Carole Gill Official Author Blog: Horror Author and Artist, William Cook Guest Posts...
Carole Gill Official Author Blog: Horror Author and Artist, William Cook Guest Posts...: I live in Wellington – the small wind-blown capital city of New Zealand. I have been writing weird stories ever since I was a kid. My firs...
Introducing Katie Dirge - Owner/Publisher of 'Black Sunday Zine'
Hi everyone, recently I had the pleasure of meeting and working with the fabulous Katie Dirge. Ms Dirge produces the publication, 'Black Sunday Zine. Katie was kind enough to publish some of my work and in turn I would like to introduce you to her and what she does. She is a very interesting lady with a penchant for the dark macabre and I recommend you check out all the links at the bottom of the page.
Katie Dirge – from ‘The House of Dirge’ website introduction:
“Katie is my real name, Dirge isn’t. My love of the Victorian era and its death customs inspired me to take a name that reflects my love and interest. A dirge is commonly known as a song that is played at a funeral or a mournful poem or other literary work. The latter is the true reflection of both myself and my writing. This is not to say I do not like my birth name, I just like to keep my family life and my work separate.
I began writing at an early age, I begun as a poet and then moved into writing fiction. As the years went on I was published in a national magazine on a regular basis and then I started up my own publication in the form of a zine. Black Sunday Zine gives me the chance to write some interesting pieces and interview artists and writers. In the past it has featured pieces on cemeteries, satanists, hearses, horror films, zombies… the list goes on.
I am heavily tattooed and I only dress in black. I have been called “eccentric” and “different” which I can only take as a compliment. I have a fake stuffed crow called One Eyed Eric, I collect candles, I dry roses, enjoy draping everything in red velvet, I buy weird art, I love drinking copious amounts of tea, I love self-published works, I like taking photographs, I collect notebooks and I love religious imagery.”
“Katie is my real name, Dirge isn’t. My love of the Victorian era and its death customs inspired me to take a name that reflects my love and interest. A dirge is commonly known as a song that is played at a funeral or a mournful poem or other literary work. The latter is the true reflection of both myself and my writing. This is not to say I do not like my birth name, I just like to keep my family life and my work separate.
I began writing at an early age, I begun as a poet and then moved into writing fiction. As the years went on I was published in a national magazine on a regular basis and then I started up my own publication in the form of a zine. Black Sunday Zine gives me the chance to write some interesting pieces and interview artists and writers. In the past it has featured pieces on cemeteries, satanists, hearses, horror films, zombies… the list goes on.
I am heavily tattooed and I only dress in black. I have been called “eccentric” and “different” which I can only take as a compliment. I have a fake stuffed crow called One Eyed Eric, I collect candles, I dry roses, enjoy draping everything in red velvet, I buy weird art, I love drinking copious amounts of tea, I love self-published works, I like taking photographs, I collect notebooks and I love religious imagery.”
Black Sunday Zine is Katie’s baby (slightly macabre baby at that!).
Black Sunday was born out of a lack of dark zines that covered the morbid, the macabre and heavy metal - all in one publication. So I wrote some pieces and then decided to get some really interesting and talented people involved like Loren Rhoads; writer and editor of the magazine Morbid Curiosity, artist Chuck Hodi, writer and artist William Cook and various others. No subject goes untouched. I have featured pieces on graveyards, satanists, zombies, hearses, horror films and lots more. As much as I enjoy writing the content I am always open to suggestions in the form of weird tales (both fiction and non-fiction), macabre features and poetry.
Heavy metal is my kind of music and is pretty much my soundtrack for life so it only felt right to include this. I openly invite unsigned bands to feature and I review new and old CD’s as a way of promotion and hopefully introducing readers to an album they have yet to discover! The House of Dirge is my emporium that quite literally houses Black Sunday Zine and soon there will be other items available that will include dark prints and chapbooks. You can get yourself a copy at http://thehouseofdirge.com and follow the links to the shop and the blog.
Main website for BSZ and Katie Dirge: http://www.thehouseofdirge.com/
Purchase Black Sunday Zine here: http://thehouseofdirge.bigcartel.com/
Personal Blog: http://thehouseofdirge.blogspot.co.nz/
Black Sunday Zine: http://thehouseofdirge.blogspot.co.nz/p/black-sunday-zine.html
Katie’s writing: http://www.scribd.com/doc/79679494/Black-Dominion-Novella-Sample-Chapter
Latest Amazon Review for Blood Related
5.0 out of 5 stars The Family That Slays Together Becomes a Legend, January 25, 2012
This review is from: Blood Related (Kindle Edition)
It started off so simple. Dr. Mary Brunswick was the court appointed psychologist to define the state of mind of one Charlie Cunningham. During the course of her talks with Charlie, she meets his twin, Caleb. Caleb consults her later on and tells her a story she will not forget, a story of violence, murder, abuse, mutilation, insanity, abduction, and conspiracy. A story that covers a family background beginning with Grandfather Samael, father Errol, and his two sons Charlie and Caleb. What begins as a subplot and gains an increasing importance is a family feud between the Cunninghams and the Trumans, a family of cops and those who don't mind flying over the dictates of the law. What becomes more disturbing is this: as you read through the book, who are you rooting for - the long length of crimes commited by those in the death house on Artaud Avenue or the less than legal obsession by Ray Truman who will use any means to wipe out the family and their crimes.The main character is Caleb. He and brother Charlie have been abused by both father Errol and mother Vera. They've been raised in an environment of murder, death, and torture. Throughout the story we identify with Caleb: his actions (mostly despicable), his feelings about his family relations, and a seemingly growing insanity fueled by drugs and alcohol. What remains is a story you can follow with Caleb's entries and excerpts from newspapers and crime books. Blood Related is an awesome and ambitious project in the ways and means of the psychopathic mind. A lot of us are looking for answers as why people kill the others around them and do the inhumane. Blood Related may help you in your quest, though the answers aren't easy ones.
This book is one that should Never be overlooked.
Read more great reviews here and try a free sample.
Meet Cindy Keen Reynders - Writer
Cindy Keen Reynders |
For Cindy KeenReynders, writing has been, and always will be, her one true passion. Growing up, she discovered a love of words and found that she had an aptitude for turning those words into sentences. Cindy’s latest novel to add to her ‘Saucy Lucy’ series, ‘A Killer Slice’, has recently been released on Amazon.
Over the years Cindy has won various writing contests and has also written for and edited numerous newsletters. She has also sold several non-fiction magazine articles to “True West” and “Wild West,” as well as writing two earlier novels in the ‘Saucy Lucy’ series.
Cindy lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming with her husband, Rich, and her little dog, Ewok. Her first two books in the Saucy Lucy series are "The Saucy Lucy Murders," and "Paws-itively Guilty," are available through Amazon. She is looking forward to the release of her next novel, ‘The Seven Year Witch’, to be published early 2012 by Angelic Knight Press.
Cindy’s future goals include being able to travel more as time allows and to write, write, write. She constantly challenges herself to develop more entertaining plots, characters and settings. Nothing pleases her more than to be able to tell a good story. If it touches someone’s heartstrings and makes them laugh or cry, then she knows she’s done her job.
A KILLER SLICE by Cindy Keen Reynders
Lexie Lightfoot’s move home to Moose Creek Junction, Wyoming, with her daughter, Eva, has been both a blessing and a curse. It’s good to be near her family, even though Lucy, her opinionated, churchgoing sister, makes life interesting in a hair-pulling sort of way.
In the recent past, the sisters have called upon their amateur sleuthing abilities to investigate murders in the small community. If matters had been left to Sheriff Otis Parnell, Moose Creek Junction’s incompetent sheriff, who just happens to be Lucy’s husband, the cases would have gone cold.
When it finally seems the snoopy sisters can settle down to a normal routine, some spicy intrigue is tossed their way. During a shower baby shower the sisters are holding for nine-months-pregnant Eva at their small restaurant, the Saucy Lucy CafĆ©, a knock sounds at the front door. The young man waiting on the doorstep claims to be Lucy’s long lost son.
Lucy is mortified, swears he’s mistaken and quickly sends him on his way, but he refuses to leave her alone. When he winds up dead, the local police department considers Lucy a suspect in his murder. The sisters embark on yet another crime-solving adventure to clear her good name.
Lexie Lightfoot’s move home to Moose Creek Junction, Wyoming, with her daughter, Eva, has been both a blessing and a curse. It’s good to be near her family, even though Lucy, her opinionated, churchgoing sister, makes life interesting in a hair-pulling sort of way.
In the recent past, the sisters have called upon their amateur sleuthing abilities to investigate murders in the small community. If matters had been left to Sheriff Otis Parnell, Moose Creek Junction’s incompetent sheriff, who just happens to be Lucy’s husband, the cases would have gone cold.
When it finally seems the snoopy sisters can settle down to a normal routine, some spicy intrigue is tossed their way. During a shower baby shower the sisters are holding for nine-months-pregnant Eva at their small restaurant, the Saucy Lucy CafĆ©, a knock sounds at the front door. The young man waiting on the doorstep claims to be Lucy’s long lost son.
Lucy is mortified, swears he’s mistaken and quickly sends him on his way, but he refuses to leave her alone. When he winds up dead, the local police department considers Lucy a suspect in his murder. The sisters embark on yet another crime-solving adventure to clear her good name.
************************
Order 'A Killer Slice' from Amazon
Make sure to hook up with Cindy here to get all the latest news and info about her next novel, 'The Seven-Year Witch.'
****************
You can also read an interview that Cindy did with yours truly on her blog here.
#Tumblr #Blood #Related by #William #Cook
Macabre Art by William Cook - Serial Killer Fiction - Blood Related by William...
BR Bytes
BR Bytes
This was my original title for 'Blood Related' and my original idea for a cover. |
A Banner if you feel like pimping ;) Please link to http://bloodrelated.wordpress.com |
This was my original cover concept for BR before I handed it over to AKP |
Final cover and title |
Serial Killer Fiction - Blood Related by William Cook
Available now from Amazon:
$3.99 Ebook edition: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Related-ebook/dp/B006QG1WA4/ref=dp_return_1?ie=UTF8&n=133140011&s=digital-text
“Dark and deeply disturbing.”
- Jonathan Nasaw, author of Fear Itself and The Girls He Adored.
“Blood Related is a nasty but nuanced take on the serial killer genre. Cook’s bruising tale of twin psychopaths who are as cold as mortuary slabs is not for the weak-kneed.”
- Laird Barron, author of Occultation and The Imago Sequence.
“A thought-provoking thriller.”
- Guy N Smith, author of Night of The Crabs and Deadbeat.
“Great - Riveting - Amazing - take your pick. I just read William Cook’s Blood Related for the second time. Both readings were followed with one thought, Wow. A horrific crime-filled tale of terror that makes us understand why we lock our doors at night, Blood Related is by far the best read I’ve experienced in years.”
- John Paul Allen, author of Monkey Love and Gifted Trust
“Blood Related is a terrifying psychological thriller. William Cook is an author to watch.”
- Mark Edward Hall, author of The Lost Village and The Holocaust Opera.
“William Cook makes serial killer fiction exciting again! Expert narrative, bursting with flare, originality, and enough passion and brutality that even a real-life serial killer will love this book … and it’s twisted and complex enough to make you question your own sanity after the first intense read.”
- Nicholas Grabowsky, best-selling author of Halloween IV and Everborn.
**********
For over two decades, Detective Ray Truman has been searching for the killer, or killers, who have terrorized Portvale. Headless corpses, their bodies mutilated and posed, have been turning up all over the industrial district near the docks. Young female prostitutes had been the killer’s victims of choice, but now other districts are reporting the gruesome discovery of decapitated bodies. It seems the killer has expanded his territory as more ‘nice girls’ feel the wrath of his terrible rage.
Meet the Cunninghams …
A family bound by evil and the blood they have spilled. The large lodging-house they live in and operate on Artaud Avenue reeks of death, and the sins that remain trapped beneath the floorboards.
Ray Truman’s search for a killer leads him to the Cunningham’s house of horrors. What he finds there will ultimately lead him to regret ever meeting Caleb Cunningham and the deviant family that spawned him. The hunter becomes the hunted, as Truman digs deeper into the abyss that is the horrifying mind of the most dangerous psychopath he has ever met.
Available now from Amazon:
$3.99 Ebook edition: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Related-ebook/dp/B006QG1WA4/ref=dp_return_1?ie=UTF8&n=133140011&s=digital-text
“Dark and deeply disturbing.”
- Jonathan Nasaw, author of Fear Itself and The Girls He Adored.
“Blood Related is a nasty but nuanced take on the serial killer genre. Cook’s bruising tale of twin psychopaths who are as cold as mortuary slabs is not for the weak-kneed.”
- Laird Barron, author of Occultation and The Imago Sequence.
“A thought-provoking thriller.”
- Guy N Smith, author of Night of The Crabs and Deadbeat.
“Great - Riveting - Amazing - take your pick. I just read William Cook’s Blood Related for the second time. Both readings were followed with one thought, Wow. A horrific crime-filled tale of terror that makes us understand why we lock our doors at night, Blood Related is by far the best read I’ve experienced in years.”
- John Paul Allen, author of Monkey Love and Gifted Trust
“Blood Related is a terrifying psychological thriller. William Cook is an author to watch.”
- Mark Edward Hall, author of The Lost Village and The Holocaust Opera.
“William Cook makes serial killer fiction exciting again! Expert narrative, bursting with flare, originality, and enough passion and brutality that even a real-life serial killer will love this book … and it’s twisted and complex enough to make you question your own sanity after the first intense read.”
- Nicholas Grabowsky, best-selling author of Halloween IV and Everborn.
**********
For over two decades, Detective Ray Truman has been searching for the killer, or killers, who have terrorized Portvale. Headless corpses, their bodies mutilated and posed, have been turning up all over the industrial district near the docks. Young female prostitutes had been the killer’s victims of choice, but now other districts are reporting the gruesome discovery of decapitated bodies. It seems the killer has expanded his territory as more ‘nice girls’ feel the wrath of his terrible rage.
Meet the Cunninghams …
A family bound by evil and the blood they have spilled. The large lodging-house they live in and operate on Artaud Avenue reeks of death, and the sins that remain trapped beneath the floorboards.
Ray Truman’s search for a killer leads him to the Cunningham’s house of horrors. What he finds there will ultimately lead him to regret ever meeting Caleb Cunningham and the deviant family that spawned him. The hunter becomes the hunted, as Truman digs deeper into the abyss that is the horrifying mind of the most dangerous psychopath he has ever met.
More info here on the Official 'Blood Related' site: http://bloodrelated.wordpress.com/
Saucy Lucy Wisdom: An Interview with Horror Writer, William Cook
Saucy Lucy Wisdom: An Interview with Horror Writer, William Cook: Today I’m interviewing fellow Angelic Knight Press author William Cook, a very talented writer...
Blood Related by William Cook - available now
Need some holiday horror/thriller reading?
Amazon - Kindle
Smashwords - all e-formats
Don't have a kindle? No problem, download free app for phone, computer, reader etc |
Want more info, background stories, origin tales etc - click above |
Angelic Knight Press: Blood Related
Angelic Knight Press: Blood Related: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Related-ebook/dp/B006QG1WA4/ Look what's up on Kindle! BLOOD RELATED by William Cook! At present, it's in the ...
Modernism, The Waste Land, & Spiritualism
§ I.
In T.S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land (1922), a society decays while humanity turns upon itself in the
name of industry. Even that most rudimentary characteristic of human nature and
existence, sexual love, is reduced to a type of capitalist transaction of ‘automated’ experience. It is a lasting impression of humanity
at its lowest and most fallible point. However, despite Eliot’s reactionary
portrayal of the spiritual and cultural death of western society, The Waste Land is not without hope or
redemption. Indeed, in the knowledge that the text itself will generate wisdom,
through the process of understanding and interpretation, there is a certain
degree of optimism present.
Modernism
(particularly Modernist writing) was essentially a search for absolutes, or
fundamental truths, about human existence and experience. Art (with a capital
‘a’) was the idealized domain for this aggressive hunt; aesthetic autonomy,
however, was far from the romantic notion of beauty as the purest aesthetic.
Modernist idealism centered on language, or on the limits of language, as the
aesthetic principle that governed the range and depth of their ‘meta-fictions’.
It was a theoretical dictum, flavored with euro-centric philosophy and anglo-cultural
morality that attempted to address the fallibility of the modern consciousness,
and ask the age-old philosophical question: ’how do/should we exist?’ This
question was one which Eliot felt the need to pose and respond to in The Waste Land.
Throughout
the poem, an underlying spiritual quest is underway. With allusion to biblical,
mystical, theological references and characters (e.g. St. Augustine,
Ecclesiastes, Buddha, Madame Sosostris etc.), Eliot concludes the poem with an
affirmation of all things unknown, a ‘shantih’. This spiritual motif is the organizing and thematic device by which Eliot structures the disjointed
contexts of western culture. Each sequence displays literary and
classical/mythological allusions that reflect a decaying society whilst
positing a philosophically spiritual affirmation of religious idealism, either
in motif or analogy. The spiritual
themes and recantations subtly and forcibly emphasise the need for
spirituality, in a society ignorant of its lack of faith and the consequential
connection to social ills.
After
Nietzsche’s proclamation in Thus Spake
Zarathustra (1883–1892) that “God is dead”, and his recognition of the over
riding human will and its tendency toward self gratification and sin, Eliot
continued to address the questions raised by the German philosopher in regard
to the state of his adopted nation. The use of biblical concepts and classical
ideas is present in the description Eliot gives of a 'fallen' world where
darkness reigns supreme. Through the clutter and chaos, discord and despair,
light breaks through the haze and ‘fog’ of this Babylonian abyss.
It
is not the ‘western dream’[i] that lights
upon a progressive metropolis, but an eastern sun that illuminates the decline
of western civilization. Through the symbolic parallels and contrasts, a
message is relayed: the west is no longer the pantheon of the civilised modern
world. Now the ancient grace and customs of the east[ii]
are the new provider of light in the heart of darkness. In other words, the
depiction of the negative suggestively emphasizes the positive or the alternative. Eliot’s subtle
proposal in The Waste Land integrates
religious idealism into a society whose access to ‘high’ cultural aestheticism
has previously been discouraged or impractical. If society at large can believe
in the numinous doctrine of religion, then it would follow that their belief
in the divinity of aesthetics as a social cure is not beyond grasp. In this
respect, the ideal behind the art proposes autonomy on a par with divine
doctrine, yet also interdependent on an audience’s faith and understanding of
theological principles and concepts.
§ II.
Modernist texts like Eliot’s were part of a
development of an aesthetic sensibility, that was not merely an expression of
the interior psychological world, but an experience in itself that forced the
reader to decipher their own individual existence as much as that of the text.
This reliance upon the reader to navigate their way through the dense forest of
metaphor and allusion makes interpretation difficult in relation to the
reader’s own knowledge and experience. The author is needed to provide a
critical compass to guide through the intellectual organization of the text
that would otherwise remain inert to the average reader. Hence, the courteous
notes Eliot put together in consideration for an audience that may not ‘be in
the know’, after writing The Waste Land. This in itself is a
significant aspect of Modernist literature; effectively it generates the
necessity for coherence and education through its use of complex symbolism,
literary tradition, myth, and philosophy. When one attempts to interpret the
Modernist text, one also attempts to decipher the major (and minor) texts of
western philosophy, science, literature, and religion.
The
Waste Land is constructed with literary remnants and images of a fragmented
western civilization that values materialism above wisdom. Apparently unrelated
references and contexts evoke a pervading sense of confusion and disharmony, in
a cultural, social, and spiritual sense. Despite the negative impressions, all
perspectives seem to end with a different proposition, or connection, to larger
fundamental issues of human existence and meaning. These remnants are the
literary ramparts of Eliot’s craft; used categorically and historically, they
form a profound literary image (or montage of images) of post-war Europe and
London in particular. A dense allegorical landscape that is as much a
reflection of society (literary and social) as it is of Modernist literature, The Waste Land is the epitome of the
Modernist tendency in poetry of the Twentieth Century.
Moreover
it is a poem consisting of differing viewpoints (from different sources) that
ultimately and resolutely provides an overall perspective of a culture
(western) without absolute ideals. It is a satirical depiction of a modern
world that is supposedly advanced with all its industrial, technological,
scientific, and accumulated resources of knowledge. It is a world without
coherence and solidarity, despite this great historical capital, that The Waste Land addresses, with its
intellectual organization of sensibility and society. Paradoxically, the poem’s complex web of intellectual and
literary meaning imposes its boundaries on any attempts at interpretation. For
Eliot it is his coup de grace, his poetical entrance into the elevated world of
‘fine art’ as defined by the institution of the literary canon. However, there
is a sense of affinity with those outside the institution within the poem. A seemingly
moral empathy with the people who populate his landscape of cultural woe and
fragmentation.
It
is the ‘machine’ of capitalist industrialization, which Eliot undermines in the
poem. This is perceived as the enemy of ‘high’ art; with its subtly coercive
social structures and powers of mobilization, its ability to envelop whole
nations, to process its individuals into social robots, to transform the living
into the dead. Above all, The Waste Land attacks
modernity’s capacity to ‘dumb down’ its masses, in order to increase economic
productivity at the expense of literacy, education, and its culture’s producers
that are the writers, poets, and artists. It is a poem that requires (demands!)
intelligence, literacy, wit, and above all a certain amount of courage, not
just in the reading but ultimately in the writing of it. Like Joyce’s Ulysses, it is a work that is designed
to achieve an absolute resolution of literary, aesthetic, and social malaise,
that was so much a part of the early Twentieth Century period.
As
is the case with most (if not all) Modernist literature, there is a heavy
investigation and saturation of selected significant events of the past. It is
this quality of Eliot’s poem that connects the reader to all humanity;
especially the modern being, to a historical tradition and the “dialect of the
[mythic] tribe”. The final stanza of the poem is the best example of this. The
solipsistic figure of the Fisher King; the ‘every-man’, the poet, stranded in The Waste Land is revealed “upon the
shore, / Fishing, with the arid plain behind” (WL, V, 423-424). In this, the poem’s finale, all the motifs,
allusions, and language converge in a chaotic textual reconnaissance, not
dissimilar to a battle zone:
London
Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon--
O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Acquitaine a la tour abolie
These
fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why
then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta.
Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih
shantih shantih
(WL,
VI, 426-433)
The use
of “shantih” is interesting, not only, because it is the final line to the
poem, but because of its characteristic conformity to the Modernist principle
of discontinuity and metaphoric allusion. It has a phonetic resonance that
itself imparts meaning. It could be the tolling of a bell; the shuffle of the
crowd flowing over London Bridge, the ticking of a clock, the ebb and flow of
the tide. Alternatively, it could represent “a savage beating a drum in a
jungle”,[iii]
the sound of the origins of poetry.
As
the sound creates multiple impressions, the literal meaning conveys a complex
construction of theological and literary metaphor. Within its Hindu context,
‘shantih’ is a mantra, an affirmative ending to the Upanishads which tell of
the personal self or “atman”, originally part of the Godhead. This individual
self is seen as separated from God by imperfect knowledge and experience, the
redemption being, that “the obligation of each individual is to realize this
original oneness by means of extensive and complex spiritual, moral and
physical disciplines”.[iv] In this
respect, the usage and meaning fits nicely into the general theme, of western
spiritual decay, as a counter point and as a redemptive allegory.
In
keeping with the classic response to Modernist literature, further analysis
also places significance on the symbolism of the line; the three lines resound
with exegetic meaning. In light of the questions of western spirituality, one
could read the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost (or Mary) into the three
Shantihs. There is a sense of overlapping, of one religion taking prominence
over another, of a shifting set of values that are fundamentally the same yet
experienced in completely different ways due to cultural values.
Tradition,
in The Waste Land, is never an
obvious foundation for western culture, although it is implied. Tradition
presents itself in the form of an assortment of allusions (and illusions) that
does not unify itself in any one perspective, as the ambiguous culmination of
the poem demonstrates. Consequently, set against this fragmented tradition, the
individual proves unstable. Tiresias fails to unify the poem’s disparate voices
in a conventional allegorical way; instead, his sexual division creates a tone
of ambiguity between the languages and characters of the poem. Each character
in The Waste Land, is individualized
to the extent that the only common trait to be found amongst them, is either
their respective genders, their madness or despair, or else the characteristic
and monotonous lack of volition which they possess:
Under
the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A
crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I
had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs,
short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And
each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
(WL, I, 61-65)
Thus, with
individuality becoming socially detrimental and cultural foundations awry, the
hope of unifying social values or of an autonomous moral ideal seems doomed.
Eliot’s explanatory note on the character of Tiresias gives the reader an
apparent, yet unsatisfactory and somewhat misleading, insight into the
technique used in employing such devices in the poem:
Tiresias,
although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character’, is yet the most
important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller
of currants melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly
distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and
the two sexes meet in Tiresias.
What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem.
(Note to line 218)
Indeed,
what Tiresias perceives, is the substance of the poem, in that his character
occupies the majority of the middle section of the poem (hence his centrality).
Eliot’s notes prove somewhat ambiguous in relation to the text itself. Whilst
they do provide a certain amount of elucidation regarding literary references
and modes the notes seem deliberately innocuous. They are almost salutatory in
their superficiality, in relation to the metaphoric density of the poem as a
whole. This set of token guidelines traces the history of the English literary
tradition, albeit at the expense of philosophical or theological explanation. Consequently,
this has the effect of encouraging a wider interpretation that in turn
questions the possibility of connecting aesthetic appreciation with moral
expression.
There
are no conclusions however, no affirmation of an ideal world or society. Insinuation
and suggestion are the only indicators of any logical answers to the illogical
problems besetting The Waste Land. In
this sense, Eliot has achieved an absolute of sorts in an artifact that is so
metaphorical, that its politics defy definition. All that remains is the text;
the aesthetic temporal object, that is as much from its own time as it is from
all. Like most other Modernist texts, the ideological goal has been achieved;
the work has stood the test of time, to affect discussion and debate about fundamental
cultural and anthropological issues up to the present day.
§ III.
Poetry
should not interpret experience for the reader, it should provide the objective
means by which the reader themselves discover meaning. Ezra Pound in How To Read argued that rationality of
speech, in science and in art, did not come from logic, but from the
combination or juxtaposition of objective images. This was the main Imagist
tenet that Eliot himself endorsed in his essay on Hamlet. It was he who
introduced it as a significant critical term for use in discussions of art and
literature; he called it the ‘objective correlative’:
The
only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective
correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events
which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the
external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the
emotion is immediately evoked.[v]
The
artisan was not so, unless they could relay the complexities of the human mind
through their art. Image must represent intellect and emotion in such a way, as
to invoke the same response from the audience, without the guidance of the
artist’s persona or the dysfunction of the art. Therefore, poetry should not
concern itself with conventional representation and technique like iambic,
regular rhythms. This was the main aspect of tradition the Modernist’s wished
to revolutionize. Formal restrictions and convention was avoided and modern
poetry freed itself from the past, through the employment of the avant-garde
influenced vers libre (or ‘free verse’) as their characteristic literary mode.
The Waste Land
is perhaps the most poignant and effective example of the Modernist use and
style of free verse in poetry; switching styles, languages, form, narration.
The poem epitomizes the liberating use of all
words, language, and styles within a modern world where ‘anything goes’. Whilst
Modernist verse addresses the world with language and images appropriate to the
modern experience, it also feels free to use any thing from all literature to
do so. If poetry was to communicate intellectually and popularly to a modern
metropolitan audience as well as to
the intelligentsia, then its ingredients would have to reflect the present
culture as much as any other reference to the past. Eliot’s The Waste Land established a transformed
tradition of modern poetry that influenced writers across the globe, especially
American poets like Hart Crane, and William Carlos Williams. Eliot’s poem is
the main literary doctrine of the modern western consciousness of the early
twentieth century.
It
is a reflection of a time when language, culture, and society was in a state of
flux; the sense of disharmony and instability conveyed, gives a historically
accurate picture of a society between wars and between poles of modernity.
Cultural definition and identity occurs when the present redeems a reconcilable
past. This awareness, of the importance of the past to the continuation of a
progressive present, is deep-set within Modernism’s fundamental idealism.
Modernism’s involvement with the urban environment reflects a realization that
society and its demands determine ‘culture’. The opposite view for critics like
Andreas Huyssen, is that Modernism:
constituted
itself through a conscious strategy of exclusion, an anxiety of contamination
by its other: an increasingly consuming and engulfing mass culture. Both the
strengths and weaknesses of Modernism derive from that fact.[vi]
Modernist
texts like The Waste Land attempt to
integrate, whilst remaining true to intellectual and aesthetic principles, an industrialized capitalist market place without becoming part of the ‘other’
institution of industrialization. Modernist text resists the commonality of
mass-produced commodity, by excluding the market from its message. It is the
main reason for the tendency in Modernist art to propagate styles that defy
mass-appeal, despite their characteristic dealings with fundamental issues of
human existence. The language is simply too intellectual, literate, and
metaphoric for the average consumer with no prior literary education. It is a
significant and characteristic aspect of Modernist poetry, fiction, and art.
Consequently,
despite its sophistication and humanitarian idealism, the Modernist style
divided the institution of art from the public consciousness. It effectively
(whether intentional or not, is a matter for another essay) elevated art up and
away from the public’s grasp. This had the effect of incurring the wrath of the
avant-garde who basically held the same principles, yet were slightly more
politically correct and vocal in their anthropological concerns, about the
place of art in society. Therefore, the avant-gardes protected themselves from
claims of ‘elitism’ by critics and the public, that otherwise affixed and generalized the project of Modernist art.
After
everything said, Eliot shall always have the last word on his poetry and on the
style that others referred to as
Modernism. Unlike the effect of Modernism and The Waste Land and its imposition of deep analysis and indefinable
conclusions, Eliot achieves a retrospective summation of the characteristics of
modern poetry and what good poetry should achieve, in rather simple and
rarefied terms:
Poetry
is of course not to be defined by its uses. If it commemorates a public
occasion, or celebrates a festival, or decorates a religious rite, or amuses a
crowd, so much the better. It may effect revolutions in sensibility such as are
periodically needed; may help to break up the conventional modes of perception
and valuation which are perpetually forming, and make people see the world
afresh, or some new part of it. It may make us from time to time a little more
aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being,
to which we
rarely
penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves, and an
evasion of the visible and sensible world.[vii]
In this,
one of his final lectures (‘The Modern Mind’), Eliot concludes with the essence
of his, and ‘Modernism’s’, ideology; that there is a need for cultural and
individual experience that transcends the ‘unreal’ to achieve a ‘real’
redemption of culture and the self. It is as much redemption of learning and
literature as it is of spirituality that The
Waste Land proposes. Culture appears to need a kind of religious haut monde
in order to create art that is divine in nature, yet the religious ideal is
seen as a redemptive feature applicable also to the degraded society. It is as
if before worshiping art, there needs to be a re-installation of fundamental
principles of faith, in order to see the divine in the aesthetic. The Modernist
style encourages conclusions such as this. As can be seen, it is not
necessarily a negative response to the intellectual idealism of writers like
T.S. Eliot, whose quest for absolutes dictates a characteristically deep
analysis of the ideas and concerns expressed within the text.
http://www.sinisterfonts.com/ |
NOTES/BIBLIOGRAPHY
[i] Which
is more of an American Modernist ideal than English, as seen in the works of
writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald Scott, and Hart Crane.
[ii] A
very ‘orientalised’ notion that Edward Said investigates in Orientalism (New York: Random House,
1978), which is also apparent in the ideologies of the Modernist avant-garde
movement, especially the ‘Primitivists’.
[iii] The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, T.S. Eliot (London: Faber &
Faber Ltd, 1964), p. 155.
[iv] See The
Wordsworth Dictionary of Classical & Literary Allusion, ed., by A.H.
Lass, D. Kiremidjian, & R.M. Goldstein (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions
Ltd., 1987), p. 228.
[v]
Selected Essays, by T.S. Eliot
(London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1972), p.145.
[vi] From After the
Great Divide, by Andreas Huyssen, in ‘Introduction’ (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1984), p. vii.
[vii]The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, T.S. Eliot (London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 1964),
p. 155.
Meet Suzanne Robb -
Suzanne Robb |
Suzanne Robb
is the author of Z-Boat, a zombie novel of a different kind published by
Twisted Library Press. The zombies are smart, strong, and come from the least
likely source.
She is
currently working on several projects, including a non-fiction collection for
Hidden Thoughts Press on Anxiety Disorders, and an apocalyptic fiction
collection for Wicked East Press.
Suzanne
also has over fifty short stories in current and upcoming anthologies with
publishers such as Coscom Entertainment, Post Mortem Press, Library of the
Living Dead, Wicked East Press, Norgus Press, Collaboration of the Dead, Living
Dead Press, Open Casket Press, Hidden Thoughts Press, Pill Hill Press, May
December Publications, Rhymfire - Ebooks, Static Movement, Cruentis Libri, and
Panic Press.
I first met Suzanne by way of her interesting blog, Ramblings of an Anxiety Ridden Mind. Be sure to stop by and check it out, there's always something going on there.
I have just bought Suzanne's great new novel, Z-Boat and I highly recommend that you do also. You can buy it here on Amazon as a paperback or for kindle/e-book. Well worth the small cost for a quality read over the holidays (or anytime - but you may want to read it during the daylight hours!!!).
Here's a bit more information about this great book:
Z-BOAT by Suzanne Robb
The Earth has been pillaged and polluted; the sun has not broken through the
smog for over a decade. The oceans and rivers have all turned toxic. Man’s last hope for survival is to search the ocean depths for alternative
fuel, food, and clean water sources. If they fail, mankind will die.
The Betty Loo, a search and rescue submarine, captained by Iain Kingston, is
hired at for a price no one could refuse. The crew must deal with distrust,
sabotage, and spies willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want.
What they find on board The Widowmaker the submarine they have been dispatched
to help will test each person’s will to survive and force enemies to work
together. If they don’t they will all die, and what rises to the surface will bring hell
to Earth
The very cool Z-Boat cover:
By David Naughton-Shires. http://www.theimagedesigns.com/index.html |
Suzanne can be found on Facebook, Goodreads and, of course, be sure to check out her Amazon author's page to see all the very cool anthologies and work she has contributed thus far.
Here are some links to interviews Suzanne has given. As you will see she has many favorable reviews and has established herself as 'one to watch.' Keep up the good work Suzanne, I want to read as much of your work as I can, as I suggest you good readers should do also.
Interviews:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
So you wanna be an indie horror writing superstar?
This article outlines the pros and cons of being an indie horror author on Amazon.com. Hey, fellow writers! If you’ve got a penchant for wri...