Born of a soldering iron and some unfaithful screws

[sovay]

I know my knowledge of the American nineteenth century is like most people with the Russian Futurists, but can somebody explain to me why it still took me until this afternoon to hear about John Murray Spear's New Motor—a mechanical Messiah built by Spiritualists in a barn in Lynn, Massachusetts, mystically birthed by one of its female followers and eventually smashed to pieces by an honest-to-God angry mob? Steampunk, give it up. You can try on all the brass and goggles you like: actual history was weirder than you.

(Courtesy of Dean Grodzins, who also asked me why I write about ghosts. At first I said I didn't, and then I talked about dybbuks for fifteen minutes straight.)

Comments

[sovay]

I don't know anything about the American 19th century, but do you want perhaps to talk about the Russian Futurists instead?

Hell, yes!

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

Well then! Let's start with the banal: if you had to choose one favorite, who would that be and why?

[sovay]

Let's start with the banal: if you had to choose one favorite, who would that be and why?

The classic unanswerable question! I was very impressed by Khlebnikov when I really started reading his poetry last November (although I know I'm hampered not being able to read it in the original), but I seem to have imprinted oddly on Aleksei Kruchonykh, both because of zaum—I discovered the Futurists because of Victory Over the Sun—and because in every single photograph I've seen of the man, he looks as though he was auditioning for an eccentric clerk in a stage production of Dickens. I just came into possession of a translation of Benedikt Livshits' memoir The One and a Half-Eyed Archer (1933) for Christmas, so I am really looking forward to that. Is Akhmatova ever counted among the Futurists, or did she just hang out with a bunch of them?

[obzor-inolit.livejournal.com]

No, she isn't, she did hang out with some, but she was in other groups. You have a lot of fascinating reading ahead of you.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

...Squeep.