You can go to this site to listen to an audio play version of Dickens, featuring excerpts from The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol on WRNi, Rhode Island’s National Public Radio.
Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there — as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done — they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M’Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations? Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular statements, showing that when they didn’t get drunk, they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared — in short, it was the only clear thing in the case — that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:
There was an old woman, and what do you think?
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,
And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.
Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of the Coketown population and the case of the little Gradgrinds? Surely, none of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown working-people had been for scores of years, deliberately set at nought? That there was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions? That exactly in the ratio as they worked long and monotonously, the craving grew within them for some physical relief — some relaxation, encouraging good humour and good spirits, and giving them a vent — some recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of music — some occasional light pie in which even M’Choakumchild had no finger — which craving must and would be satisfied aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the Creation were repealed?
and lastly, for the sake of waning holidays, there is this….(which I found here.)
Excerpt from A Christmas Carol
MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot–say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance–literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you? when will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was ‘oclock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmen’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘no eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’
But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.
Once upon a time–of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve–old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement-stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
“It is the complex nature of Dickens’s evil men, not their merited fate, that makes them the peers of Dostoyevsky’s lost souls. For this reason, I have always been irked by the critical treatment of his last novel as a pure whodunit. ”Endings” were not his strong suit.” (Angus Wilson in The New York Times, March 1, 1981)
Regarding Charles Dickens
English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens’s works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy. He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens’s good, bad, and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers.
“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.” (from Great Expectations, 1860-61)
Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. Dickens’s father was a clerk in the navy pay office. He was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. The schoolmaster William Giles gave special attention to Dickens, who made rapid progress. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father John was in Marshalea debtor’s prison. “My father and mother were quite satisfied,” Dickens later recalled bitterly. “They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge.” Later this period found its way to the novel LITTLE DORRITT (1855-57). John Dickens paid his £40 debt with the money he inherited from his mother; she died at the age of seventy-nine when he was still in prison.
…..you can read the rest of his biography, along with a list and description of his various works here…
The Manuscripts
By Annette Low, Book Conservator, Conservation Department
what follows, can be read in it’s entirety, along with vivid descriptions of the binding and conservation process, here. This excerpt was originally published as part of a larger article in the V&A Conservation Journal, no.9, October 1993, pp. 4-7 (ISSN 0967-2273). The Manuscripts are kept at The National Art Library (NAL) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where they are also available on microfilm.
Fig, 1: Charles Dickens, the manuscript of ‘American Notes’ before conservation
This collection of manuscripts covers a range of 33 years of Dickens’ writing, with Oliver Twist being the earliest (1837-9) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood still unfinished (1870). Not only does this long period show the development of Dickens’ writing style, but it is also witness to a gradual change from iron gall ink to blue ink and from cream to blue writing paper in a time of developments in paper production and artificial pigments.
The novels were published in weekly or monthly magazines and the manuscripts bear signs of close co-operation with printers and illustrators: fingerprints of printing ink, printers’ names scribbled across the pages and leaves that were often cut in half to distribute them amongst the typesetters.
Leading an active life, Dickens was writing in different locations, at his house in Kent or his town house in London, while travelling in the UK and also abroad. Different quills and nibs and change in ink supplies lead to differences in ink shades which give valuable evidence of his process of planning, writing and correcting.
The manuscript was written on one side only of a machine-made writing paper. The double leaves were folded and torn in half before writing; all manuscript leaves therefore have one torn side. Cancelled text and corrections are found on the verso. Corrections are also sometimes carried out by sticking another piece of paper across the cancelled text with seals.
The manuscript pages were glued to a slightly larger thin support paper along the two vertical edges which then had been in-layed during the last rebinding into a blank book of strong repair paper. Narrow gutter margins and the incompatibility of all the papers involved had led to creasing and warping of the manuscript leaves (Fig.1). The strain for the manuscripts was evident in a strong resistance and rattling sound every time a leave was turned over. This was also dangerous for already brittle areas of iron gall ink.
posted by Caroline Picard; Zach is coming to read at the Parlor next week on January 6th. Here is an interview I found between him and the Pilcrow Lit Fest. You can find out more about them, and read some other great interviews with exciting young authors here. You can listen to previous readers at the parlor website, www.theparlorreads.com.
“Five With…” asks five simple questions of someone involved with Pilcrow Lit Fest. For our next guest, please welcome Zach Plague.
1. What are you working on now?
I’m working on my debut novel, boring boring boring boring boring boring boring. It’s a hybrid typo/graphic novel, which means it’s heavy on the design end. I took my time writing and editing it, and the result is I kind of have to design in a panic. Beyond that I’m always working to promote the swell authors we put out on featherproof. This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record is our latest book, and it’s a YA novel, which is different for featherproof, so there are a lot of new outlets to explore.
2. What is your favorite part of literary festivals and why?
I like the schmoozing, the boozing, and the… perusing. Of good books.
to read the rest of this interview (and see his fancy photo-ma-graph) go here….
posted by Caroline Picard; more of this correspondence can be seen
(including letter no. 2 and so on) going here.
Albert Einstein
Old Grove Rd.
Nassau Point
Peconic, Long Island
August 2nd 1939
F.D. Roosevelt
President of the United States
White House
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
Some recent work by E.Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been com-
municated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uran-
ium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the im-
mediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem
to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part
of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring
to your attention the following facts and recommendations:
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable -
through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in
America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction
in a large mass of uranium,by which vast amounts of power and large quant-
ities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears
almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs,
and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely power-
ful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this
type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy
the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However,
such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by
air.
-2-
The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate
quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia.
while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.
In view of the situation you may think it desirable to have more
permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group
of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way
of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person
who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an inofficial
capacity. His task might comprise the following:
a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the
further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action,
giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uran-
ium ore for the United States;
b) to speed up the experimental work,which is at present being car-
ried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by
providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with y
private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause,
and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories
which have the necessary equipment.
I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium
from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should
have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground
that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is
attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin where some of the
American work on uranium is now being repeated.
Yours very truly,
(Albert Einstein)
posted by Caroline Picard; I want to argue that this is a relevant step in the course of recent blog posts- and for a run down, I’d diagram the following: 1) Anais Nin (sexually liberal writer) to 2) Jane Austen (Reserved and Victorian writer) to 3) An excerpt of a particular letter from Pride & Prejudice, to 4) Victorian pencils to 5) Eros & Hypertext 6)Messages concealed in Victorian letters, to 7) Systems of concealing. All of which, I feel can be applied sucessfully to the world of spies and artmaking, which afterall, might not be so different after all…..
The original site for the following post (along with a myriad of brilliant details) can be seen here.
SYSTEMS OF CONCEALING
* The oldest means of sending secret messages is to simply conceal them by one trick or another. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that when the Persian Emperor Xerxes moved to attack Greece in 480 BCE, the Greeks were warned by an Greek named Demaratus who was living in exile in Persia. In those days, wooden tablets covered with wax were used for writing. Demaratus wrote a message on the wooden tablet itself and then covered it with wax, allowing the vital information to be smuggled out of the country.
The science of sending concealed messages is known as “steganography”, Greek for “concealed writing”. Other classical techniques for smuggling a message included tattooing it on the scalp of a messenger, letting his hair grow back, and then sending him on a journey. At the other end, the recipient shaved the messenger’s hair off and read the message.
Steganography has a long history, leading to inventions such as invisible ink and “microdots”, or highly miniaturized microfilm images that could be hidden almost anywhere. Microdots are a common feature in old spy movies and TV shows. However, steganography is not very secure by itself. If someone finds the hidden message, all its secrets are revealed. That led to the idea of obscuring the message so that it could not be read even if it were intercepted, and the result was “cryptography”, Greek for “hidden writing”. The result was the development of “codes”, or secret languages, and “ciphers”, or scrambled messages.
* The distinction between codes and ciphers is commonly misunderstood. A “code” is essentially a secret language invented to conceal the meaning of a message. The simplest form of a code is the “jargon code”, in which a particular arbitrary phrase, for an arbitrary example:
The nightingale sings at dawn.
— corresponds to a particular predefined message that may not, in fact shouldn’t have, anything to do with the jargon code phrase. The actual meaning of this might be:
The supply drop will take place at 0100 hours tomorrow.
Jargon codes have been used for a long time, most significantly in World War II, when they were used to send commands over broadcast radio to resistance fighters. However, from a cryptographic point of view they’re not very interesting. A proper code would run something like this:
BOXER SEVEN SEEK TIGER5 AT RED CORAL
This uses “codewords” to report that a friendly military force codenamed BOXER SEVEN is now hunting an enemy force codenamed TIGER5 at a location codenamed RED CORAL. This particular code is weak in that the “SEEK” and “AT” words provide information to a codebreaker on the structure of the message. In practice, military codes are often defined as “codenumbers” rather than codewords, using a codebook that provides a dictionary of code numbers and their equivalent words. For example, this message might be coded as:
85772 24799 10090 59980 12487
— where “85772″ maps to BOXER SEVEN, “12487″ maps to “RED CORAL”, and so on. Codewords and codenumbers are referred to collectively as “codegroups”. The words they represent are referred to as “plaintext” or, more infrequently, “cleartext”, “plaincode”, or “placode”.
Codes are unsurprisingly defined by “codebooks”, which are dictionaries of codegroups listed with their corresponding their plaintext. Codes originally had the codegroups in the same order as their plaintext. For example, in a code based on codenumbers, a word starting with “a” would have a low-value codenumber, while one starting with “z” would have a high-value codenumber. This meant that the same codebook could be used to “encode” a plaintext message into a coded message or “codetext”, and “decode” a codetext back into plaintext message.
However, such “one-part” codes had a certain predictability that made it easier for outsiders to figure out the pattern and “crack” or “break” the message, revealing its secrets. In order to make life more difficult for codebreakers, codemakers then designed codes where there was no predictable relationship between the order of the codegroups and the order of the matching plaintext. This meant that two codebooks were required, one to look up plaintext to find codegroups for encoding, the other to look up codegroups to find plaintext for decoding. This was in much the same way that a student of a foreign language, say French, needs an English-French and a French-English dictionary to translate back and forth between the two languages. Such “two-part” codes required more effort to implement and use, but they were harder to break.
* In contrast to a code, a “cipher” conceals a plaintext message by replacing or scrambling its letters. This process is known as “enciphering” and results in a “ciphertext” message. Converting a ciphertext message back to a plaintext message is known as “deciphering”. Coded messages are often enciphered to improve their security, a process known as “superencipherment”.
There are two classes of ciphers. A “substitution cipher” changes the letters in a message to another set of letters, or “cipher alphabet”, while a “transposition cipher” shuffles the letters around. In some usages, the term “cipher” always means “substitution cipher”, while “transpositions” are not referred to as ciphers at all. In this document, the term “cipher” will mean both substitution ciphers and transposition ciphers. It is useful to refer to them together, since the two approaches are often combined in the same cipher scheme. However, transposition ciphers will be referred to in specific as “transpositions” for simplicity.
“Encryption” covers both encoding and enciphering, while “decryption” covers both decoding and deciphering. This should also imply the term “cryptotext” to cover both codetext and ciphertext, but this term doesn’t seem to be in use, although the term “encicode” is sometimes seen. The science of creating codes and ciphers is known, as mentioned, as “cryptography”, while the science of breaking them is known as “cryptanalysis”. Together, the two fields make up the science of “cryptology”.
Despite the fact that the term “code” is misleading, for the sake of readability this document will retain the use of general terms like “codebreaker”, “code bureau”, “code expert”, and “army codes”, rather than continually belaboring the distinction between codes and ciphers. As long as the distinction between “code” and “cipher” is clearly understood, this usage should cause no difficulty. By the way, in cryptographic examples, cryptographers like to use the fictional characters “Alice” and “Bob”, with Alice writing encrypted messages and Bob decrypting them. This convention will be followed in this document, along with the unconventional use of “Holmes” as a fictional codebreaker.
This is an example of a cryptogram that was headed Female Ingenuity and used by a newlymarried young lady who was obliged to show her husband all the letters she wrote. The original site for this post, as well as other letters Victorian letters & rituals can be seen at :home.kendra.com/victorianrituals I would argue that such skills are useful in any kind of art, where the most plain things tell only half the story. Hiding messages is also useful to spies.
I cannot be satisfied, my dearest friend;
blest as I am in the matrimonial state,
unless I pour into your friendly bosom,
which has ever been in unison with mine,
the various sensations which swell
with the liveliest emotions of pleasure,
my almost bursting heart. I tell you my dear
husband is the most amiable of men.
I have now been married seven weeks, and
have found the least reason to
repent the day that joined us.
My husband is
in person and manners far from resembling
ugly, cross, old, disagreeable and jealous
monsters, who think by confining to secure a wife;
it is his maxim to treat,
as a bosom friend and confidant, and not
as a plaything or menial slave, the woman
chosen to be his companion. Neither party,
he says should always obey implicitly;
but each yield to the other by turns.
The letter’s message was:
I cannot be satisfied, my dearest friend,
unless I pour into your friendly bosom,
the various sensations which swell
my almost bursting heart. I tell you my dear
I have now been married seven weeks, and
repent the day that joined us.
My husband is
ugly, cross, old, disagreeable and jealous.
It is his maxim to treat
as a plaything or menial slave; the woman
he says, should always obey implicitly.
This piece of writing is loosely based on an experience reading the book shaped rendition of a hypertext poem by mIEKAL aND and Maria Damon called Eros/ion.The hypertext of eros/ion can be found here: http://english.umn.edu/joglars/erosion/
The other night, drunk, the back seat of a speeding car, the outside, the kaleidoscopic hue of drunk at night. I turned to my roommate and good friend,
“When you have a memory of a routine, do you think that it’s one moment that has become a synecdoche of a series of moments, or an amalgamation of an indeterminate number of moments consolidated into one memory?”
Over the past couple of months I have been working on a project transcribing memories from an old and over love affair.I’ve realized in the process that even my most distinct and precise memories are subject to eros/ion, for instance, I remember the bathroom of the apartment where I lost my virginity (or gained my non-virginity as it occurs to me now is a better expression).I have a fresh vision nearly as vivid as reality.I have the undeniably sensual experience of physical presence, as fully as I am on this train, as full as the creak of the train against the steel tracks, the irritating red head on her cell phone, the pod shaped windows, the dull sheen of the train lights on the navy seats.
But I set out to write my memory of the bathroom that now only exists in my memory and I find there has been a curious eros/ion of its features.What color were the tiles?The shower curtain?The walls?What was the shape of the sink?The form of the toilet flusher?My memory has no smell, no taste, no detailed or distinct images.And yet it hits me with the visual and sensual force of the present.It is as though the memory has the power to evoke the feeling of experience, but it has none of its substance.
[…]
Eros/ion shares subject matter with my project that has been on-my-mind of late.The two poets, mIEKAL aND and Maria Damon set about write (transcribe?) memories from respective past lovers.The title of the work, “eros/ion” is multiple, its significations splaying out in directions like a frayed rope.One, it is unavailable whether the erosion refers to the effects of time upon memory, the effects of memory upon experience, or the effects of writing upon memory, experience, time.
Writing itself is an act of memory, but as we write sometimes it enables us to forget: now recorded, stowed away somewhere beyond me.Certainly culture writes collectively in order to be able to forget.Or to enact the two fold practice of remembering in order to forget.And it is likewise through writing that we discover our forgetting.I’m suddenly there again, in the bathroom where I gained the absence of my virginity, so full it’s present, and yet my pen stumbles of the paper, my descriptors lack the specificity of reality.
In any event, it is clear to me that writing changes memory.It rebirths it, distorts it, gives it new presence, and also calls up the unperceived changes that time, the weather, the friction of the wind, has levered against its surface, it’s hard rock landscape.We go back to a land we haven’t visited for many years and we find we have to make a new map.
experience the hypertext eros/ion here: http://english.umn.edu/joglars/erosion/
or order the book here: http://www.lulu.com/content/1569733
read another review of Eros/ion here: http://ntamo.blogspot.com/2007/12/maria-damon-miekal-and-erosion.html,
more books by the authors here: http://xexoxial.org/
posted by Caroline Picard; these instructions were found here, where, I believe, one is capable of purchasing said pencils.
Refilling your
Vintage Mechanical Pencils
Most mechanical pencils made before the late 1960s and some even after that are refilled by feeding lead in from the Point End. Those that feed from the barrel (below the eraser) are a fairly modern invention! Don’t be fooled by leads in the barrel, in older pencils, that was simply a space to store a few extra leads, but that’s it – just storage. As always with vintage writing instruments, exceptions will crop up!
The instruction below are from a Sheaffer package insert, but apply to most older mechanical pencils.
posted by Caroline Picard; written by Jane Austen and posted here, where you can go to read more excerpts.
From DARCY to ELIZABETH
in defense of a Victorian character
“Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes, which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the effort which the formation and the perusal of this letter must occasion should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice.
Two offences of a very different nature, and by no means of equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley from your sister; — and the other, that I had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity, and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham. — Wilfully and wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect its exertion, would be a depravity to which the separation of two young persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could bear no comparison. — But from the severity of that blame which was last night so liberally bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope to be in future secured, when the following account of my actions and their motives has been read. — If, in the explanation of them which is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating feelings which may be offensive to your’s, I can only say that I am sorry. — The necessity must be obeyed — and farther apology would be absurd. — I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with others, that Bingley preferred your eldest sister to any other young woman in the country. — But it was not till the evening of the dance at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious attachment. — I had often seen him in love before. — At that ball, while I had the honour of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by Sir William Lucas’s accidental information, that Bingley’s attentions to your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage. He spoke of it as a certain event, of which the time alone could be undecided. From that moment I observed my friend’s behaviour attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss Bennet was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also watched. — Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced from the evening’s scrutiny, that though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of sentiment. — If you have not been mistaken here, I must have been in an error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter probable. — If it be so, if I have been misled by such error, to inflict pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not scruple to assert that the serenity of your sister’s countenance and air was such as might have given the most acute observer a conviction that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily touched. — That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is certain, — but I will venture to say that my investigations and decisions are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears. — I did not believe her to be indifferent because I wished it; — I believed it on impartial conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. — My objections to the marriage were not merely those which I last night acknowledged to have required the utmost force of passion to put aside in my own case; the want of connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. — But there were other causes of repugnance; — causes which, though still existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had myself endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before me. — These causes must be stated, though briefly. — The situation of your mother’s family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison of that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly, betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father. — Pardon me. — It pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that to have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your eldest sister, than it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both. — I will only say farther that, from what passed that evening, my opinion of all parties was confirmed, and every inducement heightened, which could have led me before to preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy connection. — He left Netherfield for London, on the day following, as you, I am certain, remember, with the design of soon returning. –
The part which I acted is now to be explained. — His sisters’ uneasiness had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence of feeling was soon discovered; and, alike sensible that no time was to be lost in detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on joining him directly in London. — We accordingly went — and there I readily engaged in the office of pointing out to my friend, the certain evils of such a choice. — I described, and enforced them earnestly. — But, however this remonstrance might have staggered or delayed his determination, I do not suppose that it would ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not been seconded by the assurance, which I hesitated not in giving, of your sister’s indifference. He had before believed her to return his affection with sincere, if not with equal, regard. — But Bingley has great natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgment than on his own. — To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself, was no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the work of a moment. — I cannot blame myself for having done thus much. There is but one part of my conduct in the whole affair, on which I do not reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to adopt the measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister’s being in town. I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley, but her brother is even yet ignorant of it. — That they might have met without ill consequence is, perhaps, probable; — but his regard did not appear to me enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger. — Perhaps this concealment, this disguise, was beneath me. — It is done, however, and it was done for the best. — On this subject I have nothing more to say, no other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister’s feelings, it was unknowingly done; and though the motives which governed me may to you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them. –
With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having injured Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his connection with my family. Of what he has particularly accused me, I am ignorant; but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more than one witness of undoubted veracity. Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many years the management of all the Pemberley estates; and whose good conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my father to be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was his god-son, his kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at school, and afterwards at Cambridge; — most important assistance, as his own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have been unable to give him a gentleman’s education. My father was not only fond of this young man’s society, whose manners were always engaging; he had also the highest opinion of him, and hoping the church would be his profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it is many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different manner. The vicious propensities — the want of principle, which he was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself, and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr. Darcy could not have. Here again I shall give you pain — to what degree you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding his real character. It adds even another motive. My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly recommended it to me to promote his advancement in the best manner that his profession might allow, and, if he took orders, desired that a valuable family living might be his as soon as it became vacant. There was also a legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long survive mine, and within half a year from these events Mr. Wickham wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against taking orders, he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment by which he could not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying the law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds would be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished than believed him to be sincere; but, at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to his proposal. I knew that Mr. Wickham ought not to be a clergyman. The business was therefore soon settled. He resigned all claim to assistance in the church, were it possible that he could ever be in a situation to receive it, and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him to invite him to Pemberley, or admit his society in town. In town, I believe, he chiefly lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretence, and being now free from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation. For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in question — of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not have forgotten my revered father’s intentions. You will hardly blame me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, or for resisting every repetition of it. His resentment was in proportion to the distress of his circumstances — and he was doubtless as violent in his abuse of me to others, as in his reproaches to myself. After this period, every appearance of acquaintance was dropt. How he lived I know not. But last summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice. I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself, and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold to any human being. Having said thus much, I feel no doubt of your secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to the guardianship of my mother’s nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself. About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and by her connivance and aid he so far recommended himself to Georgiana, whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of his kindness to her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add that I owed the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the intended elopement; and then Georgiana, unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister’s credit and feelings prevented any public exposure, but I wrote to Mr. Wickham, who left the place immediately, and Mrs. Younge was of course removed from her charge. Mr. Wickham’s chief object was unquestionably my sister’s fortune, which is thirty thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing that the hope of revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge would have been complete indeed.
This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr. Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood, he has imposed on you; but his success is not, perhaps, to be wondered at. Ignorant as you previously were of every thing concerning either, detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in your inclination. You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night. But I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to be revealed. For the truth of every thing here related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who from our near relationship and constant intimacy, and still more as one of the executors of my father’s will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of me should make my assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the morning. I will only add, God bless you.
I used to have a hard time with Austen; I use to feel she was too much the parlor-woman, the author that made the list by virtue of being a woman. Her presence in my scholastic syllabi signified a kind of inverse sexism, to me. What I see now is that I was too young to read her. Even though she was present in my classes at age 16, and again at age 20, I didn’t understand the meaning of subtext. At those ages, I was frustrated by the characters inability to speak their minds. I had no respect for the formal structures and heierarchies of society – structures which I now appreciate, flawed though they may be, because they give strangers a chance to feel more comfortable together. In as much as within a structure, non-familars have a better sense of what to expect and what is expected of them. I guess I would also argue that it doesn’t matter what society you live in, that society has it’s own rules, rituals and expectations, and it is the style of a community, as it navigates those things that gives us a chance to develope friendship, just as it makes it similarly impossible to say the thing one most wants to say.
I appreciate Jane Austen much more now. I think I might even find the foibles amusing rather than frustrating.
Sir William === Lady +----------+----------+
Lucas | Lucas | | |
| | | |
+---------+----------+ Charles Caroline Louisa === Mr.
| | | Bingley Bingley Hurst
Charlotte Maria other boys
Lucas Lucas and girls
Albert Einstein
Old Grove Rd.
Nassau Point
Peconic, Long Island
August 2nd 1939
F.D. Roosevelt
President of the United States
White House
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
Some recent work by E.Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been com-
municated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uran-
ium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the im-
mediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem
to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part
of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring
to your attention the following facts and recommendations:
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable -
through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in
America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction
in a large mass of uranium,by which vast amounts of power and large quant-
ities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears
almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs,
and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely power-
ful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this
type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy
the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However,
such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by
air.
(Albert Einstein)
