Reading Notes on Uncle Silas

Reading Notes: Sheridan LeFanu, Uncle Silas
January 2-4, 2009. Transcribed from Twitter.

Set-up of "Uncle Silas" surrounds young Maude with malign cast of characters, notably the comically devious governess Mdm de la Rougiere. 11:25 AM Jan 2nd from txt

Mdm Rougiere persuades Maud: "come, come, tell me little obstinate or I will break your little finger. Tell me everything." 1:26 PM Jan 2nd from txt

Maud's widowed father a Swedenborgian. He paces in and out of darkness -- and their house situated between visible and spirit worlds. 1:30 PM Jan 2nd from txt

The two portraits of Uncle Silas: the oval of golden-haired boy and full-length of the young rake: "a most expensive and vicious young man" 8:47 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Looking at the childhood portrait, Maud ponders from "what a small seed the hemlock or the wallflower grows." Her shy father the wallflower 8:59 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Cousin Monica speaks of Silas as a "sphinx" and Maud finds his expression unreadable: "derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or patience?" 9:51 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas, caustic, on his daughter Milly: "a very rustic Miranda and fitted rather for the society of Caliban, than of a sick old Prospero." 9:56 AM Jan 3rd from txt

LeFanu compares the reluctance of a sleepy child to go to bed with the struggle of the elderly to resist "the great sleep of death" 10:06 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas on Maud's report of beating of miller's daughter: "What a romantic little child, people of that rank think nothing of a broken head." 1:29 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Monica on Silas' ancient butler: "I won't wait for your butler, who would give me cakes baked by King Alfred and Danish beer in a skull." 3:33 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas subject to catatonic fits -- "queer spells" -- as well as selective quotation from the Bible, thus creating a new reputation for piety 3:37 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Monica sees Silas for the 1st time in 20 yrs: "Angels and ministers of grace! Such a specter! That odious smile makes me feel half insane." 3:59 PM Jan 3rd from txt

The bitter Silas to Monica: "We are very like turkeys, we have so much sense and generosity. Fortune wounded me, and the whole brood were upon me pecking and gobbling, gobbling and pecking, and you among them dear Monica. It wasn't your fault only instinct" 4:07 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas' fits: "hoverings between life and death, between intellect and insanity -- a dubious marsh fire existence, horrible to look on!" 5:09 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas' inner life a "systematic blasphemy" hidden beneath a deceptive surface that takes on rainments of humanity in order to lure others. 9:13 AM Jan 4th from txt

Silas akin to "goblin of the desert who appear in friendly shapes to stragglers from the caravan, lead them to where they're found no more" 9:18 AM Jan 4th from txt

"How marvelously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers one over the other! Take away that on the surface and straight you find a new stratum." 9:57 AM Jan 4th from txt

Toward end of "Uncle Silas," Mdm Rougiere asks Maud if she is cruel or just stupid. 450 pages spent in her dismal company confirm the latter 8:38 PM Jan 4th from txt

"Uncle Silas" fully partakes of British convention of centering a novel on an insipid figure, with real interest lying in subsidiary figures 8:42 PM Jan 4th from txt

Maud consistently ignores broad hints from other characters as to the plots against her: Christian charity taken to extreme of idiocy. 8:45 PM Jan 4th from txt

Supernatural in "Uncle Silas" just so much Gothic decor. Silas' demonism explained by opium addiction. Swedenborgian veil goes unlifted. 8:49 PM Jan 4th from txt

Reading Notes on The Beetle

Reading Notes: Richard Marsh, The Beetle
December 20-21, 2008. Transcribed from Twitter

Up a bit before dawn. Very snowy landscape with sky a cold blue. Got fire going. Reading Richard Marsh's Edwardian thriller "The Beetle." 7:27 AM Dec 20th, 2008 from txt

The Beetle's victim Robert Holt dehumanized on several registers: becoming an "automaton," an "invertibrate" and without will or volition. 8:11 AM Dec 20th, 2008 from txt

Holt also a sex object as The Beetle forces him to strip naked, admires his white skin, and implants a "blubbery" kiss that steals his soul 8:12 AM Dec 20th, 2008 from txt

Modern society represented by Lessingham, smooth politician with a secret in his past, and Atherton, blithe inventor of chemical weapons. 11:56 AM Dec 20th, 2008 from txt

Atherton displaces his murderousness from humans, killing his rival's cat and planning large scale test of nerve gas on Amazonian fauna. 12:50 PM Dec 20th, 2008 from txt

Rivalry of two kinds of magic: the Beetle's "survivor" arts of transmigration and mesmerism against Atherton's electrochemical science. 12:56 PM Dec 20th, 2008 from txt

Lessingham's cloudy past: "the man's a mushroom, a toadstool sprung up in the course of a single night, apparently out of some dirty ditch" 1:22 PM Dec 20th, 2008 from txt

"The Beetle": Faced with overwhelming evidence of the ineffible, it is so much the British way to densely cling to common sense. 9:33 AM Dec 21st, 2008 from txt

Debate in "The Beetle" on how much of his past a man must reveal; Atherton does not argue Lessingham's statement that "in all our lives there are episodes which we keep to ourselves." Both Holt and Lessingham pay for indiscretion of looking in a window. 11:08 AM Dec 21st, 2008 from txt

Detective as confessor. Lessingham opens up his sexual misadventure in Cairo: "I am altogether incapable of even hinting to you the nauseating nature of that woman's kisses ... I lay there like a log. She did with me as she would and in dumb agony I endured." 11:26 AM Dec 21st, 2008 from txt

Lessingham defines a Confidential Agent (Detective): "an experienced man of the world who has been endowed by nature with phenomenal perceptive abilities and in whose capacity and honor I can place the completest confidence." 12:39 PM Dec 21st, 2008 from txt

On ride-in from Hayward, H suggests Beetle's messy end in railway accident can be read as fate of ancient magic in face of modern technology 10:57 AM Dec 22nd, 2008 from web

At end of "The Beetle," Lessingham + Marjorie suffering from kind of proto-PTSD; strangely like the contemporary symptoms of child sex abuse 10:33 AM Dec 22nd, 2008 from web

Remarkably overt sexual tone of "The Beetle"; Marsh lacivious in insistence on nakedness and sadism as opposed to more allusive Stoker. 10:45 AM Dec 22nd, 2008 from web

In summing-up, suggestion that Egyptian den of the perversion cult is wiped out in British military raid; so Atherton's violence triumphs. 10:51 AM Dec 22nd, 2008 from web

"The Beetle" presages Anglo-American tendency to see sexuality as threatening and harmful (even evil) while violence is fun and patriotic 10:54 AM Dec 22nd, 2008 from web

Reading Notes on The Monk

Reading Notes: Matthew Lewis, The Monk
Nov 27-30, 2008. Transcribed from Twitter

Began M.G. Lewis's relentlessly sacreligious "The Monk," set in Spain which is to the British mind the site of religious excess in same way that France stands for the excess of irreligion. Difficult to say which the British fear and abhor more. 11:28 AM Nov 27th, 2008 from txt

The spurned Baroness: "my love is become hatred and my wounded pride shall not be unatoned. Go where you will, my vengeance will follow." 11:46 AM Nov 28th, 2008 from txt

Denoument of Nun with the Bleeding Hands episode has Melmothian figure, revealed to be the Wandering Jew (fiery cross on forehead and all). 9:01 AM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Lewis places age of sexual urgency at 30 rather than adolescence; in some ways, the travail of the monk Ambrosio is a midlife crisis. 9:11 AM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Forgiving sister's rape: "strict honor would oblige me to wash off in your blood the stain thrown upon my family; but the (cont'd) "circumstances of your case forbid me to consider you an enemy." The honorable solution is a Papal Bull and, of course, marriage. 9:34 AM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

In cases of both Ambrosio and "bleeding hands" nun (Beatrice) artificiality of convent system accentuates licentiousness. 9:46 AM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Matilda/Rosario's seduction of Ambrosio involves secret gift: a painting of the Madonna with her own features for him to adore in his cell. 11:44 AM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Matilda to Ambrosio post-coitis: "unnatural were your vows of celibacy; man was not created for such a state; were love a crime God would not have made it so sweet, so irresistible!" Her tempting of Ambrosio comes after she sucks poison from his blood. 11:53 AM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Elvira, mother of virginal Antonia, edits the bible used by her daughter, sees clearly the snares used by both noble and clerical seducers. 2:04 PM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Bible a reference book of sin: "every thing called by its name . . . the annals of a brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecency" 2:10 PM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Elvira warning Antonia of the monk's urges is careful "lest in removing the bandage of ignorance, the veil of innocence should rent away" 2:19 PM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Matilda, adept of natural philosophy, advocate of unrestrained passion. The image she conjures of Antonia shows a playful bird at her breast 2:36 PM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

His attempts to seduce Antonia with religion foiled by Elvira, Ambrosio, with temptress Matilda's aid, tries again with Satanic methods. 2:52 PM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Ambrosio precursor of Raskolnikov: "The murdered Elvira was constantly before his eyes, his guilt already punished by agonies of conscience" 3:54 PM Nov 29th, 2008 from txt

Ambrosio is only character drawn in 3 dimensions, so for all his perfidy he demands sympathy for his quick descent from virtue and status. 9:18 AM Nov 30th, 2008 from txt

Satan appears first to Ambrosio as naked youth then, at time for surrender of soul, as snake-crowned, sable-winged monster, iron pen in hand 10:06 AM Nov 30th, 2008 from txt

Satan gloats over Ambrosio: "Know vain man that I have long marked you for my prey: I watched the movements of your heart; I saw you were virtuous from vanity not principle, and I seized the fit moment of seduction." S thus reveals he plotted A's doom from outset 11:11 AM Nov 30th, 2008 from txt

Lewis ends "The Monk" in moral fashion, but without abandoning his critique of convent system or of nobility's relative insularity. 11:48 AM Nov 30th, 2008 from txt

Reading Notes on Private Confessions and Memoirs of a Justified Sinner

Reading Notes: James Hogg, Private Confessions and Memoirs of a Justified Sinner
November 8-9, 2008. Transcribed from Twitter

Cold drizzle. Made first fire of the year: slow to start but roaring now. Starting Hogg's "Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" 8:44 AM Nov 8th from txt

"The ways of heaven are altogether inscrutable and soar as far above and beyond the works and comprehension of man as the sun flaming in majesty, is above the tiny boy's evening rocket" 10:00 AM Nov 8th

Rife w/ doubles, specters. Book's dilemma: "we have nothing on earth but our senses to depend on; if these deceive us, what are we to do?" 12:38 PM Nov 8th from txt

Mrs Logan on Robert Wringham: "I believe he sees every one of his actions justified before God, and instead of having stings of conscience for these, he takes great merit to himself in having effected them" Calvinst belief in predestination becomes demonic. 1:25 PM Nov 8th from txt

In Confessions, Robert addresses readers as "wicked of the world." Non elect's names "written on the red letter side of the book of life" 2:33 PM Nov 8th from txt

Robert's demon similar to Dostoevsky's "Double" in his antic capering and his visibility to others. But also intimate, like Twain's No. 44 8:45 AM Nov 9th from txt

Robert warned: "There is not an error into which man can fall, which he may not press Scripture into his service as proof of the probity of" 9:09 AM Nov 9th from txt

The devil Gil-Martin places veil of mist betw Robert + heaven, similar to demonic fog George sees vying with the rainbow atop Arthur's Seat 10:05 AM Nov 9th from txt

Link to "Jeckyl and Hyde" clear in how Robert sleeps while other does mayhem. Duality in several registers: theology, psych, social, folk. 2:32 PM Nov 9th from txt

In story of ultra-godly town of Auchtermuchty, only the unbeliever -- who knows the language of crows -- can see the new Minister is a devil 2:46 PM Nov 9th from txt

Robert Wringhim also somewhat recalls Frederic's Theron Ware in that he takes spiritual doctrine as applicable to real life. 7:33 PM Nov 9th from txt

Scene shifts to a printing office (presaging Twain's #44). Robert intends to publish his Confessions in the guise of a Bunyanesque allegory. 10:01 PM Nov 9th from txt

Confessions ends with no clear determination of what truly occurred: epic of delusion? supernatural visit? or hypocritical "justification"? 8:42 AM yesterday from web

Also interesting in Confessions to think of the religiously "justified" sinning (+ murder) in relation to the dubious concept of "just" war about 22 hours ago from web