Cinema, despite its thunderous claims to originality, is in truth a great necromancer. It raises the dead more often than it invents the living, and its spirits wear borrowed costumes even when paraded as new. When James Wan and Leigh Whannell conjured Insidious, they weren’t scribbling out some pristine mythology in a Hollywood boardroom but … Continue reading Dreams That Wander Too Far: From Plato to The Further
Tag: fiction
The Forgotten Divinity: On The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
“Great Pan is not dead, but sleeping; and the reed shall sound again at the hour of need.” - Adapted from Plutarch It’s a curious feature of English children’s literature that its most enchanting works are often its most subversive. Carroll slipped logic puzzles and ontological riddles into Alice; Tolkien smuggled Catholic theology into hobbit … Continue reading The Forgotten Divinity: On The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
The Wooden Shadow: Laura Purcell’s Silent Companions and the Gothic of Hollow Lives
Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions - a book which proves, if nothing else, that the Victorians couldn’t leave well enough alone. If it wasn’t séances or table-tipping, it was cardboard aristocrats painted to look like Aunt Mildred, propped up in drawing rooms like the world’s most unnerving IKEA mannequins. History assures us they were ‘decorative,’ … Continue reading The Wooden Shadow: Laura Purcell’s Silent Companions and the Gothic of Hollow Lives
Ash and Smoke at Wolf’s Nick: Evelyn Foster Between Fact and Fire
“We see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” — 1 Corinthians 13:12 The death of Evelyn Foster has become one of those crimes whose unsolved nature is almost more essential than its facts. In the bleak January of 1931, a young woman, independent enough to drive her own car for hire, was discovered … Continue reading Ash and Smoke at Wolf’s Nick: Evelyn Foster Between Fact and Fire
The Petty Jealousy of a Pretender: George R. R. Martin vs. Tolkien
I recently stumbled across a post taking shots at Tolkien, quoting George R. R. Martin’s usual grumblings about The Lord of the Rings - no tax policies for Aragorn, evil vanquished too ‘neatly’ when the Ring was destroyed, destiny over realism, and so on. The more I read, the more it irritated me. Tolkien wasn’t … Continue reading The Petty Jealousy of a Pretender: George R. R. Martin vs. Tolkien
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