Category: Uncategorized (Page 9 of 1085)

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‘Gordon Hessler passed away in his sleep January 19, 2014 at the age of 83. An underrated horror director, Hessler cut his teeth on the Hitchcock Presents TV show then helmed several genuinely creepy and atmospheric British films. He worked with Vincent Price three times, all with scripts by Christopher Wicking; SCREAM & SCREAM AGAIN (1970) was an outrageous sci-fi/horror hybrid that presented a berserk view of swinging 60′s London (and also starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee). CRY OF THE BANSHEE (1970) was gritty and mean-spirited featuring Price as a sadistic monarch with an intense hatred of witchcraft and a sardonic sense of macabre. THE OBLONG BOX (1969 – co-starring Chris Lee) was a dark and moody tale of voodoo, body snatching, medical experiments, brotherly betrayal, and being buried alive.

‘Hessler’s MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE was like a Vincent Price movie without Price (it starred Herbert Lom and Jason Robards). It mixed Poe with Phantom of the Opera and was an interesting take on Paris’ historic Grand Guignol theater. One of his last films, GIRL IN A SWING (1988) was an effective, low-key ghost story worth seeking out. Hessler directed Ray Harryhausen’s GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD in 1973, a film that’s always lived in the shadow of 7th VOYAGE as an inferior sequel but has aged well. It’s a terrific fantasy film worthy of big screen reassessment (and was recently released on Blu-ray by Twilight Time). No one could mistake his KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK for a good movie, but the 1978 TV movie plays like a live-action Scooby-Doo episode and has a huge cult following. He also directed two martial arts films in the late ‘80s starring Sho Kusugi, the best known actor/martial artist during the 1980s ninja cinema craze: PRAY FOR DEATH (1985), and RAGE OF HONOR (1987).’ — collaged

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Gordon Hessler @ IMDb
‘KISS Co-founders Simmons and Stanley Remember Gordon Hessler’
Gordon Hessler @ MGM Channel
Lumière ! Réalisateurs : Gordon Hessler
Gordon Hessler: An Alan Smithee Podcast
DVD Savant Double Feature: Gordon Hessler
‘And You Call Yourself a Scientist!’
Shock Cinema Issue #38
‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’: The Quality of Humor
SATANIC PANDEMONIUM: THE OBLONG BOX

 

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Extra

Gordon Hessler discusses the noble art of horror.

 

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Interview
from DVD Drive-In

 

What was your relationship like with AIP?

Gordon Hessler: I always got along well with Deke Heyward, the head of DIP. He was very politically adept at handling things at AIP. He would protect you from [Sam] Arkoff and [James] Nicholson because they’d come into town and stay at the Savoy Hotel, and then they’d go in to discuss the picture, or they would see the finished product and make their suggestions.

Obviously they were happy with you, as you continued to work with them.

GH: Well, THE OBLONG BOX was very successful for them. They were in tremendous trouble with DE SADE. They didn’t get along with Cy Endfield and all sorts of other problems existed. It was the greatest piece of luck that I was fired from it. When I did THE OBLONG BOX, they left me alone, there was nobody there. The day I started, Nicholson came on the set and said, “Good luck.” That’s it, and he was off. That film was made for £70,000, which is about $250,000. At Shepperton Studios, you could shoot from 8 AM until about 4 PM because of the union. If you wanted to do overtime, you’d have to let them know by lunchtime that you were going to take it one more hour. And only if all the union leaders agreed would they go along with it. It was a very tough assignment to shoot and get finished. Actually, when we were finishing it, I had three or four more days left. They [AIP] said, “Look, we like what you’re doing, take an extra week. Can’t you make this bigger?” This never happened to me before, so I was happy with the situation and I took an extra week at the studios and built up certain sequences. I can’t remember which, but whatever we were shooting, we elaborated on it. And the film did very well for them.

How did you get along with Vincent Price?

GH: Oh, marvelous, he was a marvelous man, highly intelligent. I remember at Shepperton Studios, during THE OBLONG BOX, we had an African prince who was the head of this tribe. So we put them in the film for this dance sequence. I asked Vincent if he wouldn’t mind having lunch with this African prince, or king, or whatever he was. You know, most actors always talk about themselves; Vincent was completely the opposite. He talked to him about African art, and all about the various art he knew about and so on. I was just stunned at the conversation and his knowledge. What a unique man.

I’m sure you’re aware that your director’s cut of MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE has been restored and remastered by MGM and recently aired on U.S. cable TV.

GH: I’m amazed that MGM had the instinct to do this version of it after so many years. I was appalled when I originally saw the theatrically released version. I wrote a five-page letter to Arkoff. I knew it was his picture and he could do what he wanted with it, but I asked him to do certain things so it would at least make more sense. But by that time, it was already out and released. There’s another film that I did–which I feel very strongly about–called GIRL ON A SWING that was terribly mauled. It’s awful what Miramax did. They spliced ten or 15 minutes out of it, and it didn’t make any sense. We all wanted to take our name off of that picture. In my contract, they had to give me a 35mm print of the original version–it’s the only one in existence. But as far as MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, it seems that someone at MGM is doing some researching or something, releasing my cut of the film. This cable TV version–which I haven’t yet seen–is apparently the original. I remember the flashbacks were originally never tinted, but AIP tinted them for the theatrical release. The whole idea was not to tint them so that you wouldn’t know when you’re more or less in a dream sequence or just being puzzled by it. The whole trick in that was instead of it being a flashback, this would be a flash-forward, which people really hadn’t done before at that time. It was a premonition of what was going to happen. When it’s tinted, it’s just so obvious. Audiences picked up on it immediately.

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN is an extraordinary film, very different from the typical Poe/Price cycle. Was AIP happy with it?

GH: Well, they didn’t know what the film was about and were always questioning what I was doing. The editor kept assuring them that everything was fine, but they didn’t quite know what they had as a picture. I’m sure they were a little queasy when that film came out because Arkoff had to try and sell it. We knew we had a good film. It was different. It was a science fiction film really, but the thing is, although the pulp book was very badly written, once Chris Wicking had put the nucleus of that idea into it, it elevated the whole picture and made it much more interesting. But all these pictures were made so quickly with so little money, I think we shot that in three or four weeks. But we had fun making it.

You had Christopher Lee in small parts in THE OBLONG BOX and SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN. How did you get along with him?

GH: I got on very well with Christopher Lee. He became even more talented as he moved on in his career. I was quite surprised at how good he was in certain movies. When you’re shooting, you’re so busy and you never really get to know the actors very well. You meet them and they get a sense of what you want, and then you don’t see them again because they’re off doing another picture. I think that the thing with a horror picture is that you have to convince your actors to believe in what they’re doing. You really have to get embellished in it and enjoy it.

You also worked with Peter Cushing in SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN.

GH: I really didn’t get to know him because he was put into the picture. That was Deke Heyward’s idea. Deke would try to find some well known actor to dress up the picture–who at least Americans would be familiar with–which was a good idea. He did the same thing with Lilli Palmer in MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. When I was doing the AIP pictures, I tried to keep a stable of actors and give them different roles. They were so wonderful, and they had to work for practically nothing. Since I was producing and directing, I had to go to the actors and tell them that I could only offer them so much, and that they could take it or leave it. It’s not that I was in a situation to bargain with them. I just didn’t have it in the budget. When you only have £70,000 and you’re working in a large studio, everybody else got screwed–these actors. Hopefully they get some residuals of some kind, I’m not sure.

 

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The Lost Son of Batman

‘The financial position of DC Comics in the early 70’s was precarious. A number of publishing moves initiated by publisher Carmine Infantino had failed to see a substantial return, coupled with a number of their creators either retiring or crossing over to work at Marvel, lead to new owners Warner Bros-Seven Arts selling off the movie rights to their characters to the highest bidder to raise capital. While ABC television picked up the option on Wonder Woman, and the Salkind family snapped up Superman, the rights to Batman were sold to Canadian producer, George H. Brown in 1972. Brown himself would be declared bankrupt the following year with the rights being brought up by the Hong Kong based Shaw Brothers, whose primary output was kung-fu pictures, yet who had just signed a joint-production deal with British based Hammer films. The resultant Batman film produced is probably one of the strangest and most schizophrenic films ever produced – it is certainly one of the cheapest with a reported budget of £300,000.

‘John Phillip Law was cast as Batman but he had to withdraw due to sickness, leading to the casting of David Chiang. The Shaw Brothers answer to Bruce Lee, Chiang would play Bruce Wayne’s son, who assumes the mantle of Batman after the death of his father, now played by Stuart Whitman. Anton Differing appeared briefly as a very Germanic Alfred, his performance hampered by a lengthy bout of food poisoning. As the non-comic book villain Lady Ice, Julie Ege looks stunning but her line readings were so weak she had to be re-voiced by Joanne Lumley. Chiang’s usual sparring partner Ti Lung appears as Ege’s bodyguard, Dragon Fist and the climatic duel between him and Chiang is the film’s one real highlight.

‘Original director Gordon Hessler was fired after a month due to repeated clashes with the screenwriter and producer Don Houghton, leading to Hammer’s Chief Executive Michael Carreras having to complete the picture himself. Issues with the Shaw Brothers Hong Kong studios meant that much of the film was recorded without sound leading to a very costly series of post-production work which gobbled up much of the film’s already meagre budget. Chiang looks absurd in the Batman costume, something which Carreras/Hessler seem to admit to given that Chiang only wears it twice in the whole film. The tiny resources granted to Hammer means that Hong Kong Harbour, doubling as Gotham City, only manages to reinforce the fact that the budget is almost non-existent. When shooting finally drew to an end, Carreras realised that they only had just over 60 minutes of usable footage. The Shaw Brothers managed to pad out the running time by splicing in unused scenes from earlier Chiang/Lung films, the majority of it from 1971’s Duel of Fists. Carreras’ hope that Hammer’s own team in the UK would handle the special effects were for nothing,with the Shaw’s handing it over to a subsidiary of Toei. “It looked one of those bloody cheap Godzilla films by the time they got through with it! The fire at the docks at the climax? I could’ve spit on that burning model and put the fire out!”, Carreras would later say.

‘The final film limped out to British cinemas in November 1975 as the bottom half of a double bill with Man About the House. After only managing to take a paltry £1,014 in its first month, Bernard Delfont pulled the film from his ABC cinema chain. In the Far East, the Shaw’s assembled a more action-orientated edit, released under the title The Legend of the Lost Son of The Batman which did much better. Unfortunately, due to a carefully worded contract, Hammer Films did not see a cent of that revenue – all box office receipts for that region went straight to the Shaw Brothers. DC were mortified when confronted with the completed picture and instigated a major lawsuit to reclaim the rights from the Shaw Brothers, finally buying their own property back for a rumoured $2 million. The film would not be released in the US until 1979 when Roger Corman’s New World Pictures picked up the film as part of a package buy-out. Corman re-cut the film, bookending it with scenes shot by Allan Arkush featuring Dick Miller as “Matches” Malone. Corman has stated that the edit was an attempt to catch some of the excitement following the success of Star Wars. It failed to do so and either Corman’s version or the original are hardly seen at all today. Bootleg DVDs have been known to sell for up £70 to £80 on the comic convention circuit.’ — Warning: Contains Traces of Bowie

 

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16 of Gordon Hessler’s 46 films

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Catacombs (1965)
‘Imagine calling a movie Catacombs, based on the tiniest of plot points. A rich woman who uses meditation to deal with pain is visited by her niece who returns from Paris. The woman can be a handful and one of her employees suggests to her husband that he kill her freeing them both. When an affair starts between the husband and the niece murder becomes a real possibility. However some people won’t stay dead.’ — Letterboxd

Trailer

 

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The Oblong Box (1969)
‘This troubled production from American International Pictures initially began life as the next project for young British filmmaker Michael Reeves. He had clearly impressed his backers with the strength of his third film Witchfinder General (1968). The death of Reeves during the pre-production of The Oblong Box was a major blow, not only to the film, but to British filmmaking in general. With the death of Reeves any ambition the film might have had began to dwindle and this was signposted by the arrival of the undistinguished Gordon Hessler as his directorial replacement. Hessler was a capable director, but one who rarely achieved any kind of inspiration – and this derivative and clichéd piece of gothic horror was badly in need of inspiration.’ — Son of Celluloid

Trailer

the entire film

 

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De Sade (1969)
‘I was asked to produce a film, DE SADE, for AIP while I was in Los Angeles that was taking place in Munich, Germany. I flew into London and met the writer, and the director was supposed to be there, but he never showed up. He didn’t come to the meeting; he was sick or something like that. Having met the writer, I flew to Munich to set up the film about eight weeks before they were going to start shooting. I was there preparing the production and then I was told that the original director was not going to make the picture. So we waited for a while, and finally the American director who did ZULU, Cy Endfield, came in to do it. This was a big picture for AIP, which usually made very cheap pictures, and I was an outsider. I was not an employee, just a freelance director. My position got very shaky there, even though I was very friendly with everybody. I was actually fired from the job because the local people employed by AIP wanted to produce the picture rather than have an outsider like me.’ — Gordon Hessler

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Scream and Scream Again (1970)
‘With its daft one-size-fits-all title and unassailable front-line of Cushing, Lee and Price, one could easily be forgiven for writing off Scream and Scream Again as another entry in the ill-fated cycle of ‘old boys club’ horror movies that began to take off as the box office for old-fashioned horror flicks started to diminish through the ‘70s. All bets are off however the second one sits down to actually watch Scream and Scream Again. By some strange quirk of fate, this modest Amicus/AIP co-production turns out to be one of the most beserk, imaginative and unconventional British horror movies ever made – a real kick in the teeth for anyone who bought a ticket expecting to see Vince and the gang rattling around dark old house for eighty minutes. That’s not to say it’s actually all that great, but … ‘ — Breakfast in the Ruins

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Cry of the Banshee (1970)
‘Within Cry of the Banshee can be found the groundings of what most people know as folk horror. The witchcraft elements will of course be attributed to Reeves’ film but there are more aspects in Cry of the Banshee that would crop up in later films. The worship aspects and group gestalts would be put to more dramatic and disturbing effects in Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971); a film that similarly embraces the reality of the supernatural to explain away its evils. However the purely humanistic evils found in Banshee can be seen in the sub-genre’s poster boy; The Wicker Man (1973). There’s little visually to tie in but there’s no doubt that Cry of the Banshee can be seen to be a step closer to the ultimate in folk horror madness. Some of the performances may be colourful but the film’s horror is still strong. However the better moments come from the human evils rather than the supernatural ones. The banshee creature bares little on scenes of torture and burning which have a documentary shake to them and are just as effective as Reeves’ prolonged agonies. Coupled with some Hammer like pulp and Price’s usual villainy, a film is left that is enjoyable, flawed and surprisingly influential.’ — Celluloid Wicker Man

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971)
‘Murders in the Rue Morgue is a 1971 American horror film directed by Gordon Hessler, starring Jason Robards and Herbert Lom. It is ostensibly an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name, although it departs from the story in several significant aspects, at times more resembling Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera. In an interview on the film’s DVD, Hessler said that he thought everyone already knew the ending of the story, so he felt it necessary to reinvent the plot. According to IMDB.com, the film was banned in Finland in 1972.’ — Wiki

Trailer

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Medusa (1973)
‘A couple of empty champagne glasses lay between a pair of corpses, a man and a woman – their hands folded peacefully together in the prose of two lovers who’ve opted to end it all with suicide. This is the shocking scene that greets a group of Greek police officials who have just boarded a floating yacht in the opening minutes of Medusa, a 1973 curio from television director turned big screen auteur, Gordon Hessler. Clearly this film isn’t for everyone but if you love to see actors getting crazy and going over the top and generally having a great time, you should check it out.’ — CrankedOnCinema

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Scream, Pretty Peggy (1973)
‘The main thing most people say about SCREAM PRETTY PEGGY is that all the surprise twists are absolutely no surprise at all. You’ll completely know the whole scoop about 10 minutes in and none of your guesses as to what happens and who is responsible will be wrong. This film was directed for television by Gordon Hessler who, it has to be said, isn’t the greatest director in the world. But a drunken Bette Davis falling and breaking her leg and hiding bottles of booze behind books in the library is priceless!’ — Cerpts

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)
‘Following manuscript-styled opening credits, an incantation of Baudelaire’s albatross: A swooping creature drops a fragmented amulet on the vessel’s deck, Sinbad (John Philip Hall) decides to hang on to it after a faceless odalisque with painted eyes on her palms comes as a vision. Another piece of the tablet belongs to the noble Vizier (Douglas Wilmer), who hides a charred visage behind a gold-plated Hellenistic mask; together they reveal a navigation chart, the answer to its riddle is at a mystical island populated by natives who paint themselves jade-green and worship Ray Harryhausen behemoths. The climactic brawl between a centaur and a griffin has to be some kind of stop-animation benchmark, and a few wide-eyed words are all it takes for the Amazonian figurehead at the ship’s prow to come to vengeful life. Still, Harryhausen’s most touching work is done in the quiet, beguiling scene in which the villainous wizard (Tom Baker) patiently breathes life into a tiny gargoyle, a concise ode to the divine qualities of the craftsman’s art.’ — cinepassion.org

Trailer

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Hitchhike! (1974)
‘If I told you this was a miserable, tedious, slog of a constipated TV Movie lacking suspense, bloated with cliches and propelled by confused and vacuous acting, well I would still be giving this bore too much credit. Michael Brandon is a semi-sentient log that walks among us. Cloris Leachman is Alice Cooper as Doris Day. Cameron Mitchell is Henry Darrow and Henry Darrow is Cameron Mitchell. I feel as if I survived a mugging.’ — bozodeathgod

the entire film

 

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Skyway To Death (1974)
‘The passengers in an aerial tramway are trapped when the tramway breaks down 8,500 feet in the air. I liked everything in this movie, but I disliked the screenplay and tone.’ — thebiggestpizza

Watch the film here

 

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KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park (1978)
‘A crude opening montage sees the members of Kiss super-imposed on top of night-time fairground footage. Inexplicably, Peter Criss is seen miming the drums on a roulette wheel. Drink it in, Kiss Army recruits, as this is the last glimpse of your commanding officers you’ll be getting for quite a while. Director Gordon Hessler (whose horror credits include Scream and Scream Again and Cry of the Banshee for AIP, as well as taking over The Oblong Box after the death of Michael Reeves), clearly has other things on his mind. Like FUN, primarily. Beautiful, sun-dappled, 1978 suburban American amusement park fun, to be precise. Thankfully I’m a bit too young and located on the wrong side of the world to be fully smitten by this full-scale nostalgia landslide, but anyone currently in about the 35-45 age bracket and raised somewhere in the Southern half of the USA should probably prepare themselves for paralysing wistfulness and bouts of uncontrollable sobbing, as gentle, smiling Dazed & Confused teens fade in and out of focus, enjoying a summer’s day out in their local parentally-approved leisure complex.’ — Breakfast in the Ruins

Opening credits

Watch the film here

 

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Evil Stalks This House (1981)
‘This low-budget feature is actually comprised of re-edited installments from a syndicated television serial. Jack Palance stars as a self-serving, abusive boor who becomes stranded — along with his two hapless children — by a thunderstorm, forcing them to take shelter in an isolated country estate owned by a group of mysterious and wealthy old dowagers. Seeing a golden opportunity, Palance soon turns to plundering their estate, but his plans collide horribly with the secret activities of a Satanic snake-cult who carry out ritual sacrifices in the attic. Guess who’s next in line? Given the cheap-looking confines of the shot-on-video production, director Gordon Hessler manages to generate some creepy atmosphere, and Palance chews acres of scenery as the diabolical daddy, whose tyrannical behavior makes his eventual fate quite satisfying.’ — Cavett Binion, Rovi

the entire film

 

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Pray for Death (1985)
‘Pray For Death is essentially a carbon copy of Revenge of the Ninja. In both films Kosugi plays a Japanese businessman who relocates his family to America for the sake of his job, but once there runs afoul of gangsters. In both movies his respective wives are killed, AND in both films Kosugi’s two sons play the roles of his onscreen kids, which end up surviving the bloody carnage father and gangster doll out among each other in both movies. Pray For Death is notable for two things, it’s Kosugi’s last role in a movie where he plays a ninja, and it’s notorious for being his most violent and sadistic. Kosugi find’s himself going head to head wtih James Booth, who plays a gangster psychopath that enjoys beating old men to death, torturing Kosugi in front of his kid, and raping and killing Kosugi’s wife towards the end.’ — You Won Cannes

Trailer

the entire film

 

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Wheels of Terror (1987)
‘Wheels of Terror is adapted from a novel from Sven Hassle; who was a former Nazi Soldier and thus a bit of a questionable and slightly controversial figure himself. Regardless of his background, The Misfit Brigade definitely isn’t pro-Nazi and actually quite blunt and uncompromising in the expression of its political opinions. The protagonists in this movie are anti everything and that’s probably why this is such a good and plausible film. And by plausible I do not necessarily mean the depicted events in the film, but the characterizations of the rejected SS-soldiers and deserters. Director Gordon Hessler – known from the early 70’s Vincent Price horror movies The Oblong Box and Cry of the Banshee – does an admirable job as well and he could rely on a fantastically devoted cast, including Bruce Davison as the uncrowned leader of the bunch, David Patrick Kelly as the eloquent and provocative Legionnaire and Jay O. Sanders as the big & dumb kamikaze freak Tiny. David Carradine is sublimely nefarious as the power-hungry Colonel Von Weisshägen; complete with his glasses for one eye only to make him look extra evil. Oliver Reed receives top billing but only makes a cameo appearance during the hectic and extremely cool climax. The role, however, is perfect for him and he gives his absolute everything in only five lines of dialog.’ — Coventry

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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The Girl in the Swing (1989)
‘Gordon Hessler first made a name for himself as a producer of Alfred Hitchcock’s TV series in the 1960s, and later, as a director of several interesting (if not entirely satisfying) British horror films of the late ’60s and early ’70s. The Girl in a Swing is not a good movie, but it is so ambitious in its strangeness that it cannot routinely be dismissed. Among the many curious decisions connected with this European film is the choice of Meg Tilly, an American actress, for the leading role — a young German woman who speaks English with an almost-impenetrable accent. Twenty years ago, the great director Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M) hailed Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again as one of the outstanding suspense films of the ’60s, largely because he was impressed with the political subtext of what was otherwise a stock, modern horror movie. Movie buffs have been waiting for Hessler to live up to Lang`s praise since. The Girl in a Swing brings him closer than anything else he has made. That probably isn’t enough to satisfy a mainstream audience, but it`s enough to warrant that the film not be totally ignored. Hessler has emerged from a long stretch of obscurity with The Girl in a Swing, a bizarre, almost hypnotically fascinating study of sexual obsession.’ — collaged

Trailer

the entire film

Siskel & Ebert review The Girl in a Swing

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Haha, no prob. But ouch, and here’s hoping your nail is the tip of no iceberg. Let me know how it goes please. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I too like the edible hotel, but the food didn’t look particularly edible, or should I say pleasurably edible. Ah, love quotes the big boys! There are things that I can’t do, Even if I wanted to, But I can love you, That’s easy to do, G. ** Misanthrope, Good, good, health-wise. But now your mom, ugh. If someone made a cartoon character based on a virus, I wonder what it would look like. ** James, Thank you for helping Uday feel like a proud papa. Assuming he is. I speculate about that very Santa question in my novel ‘I Wished’. Available at all fine bookstores and online outlets. Yes, you don’t want your family members to be so charmed by one of my blog’s harmless posts that they bookmark the place. Happy to hear that here is on the widescreen again. Gayer boy is the quite the ambitious boy. I would recommend that you and he at least have an IRL coffee before tying the knot. Your GbV love is so warming the cockles of my heart, whatever cockles are. Phew, ‘Crash’ passed your rigorous test. It’s always morning when I read this/you. First with insufficient coffee and then once again once my brain has risen off its sickbed. ** James Bennett, Hi. Yes, what Foster-Wallace does is very particularly what he does. I personally really respond to the heavy anxiety and lavishly polished OCD of his writing. And I find it emotionally affecting. But it’s always what you’re hungry for. I don’t understand what you mean by ‘as revelation it feels dated’. Hm, I think I’m very much a kind of live and let live, curious observer of the shifts in people’s attention spans and pull towards the lightweight and trendy, and I’m never interested in making public comments about such things in my writing even if the writing is informed by my opinion or take. As I’ve said, I want my writing to be like the drug the reader is taking. It gives you a direction and set of parameters and then it becomes subject to what your entirety builds from it. Or something thereabouts. I agree that it’s changed the texture of collective life, but I guess I think of it as interim effect, so it’s blurry at its front end, and I’m interested in that part. But I only use my phone for calls, texts, and photos, period, so I’m not really a participant. Interesting Plato quote. I guess maybe I think things are more porous than that? I guess I don’t think of memory as being some kind of unpolluted entity? Don’t know. Very interesting thoughts and questions, and thank you a lot for that. ** Sypha, I’m pro-‘Moby Dick’. I haven’t read it since high school, but … I do highly recommend you either kill of your fear of flying or set aside enough time to take a ship over there because Japan is a serious must. ** Steve, Hi. First, … Everyone, Steve has written a think/knowledge piece for Trouser Press about the Japanese collective After Dinner, but it looks to about a lot more than that and very, very interesting so check it out here. I only glanced at it, but I’m happy to see you writing about Henry Cow and Rock in Opposition. I haven’t about the latter in ages. Right, about the TV argument. In France, some of the most daring French filmmakers (Godard, Akerman, Varda, et. al.) made excellent and seemingly uncompromised films and programs for French television in the 60s, 70s, 80s. ** Bill, There’s a doc about Dean Johnson. Huh, I didn’t know about that. Yes, very interested to see it. So nice that Joel Lane’s books are getting back into print. I knew him, and he would very surprised. ** HaRpEr, My friend Zac is French, but he speaks English with an unimpeachable American accent, and I always forget that it’s a totally affected voice. Great that film screening went so well, and, well, I’m not surprised, but still! And the reading too! What an awesome day you had! Even the delicious take down by that couple. Nice! ** Steeqhen, Nice about the confidence builder. And luck finishing the outfits piece although you clearly don’t need any. ** jay, I shudder to think what might have happened if Melville hadn’t beaten me to you, haha. Right, the pearl, that must be it. Duh. I forget about the oyster’s magic trick. I tend to just think of oysters as these shells with goop in them that I sometimes have to watch people pour into their mouths and how nauseous that makes me. I’m happy you underestimated yourself. That mistaken instinct could serve you well as long as you only half-trust it. Yes, in fact, France, or Paris a least, suddenly went up about 10 degrees yesterday to a toasty 14 degrees, and not a day too soon. How is the UK greeting spring’s flirtations? ** Justin D, Hey, J. The ‘PGL’ screen went very, very well, thank you for asking. There was a big audience, and they seemed to really get it and like it a lot. And it was interesting to watch and represent it again because Zac’s and my heads have been so involved in ‘Room Temperature’, which is a very different kind of film in many ways, for a long time. And, this is weird to say, I know, but we were blown away by how good ‘PGL’ is. We were thinking maybe we would have issues with it after moving on from it, but we felt really proud of it. So it was quite an interesting and heartening experience. Haha, the first little tingle reaction is almost kind of nice, but, yes, unfortunately the next step is a splitting headache and a total body numbness. But you can’t have everything. ** nat, Hi. Okay, ‘Mouthwashing’, I’m even more onto getting it now. Thanks. Happy that Davenport’s hints worked. He needs all the readers he can get these days. ** Uday, Hi, U! Thanks so much again for giving the blog the privilege. I’m happy that it obviously really paid off. I don’t think I know Omer Bartov, but I’ll look him up. Interesting: ‘Desperate Living’ as a test case. Curious if it occasions a mindmeld. When will you hear back from the professor? Have a real swell day! ** Joe, Hi Joe! I have almost all of my materials gathered, and now it’s mostly just wait and go to the appointment (March 18 in LA) and ‘pray to god’. I am non-stop confused by almost every highly lauded and award nominated film at the moment. All this ‘settling for’ is so depressing, or at least bewildering. No, I’ve never read Gerald Murnane. Should I? I hope you’re good too. The screening went really well (see my report to Justin), thank you! ** Nicholas., Uh, … *sparkle* Wow, that’s a lot. Your life is so momentous. I need to get out more, clearly, or maybe in more. Eating man ass is more meaningful if you take little breaks from it once in a while. Your truth is highly entertaining to me. That *sparkling* up above is appreciative. ** Dan Carroll, What feels kind to you is really just the truth. What are you working on now? Still the scoutmaster self-portrait? ** Okay. The post today has been restored by request from a reader of this blog who told me the old original had fallen into disrepair and who says they would like to have it functional for something related that the are writing, so what’s why you’re spending the day with Gordon Hessler, if you wondered. See you tomorrow.

 

Summary entry in The Encyclopedia Britannica:

Herman Melville, orig. Herman Melvill, (born Aug. 1, 1819, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Sept. 28, 1891, New York City), U.S. writer. Born to a wealthy New York family that suffered great financial losses, Melville had little formal schooling and began a period of wanderings at sea in 1839. In 1841 he sailed on a whaler bound for the South Seas; the next year he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. His adventures in Polynesia were the basis of his successful first novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). After his allegorical fantasy Mardi (1849) failed, he quickly wrote Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), about the rough life of sailors. Moby-Dick (1851), his masterpiece, is both an intense whaling narrative and a symbolic examination of the problems and possibilities of American democracy; it brought him neither acclaim nor reward when published. Increasingly reclusive and despairing, he wrote Pierre (1852), which, intended as a piece of domestic “ladies” fiction, became a parody of that popular genre, Israel Potter (1855), The Confidence-Man (1857), and magazine stories, including “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) and “Benito Cereno” (1855). After 1857 he wrote verse. In 1866 a customs-inspector position finally brought him a secure income. He returned to prose for his last work, the novel Billy Budd, Foretopman, which remained unpublished until 1924. Neglected for much of his career, Melville came to be regarded by modern critics as one of the greatest American writers.

Everybody, of course, knows Moby Dick (and what book could be more American?), but few pay attention to the more bitter Redburn. An indictment, and a funny one at that, the book is soaked in the particular kind of homosexualism that some people look for in MD. Extracted from Jonathan Ned Katz in The Village Voice:

Redburn’s First Voyage is a classic journey of discovery — a youth’s dis­covery of himself and others as feeling, yearning beings, and his discovery of their society as a place of puritanical suppression, poverty, starvation, and commercial exploitation of a range of emotional and physical desires. Though this novel combines fiction with details of Melville’s first trip as sailor in 1839, my focus here is not on Melville’s life, but on those “dirty” jokes he inserted in his coded text. Melville filled this novel with archaic sexual words, sexual puns, symbols, allusions and other coded references to male-male eroticism.

COLOR

Color-coding these references was one of Melville’s means of speech: red and its variations are used, not only in commonplace ways, but repeatedly as a way of signing the unspeakable male-male eros. A “purple” light hangs outside a high-class gambling den that also seems to serve as a male whore house. An effemin­ate hairdresser and heartbreaker named “Lavender” wears “claret colored suits” and “red velvet vests.” The skipper of a red-sailed boat, an “old ruby of a fellow,” with a “rubicund” nose, propositions young Redburn. The pale, sickly, red­shirted Jackson, vampire-like, studies the “red cheeks” of a handsome, healthy sailor. Another sailor comments on the name “Redburn”: “scorch you to take hold of it.” That name connotes the yearning for intimacy with a male burning within this lonely youth — a subject too hot to handle directly in Victorian America.

In 1915 Dr. Havelock Ellis published the report of an American “invert” who said that the color red symbolized “sexual inversion” in New York City — to wear a red necktie in the street was to invite embarrassing remarks from newsboys.

Melville’s use of red suggests that in the late 1840s, the color connoted to him not just lust in general, but the lust of male for male.

SWEETMEATS

An ominous undercurrent informs one sailor’s hostile response to Redburn’s aristocratic hunting jacket: “Come here, my little boy, has your ma put some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?” In the mid-nineteenth century, says Eric Partridge, “sweetmeat” was “low” English for the “male member,” as well as a female mistress. This sailor thus metaphorically threatens molestation.

JACK BLUNT

Another sailor on the Highlander, Jack Blunt, has a Dream Book with red covers, which tells how to foretell the future. Without indirection, Redburn reports: this Blunt “had a sad story about a man-of-war’s-man who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away his life recklessly.” That blunt statement is probably the first in American fiction in which male comes out so directly as lover of male.

Another “incomprehensible” story of Blunt’s is about some “sort of fairy sea-queen;” In the late nineteenth century, says Partridge, “queen” or “quean” was used to refer to “A homosexual, esp. one with girlish manners and carriage.”

Melville’s use of “queen” suggests the word had some such meaning by mid-century. “Fairy” is first known to refer to homosexuals in 1896. But Melville’s use of “fairy” in 1849 hints that that word also referred to an effeminate male by mid-century.

LARRY

Yet another sailor, Larry, a “whaleman,” was “a somewhat singular man . . , with his eyes cast down.” Downcast eyes would, a hundred years later, be called a sure sign of homosexuality; a friend recalls reading in 1955, in a popular magazine of such a symptom.

Larry’s travels as a sailor had familiarized him with the “life of nature,” and he is said to cast “some illiberal insinuations against civilization” — and Christianity. In “Madagasky,” he says, “You don’t see any Methodist chaps feeling dreadful about their souls.” What’s the use of being “snivelized” Larry asks Redburn; “Blast Ameriky, I say. Attacks against “civilization” were associated with several early sodomitical defenses.

HERMAPHRODITE

Every day a new ship docks beside the Highlander: a Glasgow brig, manned by “sober” Scotsmen is “replaced by a jovial French hermaphrodite,” its decks “echoing with song” and “much dancing.” A “hermaphrodite” was a sailing vessel combining the characteristics of two kinds of ships. But that Melville intended another double entendre is clear. “Hermaphrodite” was an old term for an “effeminate man or virile woman,” as well as for a “catamite” (partner of a pederast). Melville’s well-named “hermaphrodite” was “jovial” with song and dance, as male no doubt partnered male in gay abandon.

FRIENDLY BACHELOR

In Liverpool, Redburn recalls, he went on board a “salt-drogher,” one of the small boats with “red sails” which carry cargo to ocean-going ships. This salt-drogher was manned by “a bachelor, who kept house all alone,” and “had an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together like a couple in a box at an oyster-celler.”

Privately coupled, like a man and woman on a date, the skipper tells Redburn that “‘ Just before going to bed” he has a nightcap and smoke: “‘but stop, let’s to supper first.'” Redburn consumes a meal and a good quantity of beer with this “old ruby of a fellow,” with a “rubicund” nose. Then, feeling guilty about such oral satisfaction, Redburn moves to leave: “my conscience smote me for thus indulging in the pleasures of the table.”

“Now, don’t go, said he; don’t go, my boy; don’t go out into the damp; take an old Christian’s advice,” laying his hand on my shoulder; . . . if you stay here, you’ll soon be dropping off to a nice little nap.”

“But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host’s hand and
departed.”

Still secure in his virtue and innocence, young Redburn survives his first proposition from a male.

HARRY BOLTON

In chapter forty-four of Redburn Melville introduces the equivocal Harry Bolton “To The Favorable Consideration Of The Reader.” Melville primes us to take Bolton favorably!

Young Bolton is said to be “one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair, and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons.”

Harry, in other words, is a butterfly. That delicate creature has, I suspect, among sailors especially, long signified a propensity to male-male eroticism. In 1964, on the London subway, I met a sailor who showed me a butterfly tattoo on his arm, by way I now realize, of identifying his proclivities and a come-on. Butterfly was also an American homosexual novel published in 1934.

Harry Bolton’s complexion is described as “brunette, feminine as a girl’s; his feet were small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black and womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.”

But where, narrator Redburn coyly asks his readers, among the depraved docks of Liverpool, did he meet this “courtly youth?” He answers: “Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding houses, standing in the doorways.” What Bolton was doing in those’ dusky doorways is not discussed, but Bolton’s prostitution is hinted at later.

Redburn adds: Bolton’s “beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted this delicate exotic” from an aristocratic neighborhood in London to a Liverpool slum. But Redburn “smoothed down the skirts of my jacket, and at once accosted him.” Those “skirts” and that “accosting” suggest a dual sexual role.

Bolton tells Redburn he was an orphan who had lost his small fortune gambling. He had resolved to carve out a fresh fortune” in America, crossing the ocean as a sailor — an attempt, also, to prove himself “manly.” Bolton’s new “scorn of fine coats,” says Redburn, corresponded with his “reckless contempt . . . for all past conventionalities.”

THE MARQUIS

Another of Bolton’s stories, about the Marquis of Bristol offering him a home, begins to breed, even in innocent young Redburn, “some suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of truth.” Redburn “cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true.” But “suspicions” about Bolton’s morals made Redburn “hold back my whole soul from him; when, in its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom of some immaculate friend.”

Poignant regret at this opportunity for intimacy lost due to puritanical strictures summarizes Redburn’s relationship with Bolton.

A “MYSTERIOUS NIGHT”

In order, as Bolton claimed, to recover a “considerable sum” of money, Bolton travels to London, taking Redburn along for a “Mysterious Night.” This is spent at a “semi-public place of opulent entertainment” in the West End — Bolton tells the cab driver “No. 40,” the “high steps there, with the purple light!” The specificity of address, purple light, and other details suggests Melville may have had some actual place in mind.

This den has ceiling frescos in which “Guido’s ever youthful Apollo” appears “in a crimson dawn.” At “Morrish-looking tables . . . sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut glass decanters and taper-waisted glasses.” Those effeminate glasses are another example of Melville’s endowing inanimate objects with a feminine gender to render ambiguous the masculinity of his human characters. The equivocal masculinity of Donald, the Highlander’s male figurehead was noted earlier.

The den’s “obsequious waiters” are presided over by “a very handsome florid old man,” with whom Bolton disappears for a moment. Redburn then “observed one of the waiters eyeing me a little impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me.”

OLD PAINTINGS

Bolton then led Redburn upstairs to a Persian carpeted room hung with lascivious, “mythological oil-paintings”.

Melville writes: “There were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps, in the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii — in that part of it called by Varro the hollow of the house: such pictures as Martial and Suetonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the bronze medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island or Capreae: such pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth.”

William Gilman’s research for his study, Melville’s Early Life and Redburn (1951), says that only one of those mythic erotic pictures referred to an actual historical work: Suetonius does mention a picture which Tiberius kept in his bedroom. In a modest back note Gilman says this showed “Atalanta performing a most unnatural service for Meleager.” My own research, with historian John Boswell’s expert help and translation, indicates that the exact act referred to was a “blow-job” (the original old Latin translates literally as “to gratify with the mouth”).

But Melville’s other “mythological oil-paintings” are literally just that — mythological — a literary joke intended to excite reader’s prurient curiosity. The non-existence of those paintings is no failure of scholarship on Melville’s part, as Gilman stuffily says, but are Melville’s means of inciting pedants like Gilman to explore the history of what in 1951 was still called “unnatural” sex.

CARLO AND HIS ORGAN

If Bolton’s background did involve such illicit sexual commerce, he was not the only such emigrant the Highlander carried to America. On the ship, among those traveling to the U.S. says Redburn, was a “rich-cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy . . , not above fifteen,” whose pensive eye reflected many sad experiences: “It was not an eye like Harry’s tho’ Harry’s was large and womanly. It shone with a soft spiritual radiance.” The Italian’s head was “heaped with thick clusters of tendril curls,” and “reminded you of a classic vase.” From “the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any lady’s arm; so soft and rounded.” This Carlo had no father, and “From the first, Harry took to the boy.” Carlo, it seems, had made a living at music — playing a “hand-organ”:

“But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men,” said Harry, “who would rather have your room than your music?”

“Yes, sometimes,” said Carlo, playing with his foot, “sometimes I do.”

“And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you never leave them under a shilling?”

“No,” continued the boy, I love my organ as I do myself, for it is my only friend, poor organ; it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me; and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off . . . .

Melville’s reference to men wanting Carlo’s “room” rather than his music, Melville’s casual allusion to the blackmail of sodomites (Carlo’s “knowing the [money] value of quiet to unquiet men”), and his pun about Carlo’s “organ,” are such blatant references to illicit sex it is difficult to understand how, in Victorian America, they were not recognized as scandalous.

FOAMING-AT-THE-MOUTH

How such references escaped notice in the 1840s becomes clearer when we consider that such erotic passages are still not officially recognized in the 1980s. While a Melville industry flourishes in academia, and books are written on such arcane subjects as the possible influence of East Indian mysticism on Whitman, one still risks job and violent critical attack by devoting book or thesis to a close textual analysis of lust. (See, for example, Richard Boyer’s foaming-at-the-mouth response to The Homosexual Tradition in American Poetry by Robert K. Martin.) Despite the success of Boswell’s tome on Christianity, intolerance, and homosex, and his display of scholarly erudition in dozens of footnotes in dozens of languages — in the American academy of the 1980s, to focus on the details of the erotic, their history and social construction, is still considered risqué and risky.

But Melville’s erotic puns, archaism, and allusions reveal much about Victorian (and our) sexuality; they indicate Melville’s belief that his respectable readers would not discern his outrageous sexual subtext. He assumed proper Victorians had buried the erotic deep in the unconscious or banished it to distant and indistinct spheres of prostitution, sodomy, or sapphism, making safe the sexual secrets of his story.

Continuing about his organ, Carlo says that when people drive him away from their homes

“I do not think my organ is to blame, but they themselves are to blame; for such people’s musical pipes are cracked, and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into their souls.”

“No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps,” said Harry with a laugh.

Carlo adds: “‘Though my organ is as full of melody, as a hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without chords.” Given Melville’s loaded, coded sex text, Carlo’s winds that breathe on that chordless harp maybe refer to oral copulation performed upon an unresponding penis.

HARRY BOLTON AGAIN

On the ship going back to America, Redburn’s mates take an immediate dislike to Harry Bolton, “girlish youth,” whose provocative clothes defiantly emphasize his aristocratic, unmanly tastes. One day, says Redburn, Bolton “came on deck in a brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap, to stand his morning watch.”

The sailors “took a special spite” at Bolton’s wardrobe: “It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out” in response to Bolton’s “silks, velvets, broadclothes, and satin. I do not know exactly what they thought Harry had been” — a gambler it is suggested. Bolton “was put down for “a very equivocal character.” “Equivocal beings” was the phrase Mary Wollstone craft in 1792 applied to those we would now called homosexuals.

Despite Bolton’s “effeminacy of appearance,” says Redburn, he had earlier displayed “flashes of spirit.” Redburn therefore wondered how Bolton “could now yield himself up to the almost passive reception” of the sailors’ contempt. He concluded: “there are passages in the lives of all men” atypical of their more usual ways.

On this trip, says Redburn, “the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and more upon myself for companionship. Bolton “became more communicative concerning his past career,” but “he did not make plain many things . . . I was very curious to know.”

Bolton had no “regular profession,” so sought Redburn’s advice about what to do for a living in America. The “two friendless wanderers” held long talks. Redburn suggested that Bolton try for a clerk’s job since he claimed to write a fine hand. Bolton’s actual hand, Redburn comments, was small, his fingers “long and thin” — it was “the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that elegant young buck of a Roman who once cut great Seneca dead in the forum.”

PETRONIUS’ SATYRICON

Petronius Arbiter’s Satyricon, says historian Vern Bullough, “offers the nearest approach to a defense of homosexuality existing in classical Latin literature.” Of the Satyricon historian Otto Kiefer says: “the most startling feature” of this satire on Roman sexual life is “the easy and natural way in which Petronius ranks homosexual love beside the love of women, as if it were neither different nor inferior. Encolpius, the narrator of the whole story, is himself a homosexual.” So is his friend Ascyltus, and their mutual lover, the boy Giton, as well as Trimalchio, “the most popular character in the novel.”

Redburn continues: though Bolton’s “hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white as the queen’s cambric hankerchief,” his work as a sailor “subtracted from its original daintiness.” Looking at his work-stained hand Bolton asked himself: “Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana?” Was this the hand which “ratified my bond to Lord Lovely?” That bond to Lovely, ratified by hand, evokes the slang phrase , hand-gig,” dating to the 193Os, referring to “A type of male prostitute who will masturbate his clients.”

Again, these are just some of Katz’s insinuations (and I suspect that Katz needs to read more and read into less, but that is at least consistent with his publication and his era), and many of them fall far short of convincing. But he did hit on something with Harry Bolton. As Elizabeth Hardwick, inimitable critic and Melville lover, had it:

In Redburn, the boat is in the Liverpool harbor and the crew is free to roam the city, and Melville is free to have his young hero meet the intriguing person named Harry Bolton. Bolton is lifelike as a certain type of frenzied, melodramatic young homosexual down on his luck and as such he is as embarrassing and interesting as life itself. Redburn, that is, Melville at his desk, is both accepting and suspicious of Harry, but there is everything about the encounter as told that seems to reveal either a striking innocence of heart and mind or a defiance in offering the scenes to the public. Nothing in the early parts of the novel would lead us to anticipate the extravagant, interesting, sudden dive into a richly decorated underworld.

The two meet on the streets of Liverpool and Redburn is immediately attracted. Harry is not a dumb, deadened fish in the human pool of the seamen; he is a friendly stranger, an English youth, fluent in self-creation. It is difficult to imagine how this handsome youth with the perfectly formed legs and so on, this “delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street,” came to the “potato-patches of Liverpool.” In a bar, Harry will be chatting about the possibility of going to America and thus the friendship with this “incontrovertible son of a gentleman” begins. Harry will tell his story: born in the old city of Bury St. Edmunds, orphaned, but heir to a fortune of five thousand pounds. Off to the city, where with gambling sportsmen and dandies his fortune is lost to the last sovereign.

More elaboration from the new friend: embarked for Bombay as a midshipman in the East India service, claimed to have handled the masts, and was taken on board Redburn’s ship which was not due to leave for a few days. Together in the roadside inns, every fascination—more news about the companion and his friendship with the Marquis of Waterford and Lady Georgiana Theresa, “the noble daughter of an anonymous earl.”

Harry is stone-broke one moment, but darts away and will return with money which will provide for an astonishing trip to London. (There is no record of a trip from Liverpool to London during this early journey in 1839 nor by the time the book was published in 1849 when Melville sailed to London for the first time almost two weeks after the publication of Redburn.) When they alight in the city, Harry puts on a mustache and whiskers as a “precaution against being recognized by his own particular friends in London.” A feverish atmosphere of hysteria and panic falls upon poor Harry and is part of the chiaroscuro mastery with which his character and the club scene that follows are so brilliantly rendered. And fearlessly rendered in sexual images of decadence and privilege in an astonishing embrace.

The club is a “semi-public place of opulent entertainment” described in a mixture of subterranean images—Paris catacombs—and faux Farnese Palace decorations. In the first room entered, there is a fresco ceiling of elaborate detail. Under the gas lights it seems to the bewildered gaze of Redburn to have the glow of the “moon-lit garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers, Lorenzo and Jessica, lurked somewhere among the vines.” There are obsequious waiters dashing about, under the direction of an old man “with snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket—he looked like an almond tree in blossom….” In a conventional club manner, there are knots of gentlemen “with cut decanters and taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.”

Redburn, throughout the scene, is curious and alarmed by Harry’s way of leaving him standing alone in this unaccountable atmosphere. They proceed to a more private room; so thick are the Persian carpets he feels he is sinking into “some reluctant, sedgy sea.” Oriental ottomans “wrought into plaited serpents” and pornographic pictures “Martial and Suetonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of the Emperor Tiberius.” A bust of an old man with a “mysteriously- wicked expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.”

Harry in a frantic return to private business suddenly puts a letter into Redburn’s hand, which he is to post if Harry does not return by morning. And off he goes, but not before introducing Redburn to the attendant as young Lord Stormont. For the now terrified American, penniless son of a senator and so on, the place seemed “infected” as if “some eastern plague had been imported.” The door will partly open and there will be a “tall, frantic man, with clenched hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.” On Redburn goes in images of fear and revulsion. “All the mirrors and marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent still.” The macabre excursion with its slithering images passes as in a tormented dream and Harry returns to say, “I am off for America; the game is up.”

The relation between the two resumes its boyish pleasantries. Back on ship, Harry, in full maquillage, comes on deck in a “brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap to stand his morning watch.” When ordered to climb the rigging, he falls into a faint and it becomes clear that his account of shipping to Bombay was another handy fabrication. Nevertheless, Redburn remains faithful in friendship, and they land in New York. The chapter heading is: “Redburn and Harry, Arm and Arm, in Harbor.” Redburn shows him around, introduces him to a friend in the hope of finding work, and then leaves him as he must, since he could hardly take the swain back to Lansingburgh. Years later he will learn that Harry Bolton had signed on another ship and fallen or jumped overboard.

In the novel there is another encounter, this of lyrical enthusiasm untainted by the infested London underworld. It is Carlo, “with thick clusters of tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears.” His “naked leg was beautiful to behold as any lady’s arm, so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace.” He goes through life playing his hand organ in the streets for coins. Now, on the deck, Redburn sinks into a paroxysm of joy at the sound of the “humble” music:

Play on, play on, Italian boy!… Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes…let me gaze fathoms down into thy fathomless eye…. All this could Carlo do—make, unmake me;…and join me limb to limb…. And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy, with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling’s door!

The scenes with Harry Bolton were not much admired; as an “intrusion,” contemporary critics seemed to rebuke them for structural defects rather than for the efflorescent adjectives, the swooning intimacy of feeling for male beauty of a classical androgynous perfection that will reach its transcendence in the innocent loveliness of Billy Budd, his heartbreaking death-bed vision.

Hershel Parker, the encyclopedic biographer and tireless Melville scholar, finds no charm in the “flaccid” Harry Bolton and has interesting thoughts on why Melville was so clearly dismissive of Redburn, a work of enduring interest.

“What he thought he was doing in it, as a young married man and a new father, is an unanswered question.” And: “…Only a young and still naive man could have thought that he could write a kind of psychological autobiography…without suffering any consequences.” Parker suggests that Melville came to understand the folly of what he had written, came to acknowledge that he had revealed homosexual longings or even homosexual experience.

Parker provides another item in the atmosphere that surrounded the days and nights of the writer. At the time, there sprang up in America a group called the Come-Outers, a sect wishing to follow Paul’s exhortation in II Corinthians 6:17: “Wherefore come out from them, and be ye separate.” It was the object of the group to reveal information ordinarily held private. Parker’s research seems to indicate that Melville knew about the sect, but did not notice that he had “unwittingly joined the psychological equivalent of this new American religious sect; in mythological terms, he had opened Pandora’s box when he thought he was merely describing the lid.”

It is not clear whether the Come-Outers were, as in the present use of the term, to announce themselves as homosexual when such revelations were relevant. In the biblical text, Paul seems to be referring to Corinthians who were worshiping idols or pretending to virtues they did not practice, such as sorrow while rejoicing, pretending poverty while piling up riches.

However, if Melville rejected Redburn because he came to see it as an embarrassing and unworthy self-revelation, why did he open the pages of the subsequent Moby-Dick with the tender, loving union of Queequeg and Ishmael, a charming, unprecedented Mann und Weib? Another wonder about life and art: Where did Melville come upon the ornate and lascivious men’s club he described with feral acuteness in Redburn? There is no record found in the cinder and ashes of Melville’s jottings to bring the night journey into history. But does the blank forever erase the possibility that the extraordinary diversion actually took place? Harder to credit that Melville, in his imagination or from what is sometimes called his use and abuse of sources, was altogether free of the lush, disorienting opening of the door.

Better writing, and better reading too. Hardwick indeed gives us the best read of Melville, something that helped me love him despite what everybody says about him. She did so by drawing attention to a peculiar little short story. From Bartleby the Scrivener:

I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate diverse histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.
…

At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically
…

In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”

I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, “I would prefer not to.”

“Prefer not to,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride. “What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to help me compare this sheet here—take it,” and I thrust it towards him.

“I would prefer not to,” said he.
…

I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt additional incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against again. I remembered that Bartleby never left the office.

“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step round to the Post Office, won’t you? (it was but a three minute walk,) and see if there is any thing for me.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“You will not?”

“I prefer not.”

I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind inveteracy returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?—my hired clerk? What added thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he will be sure to refuse to do?

“Bartleby!”

No answer.

“Bartleby,” in a louder tone.

No answer.

“Bartleby,” I roared.

Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.

“Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.”

“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared.

“Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely severe self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner-hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind.

And now the true masterpiece, Hardwick’s Bartleby in Manhattan, regrettably clipped:

Out of some sixteen thousand words, Bartleby, the cadaverous and yet blazing center of all our attention, speaks only thirty-seven short lines, more than a third of which are a repetition of a single line, the celebrated, the “famous,” I think one might call it, retort: I would prefer not to. No, “retort” will not do, representing as it does too great a degree of active mutuality for Bartleby—reply perhaps.

Bartleby’s reduction of language is of an expressiveness literally limitless. Few characters in fiction, if indeed any exist, have been able to say all they wish in so striking, so nearly speechless a manner. The work is, of course, a sort of fable of inanition, and returning to it, as I did, mindful of the old stone historical downtown and the new, insatiable necropolis of steel and glass, lying on the vegetation of the participial declining this and that, I found it possible to wish that “Bartleby, the Scrivener” was just itself, a masterpiece without the challenge of its setting, Wall Street. Still the setting does not flee the mind, even if it does not quite bind itself either, the way unloaded furniture seems immediately bound to its doors and floors.

Melville has written his story in a cheerful, confident, rather optimistic, Dickensian manner. Or at least that is the manner in which it begins. In the law office, for instance, the copyists are introduced with their Dickensian tics and their tic-names: Nipper, Turkey, and Ginger-nut. An atmosphere of comedy, of small, amusing, busy particulars, surrounds Bartleby and his large, unofficial (not suited to an office) articulations, which are nevertheless clerkly and even, perhaps, clerical.

The narrator, a mild man of the law with a mild Wall Street business, is a “rather elderly man,” as he says of himself at the time of putting down his remembrances of Bartleby. On the edge of retirement, the lawyer begins to think about that “singular set of men,” the law-copyists or scriveners he has known in his thirty years of practice. He notes that he has seen nothing of these men in print and, were it not for the dominating memory of Bartleby, he might have told lighthearted professional anecdotes, something perhaps like the anecdotes of servants come and gone, such as we find in the letters of Jane Carlyle, girls from the country who are not always unlike the Turkeys, Nippers, and Ginger-nuts.

The lawyer understands that no biography of Bartleby is possible because “the materials do not exist,” and indeed the work is not a character sketch and not a section of a “life,” even though it ends in death. Yet the device of memory is not quite the way it works out, because each of Bartleby’s thirty-seven lines, with their riveting variations, so slight as to be almost painful to the mind taking note of them, must be produced at the right pace and accompanied by the requests that occasion them. At a certain point, Bartleby must “gently disappear behind the screen,” which, in a way, is a present rather than a past. In the end, Melville’s structure is magical because the lawyer creates Bartleby by allowing him to be, a decision of nicely unprofessional impracticality. The competent, but scarcely strenuous, office allows Bartleby, although truly the allowance arises out of the fact that the lawyer is a far better man than he knows himself to be. And he is taken by surprise to learn of his tireless curiosity about the incurious ghost, Bartleby.

The lawyer has a “snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title deeds,” rather than the more dramatic actions before juries (a choice that would not be defining today). He has his public sinecures and when they are officially abolished he feels a bit of chagrin, but no vehemence. He recognizes the little vanities he has accumulated along the way, one of which is that he has done business with John Jacob Astor. And he likes to utter the name “for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it and rings like unto bullion.” These are the thoughts of a man touched by the comic spirit, the one who will be touched for the first time in his life, and by way of his dealings with Bartleby, by “overpowering, stinging melancholy…a fraternal melancholy.”

A flurry of copying demand had led the lawyer to run an advertisement which brought to his door a young man, Bartleby, a person sedate, “pallidly neat, politely respectable.” Bartleby is taken on and placed at a desk which “originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy backyards and bricks, but which owing to subsequent erection, commanded at present no view at all.”

This is a suitable place for Bartleby, who does not require views of the outside world and who has no “views” of the other kind, that is, no opinions beyond his adamantine assertion of his own feelings, if feelings they are; he has, as soon becomes clear, his hard pebbles of response with their sumptuous, taciturn resonance.

Bartleby begins to copy without pause, as if “long famishing for something to copy.” This is observed by the lawyer who also observes that he feels no pleasure in it since it is done “silently, palely, mechanically.” On the third day of employment, Bartleby appears, the genuine Bartleby, the one who gives utterance. His first utterance is like the soul escaping from the body, as in medieval drawings.

The tedious proofreading of the clerk’s copy is for accuracy done in collaboration with another person, and it is the lawyer himself who calls out to Bartleby for assistance in the task. The laconic, implacable signature is at hand, the mysterious signature that cannot be interpreted and cannot be misunderstood. Bartleby replies, I would prefer not to.

The pretense of disbelief provides the occasion for I would prefer not to soon to be repeated three times and “with no uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence.” By the singularity of the refusal, the absence of “because” or of the opening up of some possibly alternating circumstance, this negative domination seizes the story like a sudden ambush in the streets.

Bartleby’s “I” is of such a completeness that it does not require support. He possesses his “I” as if it were a visible part of the body, the way ordinary men possess a thumb. In his sentence he encloses his past, present, and future, himself, all there is. His statement is positive indeed and the not is less important than the “I,” because the “not” refers to the presence of others, to the world, inevitably making suggestions the “I” does not encompass.

Bartleby would prefer not to read proof with his employer, a little later he would prefer not to examine his own quadruplicate copyings with the help of the other clerks, he would prefer not to answer or to consider that this communal proofreading is labor-saving and customary. About his “mulish vagary”—no answer.

As we read the story we are certain that, insofar as Bartleby himself is concerned, there is nothing to be thought of as “interesting” in his statement. There is no coquetry; it is merely candid, final, inflexible. Above all it is not “personal”; that is, his objection is not to the collaborators themselves and not to the activity of proofreading, indeed no more repetitive than daylong copying. The reply is not personal and it is not invested with “personality.” And this the kind and now violently curious and enduring lawyer cannot believe. He will struggle throughout the tale to fill up the hole, to wonder greatly, to prod as he can, in search of “personality.” And the hole, the chasm, or better the “cistern,” one of the lawyer’s words for the view outside Bartleby’s desk, will not be filled.

What began as a comedy, a bit of genre actually, ends as tragedy. But like Bartleby himself it is difficult for the reader to supply adjectives. Is Bartleby mysterious; is his nature dark, angular, subterranean? You are deterred by Bartleby’s mastery from competing with him by your command of the adjective. He is overwhelmingly affecting to the emotions of the lawyer and the reader, but there is no hint that he is occupied with lack, disuse, failure, inadequacy. If one tries to imagine Bartleby alone, without the office, what is to be imagined? True, he is always alone, in an utter loneliness that pierces the lawyer’s heart when he soon finds that Bartleby has no home at all but is living in the office at night.

(No home, living in the office day and night. Here, having exempted this story from my study of Manhattanism because of its inspired occupation with an ultimate condition and its stepping aside from the garbage and shards of Manhattan history, I was stopped by this turn in the exposition. Yes, the undomesticity of a great city like New York, undomestic in the ways other cities are not—then, and still now. Bartleby, the extreme, the icon of the extreme, is not exactly living in the office. Instead he just does not leave it at the end of the day. But it is very easy to imagine from history where the clerks, Nipper and Turkey, are of an evening. They are living in lodging houses, where half of New York’s population lived as late as 1841: newlyweds, families, single persons. Whitman did a lot of “boarding round,” as he called it, and observed, without rebuke, or mostly without rebuke, that the boarding house led the unfamilied men to rush out after dinner to the saloon or brothel, away from the unprivate private, to the streets which are the spirit of the city, which are the lively blackmail that makes city citizens abide.

Lodgings then, and later the “divided space” of the apartment house, both expressing Manhattanism as a life lived in transition. And lived in a space that is not biography, but is to be fluent and changeable, an escape from the hometown and the homestead, an escape from the given. The rotting tenements of today are only metaphysical apartments and in deterioration take on the burdensome aspect of “homes” because they remind, in the absence of purchased maintenance, that something “homelike” may be asked of oneself and at the same time denied by the devastations coming from above, below, and next door. Manhattan, the release from the home, which is the leaking roof, the flooded basement, the garbage, and, most of all the grounds, that is, surrounding nature. “After I learned about electricity I lost interest in nature. Not up-to-date enough.” Mayakovsky, the poet of urbanism.

So Bartleby is found to be living in the office day and night. But Bartleby is not a true creature of Manhattan because he shuns the streets and is unmoved by the moral, religious, acute, obsessive, beautiful ideal of Consumption. Consumption is what one leaves one’s “divided space” to honor, as the Muslim stops in his standing and moving to say his prayers five times a day, or is it six? But Bartleby eats only ginger-nuts and is starving himself to death. In that way he passes across one’s mind like a feather, calling forth the vague Hinduism of Thoreau and the outer-world meditations of Emerson. Thoreau, who disliked the city, any city, thought deeply about it, so deeply that in Walden he composed the city’s most startling consummations, one of which is: “Of a life of luxury, the fruit is luxury.”)

To return, what is Bartleby “thinking” about when he is alone? It is part of the perfect completeness of his presentation of himself, although he does not present himself, that one would be foolhardy to give him thoughts. They would dishonor him. So, Bartleby is not “thinking” or experiencing or longing or remembering. All one can say is that he is a master of language, of the perfect expressiveness. This is shown when the lawyer tries to revise him.

On an occasion, the lawyer asks Bartleby to go on an errand to the post office. Bartleby replies that he would prefer not to. The lawyer, seeing a possibility for an entropic, involuntary movement in this mastery of meaning, proposes an italicized emendation. He is answered with an italicized insistence.

“You will not?”
“I prefer not.”

What is the difference between will not and prefer not? There is no difference insofar as Bartleby’s actions will be altered, but he seems to be pointing out by the italics that his preference is not under the rule of the conditional or the future tense. He does not mean to say that he prefers not, but will if he must, or if it is wished. His “I” that prefers not, will not. I do not think he has chosen the verb “prefer” in some emblematic way. That is his language and his language is what he is.

Prefer has its power, however. The nipping clerks who have been muttering that they would like to “black his eyes” or “kick him out of the office,” begin, without sarcasm or mimicry, involuntarily, as it were, to say to the lawyer, “If you would prefer, Sir,” and so on.

Bartleby’s language reveals the all of him, but what is revealed? Character? Bartleby is not a character in the manner of the usual, imaginative, fictional construction. And he is not a character as we know them in life, with their bundling bustle of details, their suits and ties and felt hats, their love affairs surreptitious or binding, family albums, psychological justifications dragging like a little wagon along the highway of experience. We might say he is a destiny, without interruptions, revisions, second chances. But what is a destiny that is not endured by a “character”? Bartleby has no plot in his present existence, and we would not wish to imagine subplots for his already lived years. He is indeed only words, wonderful words, and very few of them. One might for a moment sink into the abyss and imagine that instead of prefer not he had said, “I don’t want to” or “I don’t feel like it.” No, it is unthinkable, a vulgarization, adding truculence, idleness, foolishness, adding indeed “character” and altering a sublimity of definition.

Bartleby, the scrivener, “standing at the dead-wall window” announces that he will do no more copying. No more. The lawyer, marooned in the law of cause and effect, notices the appearance of eyestrain and that there is a possibility Bartleby is going blind. This is never clearly established—Melville’s genius would not want at any part of the story to enter the region of sure reason and causality.

In the midst of these peculiar colloquies, the lawyer asks Bartleby if he cannot indeed be a little reasonable here and there.

“‘At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,’ was his mildly cadaverous reply.”

There is no imagining what the sudden intrusion of “at present” may signify and it seems to be just an appendage to the “I,” without calling up the nonpresent, the future. From the moment of first refusal it had passed through the lawyer’s mind that he might calmly and without resentment dismiss Bartleby, but he cannot, not even after “no more copying.” He thinks: “I should have as soon thought of turning my pale, plaster-of-Paris bust of Cicero outdoors.” Ah. The “wondrous ascendancy” perhaps begins at that point, with the notion that Bartleby is a representation of a life, a visage, but not the life itself.

The lawyer, overcome by pity, by troubling thoughts of human diversity, by self-analysis, goes so far as to take down from the shelf certain theological works which give him the idea that he is predestined to “have Bartleby.” But as a cheerful, merely social visitor to Trinity Church, this idea does not last and indeed is too abstract because the lawyer has slowly been moving into a therapeutic role, a role in which he persists in the notion of “personality” that may be modified by patience, by suggestion, by reason.

Still, at last, it is clear that Bartleby must go, must be offered a generous bonus, every sort of accommodation and good wish. This done, the lawyer leaves in a pleasant agitation of mind, thinking of the laws of chance represented by his overhearing some betting going on in the street. Will Bartleby be there in the morning or will he at last be gone? Of course, he has remained and the offered money has not been picked up.

“Will you not quit me?”
“I would prefer not to quit you.”

The “quitting” is to be accomplished by the lawyer’s decision to “quit” himself, that is, to quit his offices for larger quarters. A new tenant is found, the boxes are packed and sent off, and Bartleby is bid goodbye. But no, the new tenants, who are not therapists, rush around to complain that he is still there and that he is not a part of their lease. They turn him out of the offices.

The lawyer goes back to the building and finds Bartleby still present, that is, sitting on the banister of the stairway in the entrance hallway.

“What are you doing here, Bartleby?”
“Sitting on the banister.”

The lawyer had meant to ask what will you do with your life, where will you go, and not, where is your body at this moment. But with Bartleby body and statement are one. Indeed the bewitching qualities, the concentrated seriousness, the genius of Bartleby’s “dialogue” had long ago affected the style of the lawyer, but in the opposite direction, that is, to metaphor, arrived at by feeling. His head is full of images about the clerk and he thinks of him as “the column of a ruined temple” and “a bit of wreck in the mid-Atlantic.” And from these metaphors there can be no severance.

There with Bartleby sitting on the banister for life, as it were, the lawyer soars into the kindest of deliriums. The therapeutic wish, the beating of the wings of angels above the heads of the harassed and affectionate, unhinges his sense of the possible, the suitable, the imaginable. He begins to think of new occupations for Bartleby and it is so like the frenzied and loving moments in family life: would the pudgy, homely daughter like to comb her hair, neaten up a bit, and apply for a position as a model?—and why not, others have, and so on and so on.

The angel wings tremble and the lawyer says: “Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?”

Bartleby, the unimaginable promoter of goods for sale, replies with his rapid deliberation. Slow deliberation is not necessary for one who knows the interior of his mind, as if that mind were the interior of a small, square box containing a single pair of cuff links.

To the idea of clerking in a store Bartleby at last appends a reason, one indeed of great opacity.

“There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.”

Agitated rebuttal of “too much confinement” for one who keeps himself “confined all the time”!

Now, in gentle, coaxing hysteria, the lawyer wonders if the bartender’s business would suit Bartleby and adds that “there is no trying of the eyes in that.”

No, Bartleby would not like that at all, even though he repeats that he is not particular.

Would Bartleby like to go about collecting bills for merchants? It would take him outdoors and be good for his health. The answer: “No, I would prefer to be doing something else.”

Doing something else? That is, sitting on the banister, rather than selling dry goods, bartending, and bill collecting.

Here the lawyer seems to experience a sudden blindness, the blindness of a bright light from an oncoming car on a dark road. The bright light is the terrible clarity of Bartleby.

So, in a blind panic: “How then would be going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation—how would that suit you?”

“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is anything definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.”

Definite? Conversation is not definite owing to its details of style, opinion, observation, humor, pause, and resumption; and it would not be at all pleasing to Bartleby’s mathematical candor. Bartleby is definite; conversation is not. He has said it all.

But I am not particular? This slight addition has entered Bartleby at the moment the lawyer opens his fantastical employment agency. The phrase wishes to extend the lawyer’s knowledge of his client, Bartleby, and to keep him from the tedium of error. Bartleby himself is particular, in that he is indeed a thing distinguished from another. But he is not particular in being fastidious, choosey. He would like the lawyer to understand that he is not concerned with the congenial. It is not quality he asserts; it is essence, essence beyond detail.

The new tenants have Bartleby arrested as a vagrant and sent to the Tombs. The same idea had previously occurred to the lawyer in a moment of despair, but he could not see that the immobile, unbegging Bartleby could logically be declared a vagrant. “What! He a vagrant, a wanderer that refuses to budge?”

No matter, the lawyer cannot surrender this “case,” this recalcitrant object of social service, this demand made upon his heart to provide benefit, this being now in an institution, the Tombs, but not yet locked away from the salvaging sentiments of one who remembers. A prison visit is made and in his ineffable therapeutic endurance the lawyer insists there is no reason to despair, the charge is not a disgrace, and even in prison one may sometimes see the sky and a patch of green.

Bartleby, with the final sigh of one who would instruct the uninstructable, says: I know where I am.

In a last urging, on his knees as it were, the lawyer desires to purchase extra food to add to the prison fare.

Bartleby: “I would prefer not to dine today. It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners.” And thus he dies.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Today the blog is highly pleasured to be the situation for a guest-post by the distinguished local Uday. Even if you haven’t read Melville’s novel ‘Bartleby’, it’s a really fascinating and enlightening read. It’s also an eye-and-brainful, so if you can’t read the entirety today, just do your best and book the post for later. It’s super worth it. Thank you so much, Uday, for making this place your and your thoughts’ home. ** James, Ho! As in Santa Claus. Wow, I managed to make a family-friendly post. How about that! Thanks for your kind and generous attention. Greetings from deep within the small rectangular screen of your phone. Saucy: you and the ever gayer fella. Somehow the band’s name does not lend itself to being snipped into a badge of honor. Strange though. I have heard people use the term Pollardian. In fact, I have used it quite a number of times. The Pollardians? Maybe. I’ll try it out. ‘Crash’ is good. Although you could easily find it wanting, you being you. Good morning! ** Misanthrope, I trust your okayness has persisted. Arguments have been made that discipline and hence work is the cure all. George, you can easily imagine what I think about the sick, stupid, greedy directives coming from the top of the USA these days, your situation very included. Fuck the fucking fuck them. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Of those? Hm, maybe that hotel that looks like a gigantic geode? You? Alice Cooper! Whoop! Oh, big grey mother, I love you forever, With your barbed wire pussy and your good and bad weather, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ooh, bitch! The Tate just had a big Mike Kelley retrospective, so they should be cut at least that much slack, I reckon. ** Bill, Yes, truth be told, I don’t think I’d want to sleep in any of those. Now, Hotel Poseidon on the other hand. Based only on the description, mind you. I will at least check in with my eyes and ears. Thank you. ** Sypha, I too love staying in hotels. Often when I’m walking around in Paris I’ll suddenly wish I was a billionaire and could just go check into the Ritz or some other mega-expensive wherever for a night just for kicks. The last time I was in Japan I ended up in this town called Kaga and stepped off the train and looked up and saw this. Whoa. ** Steeqhen, Choosing the hamster and prison hotels no doubt says a lot about you, but I don’t know what. The Irish Kardashians, perish the thought. Yikes. Given your recent rants, you on controversial outfits should be quite entertaining. The photo shoot sounds quite exciting. You’re on the veritable roll. ** Midnight_Mass_Matt, Hi! Sorry about the blog’s persnicketiness. I don’t know what its problem is. R-G’s wife Catherine is a pal of mine. She’s wild. I’d forgotten that you originally published ‘Hunchback ‘88’. What a great book. Wow, amazing line up of books you have coming. I’ll stay peeled and trigger fingered. Respect! And thanks about my gig with Derek. Yeah, it was strangely really great in person even. For Derek and me, at least. Thanks! Excellent remaining week to you! ** Tyler Ookami, Hm, he sounds quite mercurial. I hope he’s the genius kind. Thanks for the YouTube channel. I eat that stuff up, so … thanks! Everyone, Tyler Ookami announces that there’s a Youtube channel that reviews theme hotels! And he even told us where it is! Here! The Ginger Snaps movies are swell. I think I’ve had them in a couple of posts here at some point. Agreed with you, obviously, about animatronic creatures vs. cg ones. You’ve probingly seen one of my yearly Halloween posts of my favorite animated props of the year. The drag variety show sounds unusually throwing one for a loop-like and exciting. ** Steve, Nothing too wild or extreme, hotel-wise. Efteling has a wacky theme hotel, I stayed there. Phantasialand has a steam punk hotel with glorified capsule rooms, I stayed there. The Madonna Inn. Nothing too exorbitant. Sorry about the necessary parents visit. Being a blood offspring is such a mixed bag. I kind of figured on that box set and saved my money. Good to know. ** HaRpEr, Cool, I’ll look for that Walser book. ‘Artists who revel in confusion/instability’: that definitely corrals most if not all of the writers I most love. I have a close friend here who is transitioning and the last time I saw him his voice was a register lower but other precisely the same and it sounded so right. I only know your voice from the film/video, but I like it, and you speaking/reading was ace, so I wouldn’t worry about the event. How was it? ** Justin D, Hello, Justin! Thanks so much about the interview and stills. I’m so excited that people are finally going to get to see the film starting very soon. No, I can tell right away about the allergy. All kinds of stores these days sell what they tag as ‘organic’ clothes, but a lot of time they’re not. I can just lay the palm of my hand on them and within ten seconds I start to get a tingling in my arm if it’s not actually organic. It’s a drag, but I’ve had the allergy since 1991, so I’m pretty accustomed to it. Thanks about the screening. I’m looking forward to it. We haven’t been present for a ‘PGL’ screening in quite a while. In fact I need to rewatch it today to make sure I remember it fully. I’m saving ‘The Brutalist’ for a long, tedious in-flight viewing if ever. ** jay, I agree. I love staying in hotels. Even rudimentary Motel 6 places. It’s weird. It doesn’t make sense, but it somehow does. It is interestingly nice when the only thing that differentiates a hotel room is what’s in the window. If I’m writing an interview, I’m like you, but I’m from LA, and when I talk I just open my mouth and let it extrude. I’ll check that link when I’m outta here, but I did peek long enough to know I’m kind of already in love with what’s at the other end, so thank you, pal. I hope today is your oyster. Such a strange saying. I wonder what it meant when someone initiated it. ** Dan Carroll, Hey! I enjoyed your essay a lot! So sharp and imaginative. It was beautiful. You’re so good. No, I didn’t know Phil Solomon’s work when I wrote ‘God Jr.’. It was influenced just by the games I was playing and most fascinated by. ‘Banjo Kazoo’ being the main one. But that you thought it was Solomon-eque is a real compliment, thank you. You as a scoutmaster, nice. I was in Boy Scouts. I actually had vague ideas of graduating to the Eagle rank, but I got kicked out because I refused to cut my long hair. No loss, ultimately. ** Right. Please pursue Uday’s thoughtful thoughts today, and I will see you tomorrow.