Question

 

Should Expat @ Large change his name to Exile @ Home?

Which would you prefer?

E@L

or 

E@H

More Michael Moorcock Than You Can Swing a Runeblade At...

How many of these (scroll down, but later) magical masterpieces of Swords and of Sorcery have you read? 

E@L has x-ed (and reddened) those he has ploughed through (27 is it?), and y-ed (and purpled) those he owns but hasn’t got around to yet, not in this realm anyway. You’ll notice that he has mainly done the pre-1980 novels and stories as he eventually turned away from such childish fun and adventure, thanks to pressing concerns, and became a boring old man at the age of 23. Maybe he overdid the fantasy schtick at the time… Maybe the guilty indulgences stole his S&S soul?

Anyway, E@L temporarily embedded his blade into Moorcock back in 1977/78 at the urging of a fellow unworldly student radiographer (who went on study for a real job as a dentist while E@L hung around on the cusp of unemployment and failure). 

They are so easy to read, these slim volumes, and so much fun, at least once you get a delightedly morbid taste for soul-stealing swords and demon infested nether-realms and lots of gruesome and bloody deaths, and those dead who don’t stay dead, but aren’t zombies either, thankfully, as that would be, like, hey, a cliché. 

E@L means, hey, if you're 20 years old, working full-time, studying on the evenings, are newly married and with a young baby to focus on, why wouldn’t you retreat into a fantasy world at every opportunity?

You weren’t free to go surfing on a whim anymore, at the drop of an on-shore wind and the rise of a solid swell…

~~~~~~

[Many years later]

So bring on the black mists and the intrigue of the gods and elementals! And get out your guitar and play some Hawkwind songs (if you know any; E@L doesn’t!).

Let’s scour the realm of second-hand bookstores and of charity store like the Salvos or Vinnies, submit ourselves to the fates of heretical churches and their sly fêtes. 

Let’s overflow E@L’s already well fucking overflowing bookshelves with the adolescent fantasy dreamworld of Michael Moorcock!  

More Moorcock! More Moorcock!

If you’re wondering WTF; E@L is listening to the audiobooks of the Elric saga on his morning walks, and loving them, hence this post. 

~~~~~~

E@L considers his poor — perennially on the knife-edge of failing -- performance in his initial career (radiographer, as mentioned) due to being distracted by these stories of eternal champions like Erokosë, Jerry Cornelius, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum, and, of course, the pale, thin-blooded, reluctant, emperor, Elric of Melniboné (not MEL-kneebone but Mel-NIB-onay) with Stormbringer, his runesword, the stealer of souls! 

It was not just the family stuff.

E@L means, hey, like, awesome, right?

~~~~~~~

E@L attributes his poor performance at high school to his being distracted by those surfing whims when it blew off-shore and tide was right and swells were a solid 4-6ft  (or lower)…

~~~~~~~

E@L attributes his poor performance  at surfing (he was OK, but not a star) to his mother being reluctant/unable to buy more and better surfboards for him. And for him being shit-scared of big waves. He could only afford a decent board when he left school and got a job, but see above re-marriage and progeny and work and study, and guess how well that worked out for him.

Not that he is bitter, twisted, and has his hand on the rune-encrusted obsidian pommel of his otherwordly blade…

No, his hand is on a double G&T.

~~~~~~~

- [ ] The Elric of Melniboné series (1961–2022), including:
                  - [ ] The Dreaming City (1961)
                  - [x] The Stealer of Souls (1963)
                  - [x] Stormbringer (1965, revised 1977)
                  - [x] Elric of Melniboné (1972)
                  - [x] Elric: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976)
                  - [x] The Weird of the White Wolf (1977)
                  - [ ] The Vanishing Tower (1977)
                  - [ ] Elric at the End of Time (1981)
                  - [y] The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)
                  - [y] The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
                  - [y] The Citadel of Forgotten Myths (2022)
- [ ] The Dorian Hawkmoon series (1967–1975), including:
                  - [x] The Jewel in the Skull (1967)
                  - [x] The Mad God's Amulet (1968)
                  - [x] The Sword of the Dawn (1968)
                  - [x] The Runestaff (1969)
                  - [x] Count Brass (1973)
                  - [x] The Champion of Garathorm (1973)
                  - [x] The Quest for Tanelorn (1975)
- [ ] The Erekosë series (1970–1987), including:
                  - [x] The Eternal Champion (1970)
                  - [x] Phoenix in Obsidian, aka The Silver Warriors (1970)
                  - [ ] The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell (with Howard Chaykin) (1979) (graphic novel)
                  - [ ] The Dragon in the Sword (1987)
- [ ] The Corum series (1971–1974), including:
                  - [x] The Knight of the Swords (1971)
                  - [x] The Queen of the Swords (1971)
                  - [x] The King of the Swords (1971)
                  - [x] The Bull and the Spear (1973)
                  - [x] The Oak and the Ram (1973)
                  - [x] The Sword and the Stallion (1974)
- [x] Behold the Man (1969)
- [x] Breakfast in the Ruins (1972)
- [ ] The Time Dweller (1969)
- [ ] Sailing to Utopia, comprising:
                  - [ ] Flux (1962)
                  - [ ] The Ice Schooner (1966)
                  - [ ] The Black Corridor (1969)
                  - [ ] The Distant Suns (1975)
- [ ] The Wrecks of Time, aka The Rituals of Infinity (1967)
- [ ] The Sundered Worlds, aka The Blood Red Game (1965)
- [ ] The Fireclown, aka The Winds of Limbo (1965)
- [ ] The Twilight Man, aka The Shores of Death (1966)
- [ ] Kane of Old Mars (1998 compilation volume originally published as three books in 1965, 346pp)
- [ ] The Lost Canal (novelette) (2013)
- [ ] The Chinese Agent (1970)
- [ ] The Russian Intelligence (1980)
- [ ] Michael Moorcock's Multiverse (1999) (graphic novel)
- [ ] The Metatemporal Detective (2007) (collection)
- [ ] A Nomad of the Time Streams:
                  - [ ] The Warlord of the Air (1971)
                  - [ ] The Land Leviathan (1974)
                  - [ ] The Steel Tsar (1981)
- [ ] The Dancers at the End of Time sequence (1972–76):
                  - [y] An Alien Heat (1972)
                  - [y] The Hollow Lands (1974)
                  - [ ] The End of All Songs (1976)
- [ ] Legends from the End of Time (1976)
- [ ] The Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming, aka A Messiah at the End of Time (1977)
- [ ] Gloriana (1978)
- [ ] My Experiences in the Third World War (1980)
- [ ] The Opium General and Other Stories (1984)
- [y] Mother London (1988)
- [ ] Casablanca (1989) – short stories
- [y] King of the City (2000)
- [ ] London Bone (2001) – short stories
- [ ] Kaboul (first published in French) (2018
- [ ] The Jerry Cornelius quartet of novels and shorter fiction:
                  - [x] The Final Programme (1969)
                  - [x] A Cure for Cancer (1971)
                  - [x] The English Assassin (1972)
                  - [x] The Condition of Muzak (1977)
                  - [ ] The Cornelius Quartet (1977 compilation volume, 974pp)
                  - [ ] The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century (1976)
                  - [ ] The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius (1976)
                  - [ ] The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, aka Gold Diggers of 1977 (1980)
                  - [ ] The Entropy Tango (1981)
                  - [ ] The Alchemist's Question (1984)
                  - [ ] A Cornelius Calendar (1993 compilation volume, 554pp)
                  - [ ] The New Nature of the Catastrophe (1993 anthology collecting Jerry Cornelius stories by Moorcock and others, edited by Moorcock and Langdon Jones, 448pp)
                  - [ ] Firing the Cathedral (novella) (2002)
                  - [ ] Phase 1:A Jerry Cornelius Story (novella) (2008)
                  - [ ] Modem Times 2.0 (novella) (2011)
                  - [ ] Pegging the President (novella) (2018)
                  - [ ] The Fracking Factory (novella) (2018)
                  - [ ] The Wokingham Agreement (novelette) (2022)
- [ ] The von Bek sequence:
                  - [ ] The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)
                  - [ ] The Brothel in Rosenstrasse (1982)
                  - [ ] The City in the Autumn Stars (1986)
- [ ] The Pyat Quartet:
                  - [ ] Byzantium Endures (1981)
                  - [ ] The Laughter of Carthage (1984)
                  - [ ] Jerusalem Commands (1992)
                  - [ ] The Vengeance of Rome (2006)
- [ ] The Second Ether sequence:
                  - [ ] Blood: A Southern Fantasy (1994)
                  - [ ] Fabulous Harbours (1995)
                  - [ ] The War Amongst The Angels (1996)
- [ ] The Elric/Oona Von Bek sequence:
                  - [ ] The Dreamthief's Daughter (2001)
                  - [ ] The Skrayling Tree (2003)
                  - [ ] The White Wolf's Son (2005)
- [ ] Doctor Who:
                  - [ ] The Coming of the Terraphiles (2010)
- [ ] The Sanctuary of the White Friars
                  - [ ] The Whispering Swarm (2015)
                  - [ ] The Woods of Arcady (2023)
                  - [ ] The Wounds of Albion (TBC)

~~~~~~~

Phew! Busy guy that Michael Moorcock!

~~~~~~~

Sigh.

E@L considers his poor history with girlfriends (only JUST plural) and wife (singular) to being obsessed with surfing. And himself. And being obsessed by obscure (to many) books, and to only ever learning four songs on his guitar and playing them on heavy repeat for 50 years yet never remembering the chord changes correctly.

And just being a selfish, ignorant dickhead in relationships, with zip EQ (see previous paragraph for pathetic excuses), and so here he is at 67, still alive despite the best effort of the invidious fates, the anger of the chaotic gods and spirits on this realm and others, only by having used the Mechanical Magic of Modern Medicine to confound his destiny and his malicious DNA, sitting alone on his balcony with a double G&T and an iPad, a thorax marred with multiple scars, a gurgling colostomy bag, and a list of the millions of books he hasn’t read, not to mention the one he hasn’t written. 

Pleasant enough, right?

~~~~~~~

But, oh, this post has gone off the rails suddenly, hasn't it? 

But like, hey! What more could one expect from that plate of cheese and crackers, that (second) double G&T, and

E@L

There You Are... Not.

The received wisdom of travel is "wherever you go, there you are.” 

The consciousness in a calcium box that you might think(ha!) of as YOU never goes anywhere, not by itself. 

The sensations that stimulate it are sort of... arbitrary, dependant on the geolocation of the flesh and bones that support and protect it, that then send electrical impulses to a bunch of cells that create your awareness of externality, when it exists... (The exquisite details of the physical location, the emotions felt in dreams for example, or in hallucinations, don't exist.)

Your senses might be stimulated by views of the 365 chimneys of Chateau Chenonceau, or by the turrets of Neuschwanstein half enveloped in mist as a chilling snow embraces you in the clouds, by the tickle of hungry tropical fish swarming around your feet in the warm waters of Koh Phi Phi, or by the familiar aromas initially and then a burning on the lips and tongue as the plethora of capsaicin rich chilis in your spicy som tam flood in and overload your trigeminal nerve to deliver a Doc Martin kick to the inside of your occiput. 

If you believe in physical reality that is. You know the theory of duality, right? Mind/body. Well, let's assume you are not a brain on a box somewhere, and that the world and all its stimuli are predominantly real when you are awake. Places and things surround you.

But are they real? Of course they fucking are. (Or are you only dreaming you are awake, or is this a Man With Two Brains scenario? No! Snap back to reality!)

Your body, the physical YOU and its consciousness, the mental YOU, board a cruise ship, an aeroplane, a train: the coordinates on Google Maps move with both.

Your character, your habits and traits, the moral beliefs that both torment and bring bliss, your education, your memories, they move with you as well. There they are. There you are. YOU. Wherever YOU are, you are the same person in a different location; feeling awe, hunger, satiety, gastronomic discomfort, warmth or cold, moisture, cold, physical pain, maybe, but still come the same patterns of thought, mental and physical reactions, as your body moves here and there. YOU are. You. The YOU you think you know, that your friends and family would recognise in an instant. 

All true.

~~~~~~

Until… 

You turn from from Soi 4 into Nana Plaza, from Soi 23 or Asoke into Soi Cowboy, through the plush purple curtains on Lockard Rd, or out of the lift straight into the 6th floor bar in Roppongi or Shinjuku…  

And YOU are gone. Woosh!

And probably it's a night on the rickety tiles with a YOU that is completely different, and enjoying it immensely with a YOU who once was

E@L 

~~~~~~
(Just realised that this is very Clarice Lispector)

No! Yes! No! D’oh!

D’oh indeed. 

E@L’s  first work trip was proposed for Monday to Friday next week. The Victorian rep who would be supporting the Sydney apps lady is going to be at a conference in New Zillint. 

The work is in Bairnsdale, a 5hr drive away, across Victoria, and a decent hotel needs to be booked. Dr’s had OKed E@L’s travelling that far, so all good. However, until today he had not had confirmation of the demo going ahead… aaaaannnddd… so he presumed it was cancelled or something, so didn’t need to do anything. 

On Tuesday this week a letter came from the hospital Outpatients Dept with an appointment scheduled for next Wednesday, when, hmm, he MIGHT be in Bairnsdale! This would be the last Dr’s appointment to follow up on his recent surgery so he really wanted to get it out of the way and move on with life, the universe, everything [the novel?]. 

And on top of that, the district nurse had made his final  appointment with her/them for Thursday! 

Um… he again wonders if this trip is going ahead or not? He would might need to change all these appointments and it’s getting close to too late…

It’s Friday now, mid-afternoon. E@L is relaxed [a pint of lager and a burger, $20 special at Carwyn cellars, who could say No?] and reading a book… [Aqua Vita by Clarice Lispector — he’s not sure what is going on, indeed not sure IF anything is going on. She’s writes at a point where the Samuel Beckett of the trilogy and Fernando Pessoa cross paths.]  

A phone call: “Are you still OK for next week? Sorry for the last minute call. I’m still heading to NZ, so we will need you. I’ll confirm with the Big Boss!” 

“Yep, excellent!”  [Some good money coming with his exorbitant rates!]

E@L logs on to Booking-dot-com, tells them Bairnsdale and the dates, and selects some reasonably comfortable mid-range accommodation in this medium sized country town, but waits to press BOOK just in case.

5 mins later an email and Team mtg appointment from the Big Boss: “Demo is Tuesday to Friday next week. Please let’s have a meeting to discuss the demo on Monday.”

Oh shit, the appointments!!

It’s currently Friday afternoon still, but it’s 5 minutes before, if he remembers aright, the Outpatient clinic closes… E@L calls just in time and asks to change the appointment. There is nothing free until the end of the month. OK, whenever is possible, thanks. 

E@L hangs up. 

E@L’s finger is back to being poised over BOOK for his hotel… aaaaaaaanndd…

E@L’s phone rings: “Hi, mate [not Big Boss obviously], have you booked anything yet, because the demo has been pushed back! Don’t have a date yet…”

E@L sighs. He pulls his finger from his iPad…

It’s now 2 mins after OP has closed….

But E@L calls anyway, thinking for sure it’s too late — Friday, after 4, when he used to work there, phone? Fuggedabartit! — and for 7mins the phone keeps a ringing (not on hold, no robot messages so there is hope eternally and internally springing). Then a welcoming voice answers, springing (Hope fulfilled!) from a live human’s voice-box, yay! Outpatients is not closed after all! and Yes, she is able to change his appointment back to next week as previous.

E@L sighs.    

What a run around! 

Then a penny drops… If the demo is postponed, that means the local guy whom E@L would have been covering for is back in town and will be available after all.

E@L will not be required. 

No big money after all. 

Another sigh from

E@L

Speech, Free or Not? Subscribe to Find Out

[I drafted this ages ago, in May, but forgot to post. It’s looks Sam Harris is becoming my NYT as a source for blog post topics!]

Sam Harris, famous as being one the Four Horsemen of Atheistolypse, is sort of almost detested by the right, because he is not right wing, and because he rails against evil fuckwits like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, even Trump himself*, and, more recently, he is viewed suspiciously by the left (maybe as he has criticised the NYT and even the New Yorker), at least in America. 

At the risk of being cancelled myself, I admit I do subscribe (in order to get the full episodes) and listen to the occasional podcast from Making Sense. In my opinion he usually does exactly that, as he is prepared to listen to intelligent people with whom he might possibly disagree without losing his temper and at least he claims to be prepared to change his mind. Unlike Joe Rogan, he does not suffer fools gladly, and his guests are more than just other podcasters and influencers.

His current interview with Greg Lukianoff,  author of “The Cancel[l]ing Of The American Mind” (please buy), Substack writer, no subscription fees required (no-one blogs anymore: not true, he writes for the FIRE blog - see link below) is fascinating, as it covers most aspects and opinions about free speech; historically with the social medium of the time, the printing press under the Tudors, and also McCarthyism; mainly about free speech as a modern concept in general; what’s happening on university campuses now, and, duh, cancel culture, etc etc; predominantly the American experience, but also comparing the laws, and the variability in interpretation between countries  in Europe.

Usually I end totally confused about where my opinion should lie after listening to Making Sense, as everyone on his podcasts sounds so reasonable and rational, as does Mr Lukianoff. 

Not that I think I disagree with Lukianoff’s definition of Free Speech, which is basically that all opinions have the right to be heard, in order to make it possible to rationally discredit bad shit or support the good stuff with “the truth”. Inciting illegal actions, or even voicing opinions that trigger illegal actions (I think I got that right), should however be restricted. In other words controversial topics should be allowed to be heard otherwise these opinions will go underground and social media will amplify and intensify them. Not that doesn’t happen anyway, as influencers attack on the ideal of truth and trust in authorities/experts.

Here's a hypothetical they come up with. What if Alex Jones, while still saying the Sandyhook tragedy was a lie, DID NOT give out the details - addresses and names, which he did -  of the families of some of the victims, would he still be liable for prosecution?  

Ferkucked if I know! I would very much hope so though! He certainly should have been kicked of Twitter or Youtube or whatever, from his very first post on the topic.

~~~~~~~~

But I also remain concerned about Australia, which Wants to Dictate What The World Can Read online, and where Lachlan Murdoch** can sue a small Aussie independent online newspaper for offering an opinion in Lachie’s responsibility in the Dominion voter fraud case in the US.  He lost, and had to pay legal costs - do I get my contribution refunded? Libel has to cause “substantial harm” in Australia, so I doubt anything much less $785million would trouble NewsCorp.au. (I drafted this a while ago: Crickey settled.)

And as I’ve mentioned on FB before, I spent 16 years of living in Singapore where, as examples, in my first few years there, truckloads of riot police arrested four silent protestors from the Workers Party standing on the footpath with “More Transparency in Government” or WTTE, on their tee-shirts; where a foreign speaker at a public meeting on free speech was not granted permission to speak by MICA aka the Ministry of Truth; where blogger mrbrown lost his stint at a newspaper for a light hearted piece on the cost of living (“If you want to comment on politics, join a political party”, said the MiniTru - and that worked out well for those silent protestors, right?). At another public session on censorship in Singapore, this one at the 2006 (or was it 2007?) Writers Festival, hosted by mrbrown, I ventured to hope to be anonymous and safe from MiniTru as my sometimes contentious blog*** was hosted in San Francisco, but mrbrown was sceptical and said, “Everyone knows who you are Phillip!”

(Everyone knows mrbrown is Lee Kin Mun.)

 ~~~~~~~~~

Question is: Would people go to substack instead of here and pay to read, or even read for free, the inexpensive speech of  

Phillip aka E@L

*I still recall Harris’s  brilliant rant against Trump from a few years ago.

** News Corp eventually dropped the case in embarrassment: "A defamation battle being waged between media heir Lachlan Murdoch and the publisher of online news site Crikey appears to be driven by "ego and hubris", a judge has declared.” 

*** The historical posts are mostly gone now, cancelled by a software upgrade. The plan is to restore my back-up to a readable format, but the comments are all over the place in the ascii dump of the SQL database. There are about 250,000 words there, so not an insubstantial effort is required.

Is There Intelligent Life On Earth?

On my walk this morning I listened to very stimulating discussion about what (philosophically not chemically) it would take for complex life to develop. Sam Harris and guest Sara Irma Walker, also discussed the Fermi Paradox and likelihood of life on other planets, and what it would take to even measure that likelihood in a nearly infinite universe and within the limited time before either the sun goes red giant or Trump wins the coming US election, either of which would destroy all intelligent life on the planet. (In which case, after next week, there will be no-one left to read this near-defunct blog.)

Anyhows... When my eyes and brain weren’t glazed over with the abstract theories and physics jargon, I really enjoyed it.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/388-what-is-life/id733163012?i=1000673910025

According to Sam’s guest, the multiverse is crap (my word). The “block universe”, where the past present and future are all "now”, as with the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse Five, and the inky octopi in Arrival, is also crap.

However, she keeps flipping on Yes, there is life and No, no life.

My take on the Fermi Paradox, given that if the earth could be reset to its beginning, there would be way less than fuck-all chance of complex life developing again, and that this current time around, of all the planets in the brain-numbing extent of the universe, over the life of the universe from its the past, before there even was time, and into its future, our earth was the single typewriter where one of those infinite monkeys randomly typed the complete works of Shakespeare. (Prof Brian Cox, not the actor, would agree, I think.) Or then again maybe, like prime numbers, there will always be one more, we just haven’t conceived of it, or indeed constructed it (listen to discussion) yet.

Just we still haven’t constructed a timeless

E@L

OneDownManShip (™)

All too often, when E@L was telling a story to TBITP* about the outrageous things he, um, had heard about on his last trip to Pattaya, Bruce might cut in and say, "All very good and depraved sir, but let me tell you of my even more intriguing episode. I had taken to chatting up this dwarf, when two ladyboys and their baby elephant..." 

Etc... 

~~~~~~~

It's called Onedownmanship(™).

~~~~~~~

Getting used to being not quite the reprobate he thought he was is 

E@L

* Forgotten so soon? The Boys In The Pub.

Foundation And The Eleusian Mysteries.

From the Hmm, I Did Not Know That, and The No-one Who Reads My FB Feed Cares So This Goes To The Blog files comes this fascinating connection:

In Series 1 Epsisode 8, "The Missing Piece" of Asimov's Foundation on Apple+, "Brother Day embarks on a journey that no other Cleon has ever attempted." This is a religious ceremony that involves a long arduous walk in the sun without food or water that is deadly for many, called The Great Spiral. Br Day expects to reach a sacred cave, referred to as a womb by a priestess (note the rebirth motif) where salt in the water has some mind-altering property that may grant him a vision of the three goddesses (mother, maiden and ... cleaning lady?) and some enlightening message.

And hopefully some aloe vera for that sunburn.

~~~~~~~

It just so happens that The Eleusian Mysteries of ancient Greece bear a striking resemblance, at least part, to this fictional ritual journey. The Mysteries involved a once in a lifetime experience for the elite of the time and requiring them (people like Marcus Aurelius!) to oversome some harsh trials/tests/etc? and reach a certain underground temple or cave, ritualistically descend into hades and return with the goddesses Persephone and Demeter (daughter and mother).

References to re-birth from a seed (it obviously began as an an agricultural festival), visions, a revelation of spiritual and mental enlightenment, and eventually, as the mysteries evolved, eternal life and maybe even becoming a god. Magic mushrooms or some other psychedelic may very well have been involved, but we don't know as the rites were (the clue is in the name) a Mystery.

Anyone seen Marcus?

E@L couldn't find a correpsondence to this TV show's Great Spiral subplot in the books by polymath Isaac Asimov. Well, research, as in he did a search for "cave" and "goddess" in the seven Foundation ebooks he has, with no result. Maybe the scriptwriters' put it in? Seems unlikely. It must be there. Anyone here read them all?

~~~~~~~~

Anyway, it was an interesting (to E@L) parallel, even though he has probably misread the details in the Wikipedia entry completely as he was drinking a double negronic (negrotonic? Anyway, negroni topped up with tonic) as he drafted this.

~~~~~~~~

No doubt a dunk into reddit or somesuch chat area, even Google, would provide E@L with a wealth of discussion on this obvious, to many, association and several PhD theses have already been submitted on it and Stephen Fry probably explained it on Qi (even though he doesn't do it anymore) or in his latest book, and it is only because E@L lives in isolation from the cultured world (the bars of Bangkok and breweries in Singapore?) that he can claim to claim it as his own discovery.

To be totally honest, the correspondence hit E@L while he was doing his daily constitutional around said culturally isolated home village, sipping his barista-brewed flat white, and listening to a recent Sam Harris podcast on the use of psychedelics in religious ceremonies in the ancient western world, and the blindingly obvious pagan origin of many Christian rituals, natch. The guest describes the Mysteries in as much detail as, even more than, any brain could hold onto, least of all the exploding one of

E@L

From The SMW* Files Of E@L

E@L has just discovered an excellent book review podcast called Backlisted, where they pull out an overlooked or under-appreciated book from some time back and get experts to go over the tome’s inexplicable and unfortunate desuetude.

~~~~~~

The first one he listened to while he was doing his morning walk yesterday. The topic was M. R. James, the Eton don who wrote “weird” and ghostly tales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically his Ghost Stories of An Antiquary from 1904.

~~~~~~

The second episode he Iistened to while he was on the road back from No1 son’s place in Melbourne this afternoon. This episode was about Diane Johnson’s 1972 biography, The True History Of The First Mrs Meredith And Other Lesser Lives. George Meredith, the husband in question, being the early Victorian era novelist.

~~~~~~~

After the excellent discussions on the podcasts, E@L bought them both for his Kindle (0.99c for the James) and after dipping an eyeball into both he can heartily recommend them! Johnson’s book is brilliantly entertaining despite what you might think of as a dry topic. It was reissued by NYRB a few years ago, so obviously it is not all THAT overlooked.

Irrelevant. 

Look, listen, and learn. Here’s the point:

Kindle Loc 32 of Ghost Stories: “…of a more formidable prosecutor than a termagant wife.”

E@L had to look up termagant when he read it this morning in the first of M.R. James’ stories; easily done on the Kindle: “Harsh-tempered or over-bearing woman.” From the moon wandering (vagant) between three (tri = ter) places: heaven, earth, and hell. E@L can’t recall reading that word in the last few decades, but it was vaguely familiar. Such an obscure and extremely rare word, yeah?

After a spine-tingling (not really) jaunt through a few of James’ quite short spooky stories, E@L thought he should check on the Johnson biography this evening! He found it terrifically witty and clever, and then…

Kindle Loc 361 of The True History: “… was left by his wife, a termagant and too clever by half; she took their little boy Tom…”

~~~~~~
Jaw. Drop. Floor.
~~~~~~

WWWwwwwwwwhat is going on here? Seriously. we mean, WTAF? Guess who's afraid to pick up another book now? 

Looking anxiously over his shoulder for a spooky apparition of a possibly termagant Mary Ellen Meredith née Love Peacock creeping in from one of James’ eerie tales is

E@L!


*Spooky. Mystic Weird.