.

The mist settled back on him, making him cough.

They were all around him, on him, dozens of them scurrying over his body, hundreds of others hurrying to join them.

Kress heard a loud hiss, and the deadly fog rose in a great cloud from between his shoulders, cloaking him, choking him, making his eyes burn and blur.

He stumbled and screamed, and began to run back to the house, pulling sandkings from his body as he went.

Inside, he sealed the door and collapsed on the carpet, rolling back and forth until he was sure he had crushed them all.

The canister was empty by then, hissing feebly.

His hand shook as he poured, slopping liquor on the carpet.

He sat at the console, frowning.

Their skimmer passed low overhead first, checking out the situation.

The black army burned and disintegrated, the mobiles fleeing in a thousand different directions, some back toward the castle, others toward the enemy.

Kress pounded wildly on the window, shouting for attention.

He brought it down sharply, hacking at the sand and stone parapets.

The laser bit into the ground, searching round and about.

Then he used the lasercannon, crisscrossing methodically until it was certain that nothing living could remain intact beneath those small patches of ground.

“Is that safe in here?” he found himself muttering, pointing at the flamethrower.

She stepped into the door, shifted the laser to her left hand, and reached up with her right, fumbling inside for the light panel.

He closed his eyes and waited, expecting to feel their terrible touch, afraid to move lest he brush against one.

His shambler followed him down the stairs, staring at him from its baleful glowing eyes.

Kress slipped outside, carrying his bags awkwardly, and shut the door behind him.

For a moment he stood pressed against the house, his heart thudding in his chest.

Kress smiled, and walked slowly across the battleground, listening to the sounds, the sounds of safety.

A white sandking watched him from atop the dresser in his bedroom, its antennae moving faintly.

They were making modifications in his house, burrowing into or out of his walls, carving things.

He went outside to get the bodies that had been rotting in the yard, hoping to appease the white maw’s hunger.

They avoided the frozen food, leaving it to thaw in a great puddle, but they carried off everything else.

He closed the door behind his latest guest, ignoring the startled exclamations that soon turned into shrill gibbering, and sprinted for the skimmer the man had arrived in.

Kress rose, holding his breath, not daring to hope.

He ran down the stairs, jumping over sandkings.

Finally he got out and checked, expecting the worst.

Kress went to his communicator again, stepping on a sandking in his haste, and prayed fervently that the device still worked.

The fear was on him again, filling him, and with it a great thirst and a terrible hunger.

He ran down the hill toward the house, waving his arms and shouting to the inhabitants.

The Moment Of Avoidance

Faber and Faber, 1970. Click for a better jpeg.

"Beautiful women with corrupt natures -- they have always been my life's target. There must be bleakness as well as loveliness in their gaze: only then can I expect the mingled moment."

-- Brian W. Aldiss, "The Moment of Eclipse." (1969)

Aldiss: the frustrator of expectation. Some of his work I respect, but some of it makes me want to bash my head against the kitchen sink. This mingled moment comes through most clearly in the story at hand.

Here we have a marvelous control of tone, melody and rhythm, imagery and symbol, but a narrative that collapses with a ffffffffffwuffffffff like a neglected balloon.

Any story makes a promise, and a good one keeps it. Aldiss implies a tale of perversion and danger, but as the story goes on, he avoids both. The narrator's "corrupt woman" is neither especially corrupt nor threatening, and he somehow manages to veer away from her at every possible encounter:

"It may appear as anti-climax if I admit that I now forgot about Christiania, the whole reason for my being in that place and on that continent. Nevertheless, I did forget her; our de­sires, particularly the desires of creative artists, are peripatetic: they submerge themselves sometimes unexpectedly and we never know where they may appear again. My imp of the perverse descended. For me the demolished bridge was never rebuilt."

Okay. Sure.

Instead of the story promised, Aldiss has another tale in mind. He supports it with recurring symbols (eyes and eclipses), then brings it to a crisis well-described and eerie. But once that mood has been established, the ending goes fffffffwuffffffff.

In effect, he does this:

"I'm crushed by a terrible spiritual burden!"

"Here, let me solve it for you."

"Okay. Sure."

The End.

What we have, then, is "The Moment of Avoidance," and this refusal to confront its own initial set-up is the most perverse thing about it. None of its fine prose, none of its otherwise firm technique, can salvage the story that Aldiss failed to write.