It has been snowing on and off since last night, first featherily, now grainily, all day the colorless mirror-light I associate with winter; it requires snow, making it rarer and rarer in these dry green years. I was in too much pain to sleep all night or even this morning and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch had to take Hestia to the vet this afternoon, whence she has returned with an antibiotic shot and painkillers and is napping on the bed. She let me hold her against my shoulder for fully half a minute, purring. Have some links-ish.
1. I was not familiar with Jack Lueders-Booth as a photographer, but if he did a project about Boston's Orange Line, I will have to look more of his work up. "What was feared did come to pass. Most of the homeless shelters went and now there are very high-end shops, fine restaurants and high-rise apartment blocks. By law, some are allotted to those on low incomes but the sky is the limit for the rest and rents are very high."
2. I was sorry to read Bret Devereaux's "What's the Problem with Antigone?” He is talking about the online journal, not the play; I had never interacted much with it, but I had vaguely considered it as a way of trying to get over the block I have about publishing anything that could be construed as academic as opposed to merely nonfiction. It looks as though I will have to try the experiment elsewhere. The scathing review by Shadi Bartsch mentioned therein, however, is pretty great.
3. I am much happier to have read Herbert Farjeon's review of the 1927 Little Theatre production of Hamilton Deane’s Dracula, shared elsenet by Ian McDowell. It’s great horror criticism:
Perhaps the desire to be frightened, which is common to most civilized human beings, is most satisfactorily appeased by the infusion of an element of incredibility into the bogy-man. If Count Dracula were presented as a blood-sucker pure and simple, a mere pervert unadorned by any supernatural attribute, most of us would find his stage appearances altogether insupportable. But the way he vanishes into smoke—the way the pictures fall down from the wall without provocation—the way the doors have of opening of their own accord—all these things reassure us, even in the act of thrilling, that this is only a very bad dream.
All this hocus-pocus about blood-suckers has fulfilled a useful purpose in the past. Just as humour has come to our assistance to render tragedy bearable, so superstition has helped to render bearable the existence of the most disturbing abnormalities. In the past we have called blood-suckers were-wolves, and have endowed them with magical powers of the most fantastical nature because we cannot bear to think that human beings so nearly like ourselves should be as nearly like ourselves as they are. We have therefore sought to remove them as far as possible by bestowing on them a vestiture of other-worldliness. Observe the make-up of Mr. Raymond Huntley, who plays the part of Count Dracula at the Little Theatre with such admirable horrific power. The moment you set eyes on him, you are appalled by his semi-satanic, semi-vulpine appearance. And yet how comforting that semi-satanic, semi-vulpine appearance is! When evil stalks abroad in such a self-proclaiming uniform, our hearts may palpitate, but at least we can take to our heels. The true terror would be to encounter on the stage a Count Dracula who looked no more surprising than the man sitting next to us in the stalls, and who, apart from his blood-sucking proclivities, was the most ordinary fellow in the world.
I now consider it an active tragedy that Farjeon, who died in 1945, never had the chance to be given a copy of Theodore Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood (1961).
spatch had to take Hestia to the vet this afternoon, whence she has returned with an antibiotic shot and painkillers and is napping on the bed. She let me hold her against my shoulder for fully half a minute, purring. Have some links-ish.1. I was not familiar with Jack Lueders-Booth as a photographer, but if he did a project about Boston's Orange Line, I will have to look more of his work up. "What was feared did come to pass. Most of the homeless shelters went and now there are very high-end shops, fine restaurants and high-rise apartment blocks. By law, some are allotted to those on low incomes but the sky is the limit for the rest and rents are very high."
2. I was sorry to read Bret Devereaux's "What's the Problem with Antigone?” He is talking about the online journal, not the play; I had never interacted much with it, but I had vaguely considered it as a way of trying to get over the block I have about publishing anything that could be construed as academic as opposed to merely nonfiction. It looks as though I will have to try the experiment elsewhere. The scathing review by Shadi Bartsch mentioned therein, however, is pretty great.
3. I am much happier to have read Herbert Farjeon's review of the 1927 Little Theatre production of Hamilton Deane’s Dracula, shared elsenet by Ian McDowell. It’s great horror criticism:
Perhaps the desire to be frightened, which is common to most civilized human beings, is most satisfactorily appeased by the infusion of an element of incredibility into the bogy-man. If Count Dracula were presented as a blood-sucker pure and simple, a mere pervert unadorned by any supernatural attribute, most of us would find his stage appearances altogether insupportable. But the way he vanishes into smoke—the way the pictures fall down from the wall without provocation—the way the doors have of opening of their own accord—all these things reassure us, even in the act of thrilling, that this is only a very bad dream.
All this hocus-pocus about blood-suckers has fulfilled a useful purpose in the past. Just as humour has come to our assistance to render tragedy bearable, so superstition has helped to render bearable the existence of the most disturbing abnormalities. In the past we have called blood-suckers were-wolves, and have endowed them with magical powers of the most fantastical nature because we cannot bear to think that human beings so nearly like ourselves should be as nearly like ourselves as they are. We have therefore sought to remove them as far as possible by bestowing on them a vestiture of other-worldliness. Observe the make-up of Mr. Raymond Huntley, who plays the part of Count Dracula at the Little Theatre with such admirable horrific power. The moment you set eyes on him, you are appalled by his semi-satanic, semi-vulpine appearance. And yet how comforting that semi-satanic, semi-vulpine appearance is! When evil stalks abroad in such a self-proclaiming uniform, our hearts may palpitate, but at least we can take to our heels. The true terror would be to encounter on the stage a Count Dracula who looked no more surprising than the man sitting next to us in the stalls, and who, apart from his blood-sucking proclivities, was the most ordinary fellow in the world.
I now consider it an active tragedy that Farjeon, who died in 1945, never had the chance to be given a copy of Theodore Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood (1961).
