Every knitter and Orwell fan that you know will want this free download: a knitting pattern for a sweater depicting the cover of the iconic Penguin Classics version of George Orwell’s 1984. “The pattern includes extra alphabet charts so that you can customise the title and author to your favourite book.”
“When young and full of fellow feeling, Professor Joseph Skizzen had been tormented by the thought that the human race (which he naïvely believed was made up of great composers, a few harmlessly lecherous painters, maybe a mathematician or a scientist, a salon of writers, all aiming at higher things however they otherwise carried on) … that such an ennobled species might not prosper, indeed, might not survive in any serious way—symphonies sinking like torpedoed ships, murals spray-canned out of sight, statues toppled, books burned, plays updated by posturing directors; but now, older, wiser—more jaundiced, it’s true—he worried that it might (now that he saw that the human world was packed with politicians who could not even spell “scruple”; now that he saw that it was crammed with commercial types who adored only American money; now that he saw how it had been overrun by religious stupefiers, mountebanks, charlatans, obfuscators, and other dedicated misleaders, as well as corrupt professionals of all kinds—ten o’clock scholars, malpracticing doctors, bribed judges, sleepy deans, callous munitions makers and their pompous generals, pedophilic priests, but probably not pet lovers, not arborists, not gardeners—but Puritans, squeezers, and other assholes, ladies bountiful, ladies easy, shoppers diligent, lobbyists greedy, Eagle Scouts, racist cops, loan sharks, backbiters, gun runners, spies, Judases, philistines, vulgarians, dumbbells, dolts, boobs, louts, jerks, jocks, creeps, yokels, cretins, simps, pipsqueaks—not a mensch among them—nebbechs, scolds, schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps, dummkopfs, potato heads, klutzes, not to omit pushers, bigots, born-again Bible bangers, users, conmen, ass kissers, Casanovas, pimps, thieves and their sort, rapists and their kind, murderers and their ilk—the pugnacious, the miserly, the envious, the litigatious, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the lubricious, the jealous, the profligate, the gossipacious, the indifferent, the bored), well, now that he saw it had been so infested, he worried that the race might … might what? … the whole lot might sail on through floods of their own blood like a proud ship and parade out of the new Noah’s ark in the required pairs—for breeding, one of each sex—sportscasters, programmers, promoters, polluters, stockbrokers, bankers, body builders, busty models, show hosts, stamp and coin collectors, crooners, glamour girls, addicts, gamblers, shirkers, solicitors, opportunists, insatiable developers, arrogant agents, fudging accountants, yellow journalists, ambulance chasers and shysters of every sleazy pursuit, CEOs at the head of a whole column of white-collar crooks, psychiatrists, osteopaths, snake oilers, hucksters, fawners, fans of funerals, fortune-tellers and other prognosticators, road warriors, chieftains, Klansmen, Shriners, men and women of any cloth and any holy order—at every step moister of cunt and stiffer of cock than any cock or cunt before them, even back when the world was new, now saved and saved with spunk enough to couple and restock the pop … the pop … the goddamn population.”
From William H. Gass’s novel Middle C.
Like many Travel Between The Pages readers, I’m a big J.R.R.Tolkien fan. I can date my interest in Middle Earth back to a bit of graffiti that I saw on a wall in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood when I was 15 years old. Frodo Lives tweaked my attention and the rest is history. But my interest in all things Middle Earth pales when compared to the obsession of Swedish engineer Emil Johanssen’s fascination with “data visualization and the wonderful world created by J.R.R. Tolkien.” His LOTR Project is a masterclass in Tolkien’s fantasy world.
Even folks who have just a passing interest in the LOTR universe will find Johanssen’s project fascinating. Along with original interactive maps, data visualizations, timelines, statistics, and graphs, he offers a deep dive into the demographics of Tolkien’s world with an indepth analysis of the 982 characters that populate The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Silmarillion, and other posthumously published works.
Few writers have the ability to evoke a sense of horror and dread more effectively than Edgar Allan Poe, born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s parents were actors. Their bright but unstable son grew up to be a romantic poet, a master of macabre tales, the originator of the modern detective story, and an acute literary critic, editor, and journalist. Orphaned at age two, Poe grew up in the Richmond, Virginia home of a childless couple, merchant John Allan and his wife Frances. His foster parents treated him well. Allan paid for Poe’s education at schools in England and in Virginia. Poe showed an early gift for language and Allan enrolled him in the University of Virginia in February 1826.
Before the year was out, Poe, maintaining the lifestyle of a Virginia gentleman of substance, had accumulated a debt of $2,000. Poe angered his foster father—accusing him of providing inadequate financial support for his university expenses. Allan paid Poe’s charges to Charlottesville merchants, but refused to pay his gambling debts, regarded at that time by young gentlemen as “debts of honor.” When Poe returned to Richmond for Christmas, Allan refused to send him back to the university. For two months the pair argued at home, culminating in a huge fight in March 1827 that prompted Poe to move to Boston. In May, Poe enlisted in the army under an assumed name. While training as a soldier, he found time to write romantic poetry in the tradition of Lord Byron. His first volume of poems was published in 1827 as Tamerlane and Other PoemsExternal, “By a Bostonian.”
Allan and Poe were not in contact after Poe moved to Boston. Early in 1829, however, Poe’s regimental commanding officer, acting as intermediary, helped them reestablish communication. The death of Poe’s foster mother on February 28, 1829, sealed Allan and Poe’s reconciliation.
Poe was discharged from the army in April 1829. In May he took up residence in Baltimore with his grandmother Poe, and his aunt Maria Clemm and her children. He supported himself by holding odd jobs. In December 1829, a Baltimore publisher brought out Poe’s second volume of poetry, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor PoemsExternal.
Allan, who had resumed his financial support of Poe, assisted him in financing his entrance into the U.S. Military Academy. Poe enrolled in the Academy on July 1, 1830. Within the year, Poe’s academic career and his relations with Allan again ran aground. Poe drank to excess and ran up debts at West Point. By this time, Allan, who had remarried in October 1830, was more interested in starting a new family than dealing with the ongoing problems of his foster son. He again severed relations with Poe, this time permanently.
During the 1830s Poe’s writing began to attract notice. He published stories in the Philadelphia Courier, the Baltimore Sunday Visitor, and Godey’s Ladies Book. In 1835 he moved back to Richmond where he became editor and contributor to the Southern Literary Messenger. Shortly thereafter, he married his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm. Between 1835 and 1837, during his tenure with the Messenger, Poe published more than one hundred reviews and editorials in a regular literary column, and also brought out many new poems and stories. In 1838 he published his one full-length piece of fiction, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon PymExternal.
From 1838 until 1844, Poe lived with his wife and mother-in-law in Philadelphia. During these productive years, he served as editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, which became Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, publishing incisive literary criticism and some of his finest fiction, including “The Pit and the Pendulum”External, The Tell-Tale HeartExternal, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”External. In 1840 Poe’s stories were published in two volumes as Tales of the Grotesque and ArabesqueExternal. The publication of “The Gold-Bug”External and “The Black Cat”External in the summer of 1843 produced a literary sensation. He received even wider acclaim with the publication of “The Raven” in 1845.
Simultaneous with his development of gothic themes of terror, Poe experimented with the pleasure of logical analysis, which flowered in the creation of a new type of literature. Poe called the new genre the “tale of ratiocination.” The first story of this type, The Murders in the Rue MorgueExternal, featured an apparently inexplicable crime and a step-by-step analysis by the rational Frenchman Dupin, as narrated by his admiring and baffled sidekick. From this formula, which proved to be amenable to endless variations, arose the widely popular genre of the mystery novel and detective story.
In the spring of 1846, Poe and his wife, who had long been seriously ill, moved to a cottage in Fordham, New York. Virginia Clemm Poe died there the following January. During the next two years, Poe pursued a number of erratic romantic attachments with unavailable women, drank heavily, and made himself ill.
Increasingly incapacitated, Poe experienced bouts of delusion and paranoia. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semiconsciousness at Gunner’s Hall tavern in Baltimore. First thinking him to be intoxicated, physicians soon realized that his illness was of a more serious nature. Poe died in delirium at Washington College Hospital four days later. The official cause of death was reported by the Baltimore Clipper as “congestion of the brain.”
Poe’s romantic tales and poems had often involved the morbid dread of loss of an idealized female love object. This theme seems to have arisen from Poe’s grief over the early loss of his mother, followed by the deaths of his friend’s mother, when he was fifteen years old, and of his foster mother, when he was twenty. In the months before his own death he had penned several versions of one of his most famous and haunting poems on this theme.
“Annabel Lee” was published in the Richmond Examiner, the New York Tribune, and the Southern Literary Messenger, along with Poe’s obituary notice.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride
In her sepulchre there by the sea —
In her tomb by the side of the sea.
Source: LOC.gov
The Disappointed Tourist is a brilliant, on-going project in which artist Ellen Harvey is making paintings of places suggested by members of the public in response to the question: “Is there some place that you would like to visit or revisit that no longer exists?”
Artwork by Ellen Harvey
She has painted over 300 sites so far. Anyone can submit a site to be painted, although she does not guarantee that she will paint each site. All paintings are 24 x 18” (61 x 46 cm) and are painted in monochrome acrylic with oil glazes on wood panels and include the name of the site and the date of the site’s destruction. submitted.
The painting range from the prosaic sites such as New York City’s beloved Automat to sacred sites such as ruined Cluny Abbey.
We live in a world that often feels as though it is vanishing before our eyes. Places we love disappear. Places we have hoped to visit cease to exist. The forces of war, time, ideology, greed and natural disaster are constantly remaking places that we love but cannot control or save. The Disappointed Tourist is inspired by the urge to repair what has been broken. It makes symbolic restitution, literally remaking lost sites, at the same time that it acknowledges the inadequacy of such restitution. It is inspired both by old postcards and by the tradition of tourist painting – both the paintings produced for wealthy tourists to take home and the touring paintings that allowed pre-photographic viewers to experience far-off places. It attempts to honor the trauma underlying the nostalgia that results from our collective and individual losses, while celebrating the human attachment to places both real and aspirational. It tries to create a level playing field in which personal losses and larger cultural losses can meet and be recognized and create a new conversation about our love for our physical environment, harnessing nostalgia to create empathy rather than division.
Ellen Harvey, 2021
The project is currently on view until March 9, 2024 at Rowan University Art Gallery.
The new website From-To promises to ‘make new places familiar’. It does this by comparing districts in the city you wish to travel to with a city you know well. For example if you are traveling to New York from Berlin then From-To informs you that Friedrichshain is like the Bushwick, Brooklyn, Charlottenburg is like the Upper East Side.
This seems like a handy method to discover neighborhoods in new cities that might suit your travel sensebilities. From-To offers a hany shortcut in finding areas where you’ll be comfortable and uncover the types of places you want to visit. The From-To map allows users to drill down and find a more local details, with a list of activities that are possible to discover during a visit. From-To also includes a handy trip-planning tool. While exploring a city you can add whole neighborhoods or individual activities to your trip-planner. When finished From-To will even e-mail you your completed trip itinerary.
Books, by Erica Jong
By now you have probably seen dozens of news stories and blog posts (including mine) about the intellectual property that entered the Public Domain in the United States on January 1, 2024. Every article invariably highlighted the freeing of the earliest incarnations of Mickey Mouse from copyright. So far, the absolute top use of Mickey has been by cartoonist Randy Millholland on his website Mousetrapped. I have bookmarked the site and will be returning for more, and you will too.
Travel Between The Pages 