One of my favorite writers is J.M.G. Le Clézio, a French author with perhaps the most lyrical prose style I’ve ever encountered. Le Clézio’s novels, such as Le Chercheur D’Or and Étoile Errante, are wondrous works of supreme artistry, but I treasure equally his moving Nobel Lecture, “Dans La Forêt Des Paradoxes.” I would like to present an excerpt which I found to be especially meaningful and relevant, about the necessity of literature and of books. The following text is © The Nobel Foundation 2008:

Literature—and this is what I have been driving at—is not some archaic relic that ought, logically, to be replaced by the audiovisual arts, the cinema in particular. Literature is a complex, difficult path, but I hold it to be even more vital today than in the time of Byron or Victor Hugo.

There are two reasons why literature is necessary:

First of all, because literature is made up of language. The primary sense of the word: letters, that which is written. In French, the word roman refers to those texts in prose which for the first time after the Middle Ages used the new language spoken by the people, a Romance language. And the word for short story, nouvelle, also derives from this notion of novelty. At roughly the same time, in France, the word rimeur (from rime, or rhyme) fell out of use for designating poetry and poets—the new words come from the Greek verb poiein, to create. The writer, the poet, the novelist, are all creators. This does not mean that they invent language, it means that they use language to create beauty, ideas, images. This is why we cannot do without them. Language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity, the one which came before everything, and which makes it possible to share everything. Without language there would be no science, no technology, no law, no art, no love. But without another person with whom to interact, the invention becomes virtual. It may atrophy, diminish, disappear. Writers, to a certain degree, are the guardians of language. When they write their novels, their poetry, their plays, they keep language alive. They are not merely using words—on the contrary, they are at the service of language. They celebrate it, hone it, transform it, because language lives through them and because of them, and it accompanies all the social and economic transformations of their era.

When, in the last century, racist theories were expressed, there was talk of fundamental differences between cultures. In a sort of absurd hierarchy, a correlation was drawn between the economic success of the colonial powers and their purported cultural superiority. Such theories, like a feverish, unhealthy urge, tend to resurface here and there, now and again, to justify neo-colonialism or imperialism. There are, we are told, certain nations that lag behind, who have not acquired their rights and privileges where language is concerned, because they are economically backward or technologically outdated. But have those who prone their cultural superiority realized that all peoples, the world over, whatever their degree of development, use language? And that each of these languages has, identically, a set of logical, complex, structured, analytical features that enable it to express the world, that enable it to speak of science, or invent myths?

Now that I have defended the existence of that ambiguous and somewhat passé creature we call a writer, I would like to turn to the second reason for the necessity of literature, for this has more to do with the fine profession of publishing.

There is a great deal of talk about globalization these days. People forget that in fact the phenomenon began in Europe during the Renaissance, with the beginnings of the colonial era. Globalization is not a bad thing in and of itself. Communication has accelerated progress in medicine and in science. Perhaps the generalization of information will help to forestall conflicts. Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler’s criminal plot would not have succeeded—ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day.

We live in the era of the Internet and virtual communication. This is a good thing, but what would these astonishing inventions be worth, were it not for the teachings of written language and books? To provide nearly everyone on the planet with a liquid crystal display is utopian. Are we not, therefore, in the process of creating a new elite, of drawing a new line to divide the world between those who have access to communication and knowledge, and those who are left out? Great nations, great civilizations have vanished because they failed to realize that this could happen. To be sure, there are great cultures, considered to be in a minority, who have been able to resist until this day, thanks to the oral transmission of knowledge and myths. It is indispensable, and beneficial, to acknowledge the contribution of these cultures. But whether we like it or not, even if we have not yet attained the age of reality, we are no longer living in the age of myths. It is not possible to provide a foundation for equality and the respect of others unless each child receives the benefits of writing.

And now, in this era following decolonization, literature has become a way for the men and women in our time to express their identity, to claim their right to speak, and to be heard in all their diversity. Without their voices, their call, we would live in a world of silence.

Culture on a global scale concerns us all. But it is above all the responsibility of readers—of publishers, in other words. True, it is unjust that an Indian from the far north of Canada, if he wishes to be heard, must write in the language of the conquerors—in French, or in English. True, it is an illusion to expect that the Creole language of Mauritius or the West Indies might be heard as easily around the world as the five or six languages that reign today as absolute monarchs over the media. But if, through translation, their voices can be heard, then something new is happening, a cause for optimism. Culture, as I have said, belongs to us all, to all humankind. But in order for this to be true, everyone must be given equal access to culture. The book, however old-fashioned it may be, is the ideal tool. It is practical, easy to handle, economical. It does not require any particular technological prowess, and keeps well in any climate. Its only flaw—and this is where I would like to address publishers in particular—is that in a great number of countries it is still very difficult to gain access to books. In Mauritius the price of a novel or a collection of poetry is equivalent to a sizeable portion of the family budget. In Africa, Southeast Asia, Mexico, or the South Sea Islands, books remain an inaccessible luxury. And yet remedies to this situation do exist. Joint publication with the developing countries, the establishment of funds for lending libraries and bookmobiles, and, overall, greater attention to requests from and works in so-called minority languages—which are often clearly in the majority—would enable literature to continue to be this wonderful tool for self-knowledge, for the discovery of others, and for listening to the concert of humankind, in all the rich variety of its themes and modulations.

I’m ecstatic to present this interview with Paul Savage, former drummer for The Delgados–my all-time favorite band–and current music producer at Chemikal Underground, the great record label the band founded and still operate today. Below, you’ll find our discussion of The Delgados’ music, career, and legacy; hopefully, fellow fans will find it as fascinating as I did!

SCP: The internet has wrought massive changes upon the music industry and music culture over the past decade. Do you feel that these changes are mostly positive–that the web makes it easier for listeners to discover bands like The Delgados–or are you more skeptical of its effects on music?

PS: I must admit I think the internet has, overall, been a negative influence on the music industry. There have been lots of positives, but from someone who runs a label and a studio, I can only see an industry which can’t afford to pay the artist what they’re due. Lots of small labels are ceasing to trade, bands are finding it hard to juggle working and playing in a band and a lot end up splitting up before they’ve really started. Mainstream major labels still have enough money to invest in a few artists but not as much as they used to. This means they play it even safer than they used to and go for much more sure bets.

I certainly haven’t noticed any increase in attention for anything we’ve done as The Delgados recently so if there’s a lot of new fans due to internet awareness then we’re not being made aware of them…maybe we should get our website up and running again.

SCP: Domestiques and Peloton are the band’s most stylistically varied albums. What were some of the musical influences that went into the making of those records?

PS: I think we wanted the first record to reflect our varied tastes and show a bit more of what we could do. By that I mean the acoustic and slightly darker tracks. The direction of Peloton came about from a Peel session we did as a bit of an experiment. On this session we used a string quartet and did songs that were a bit more ambitious than we had tried before. The reaction to the session was great and we continued this on to the recording of the record.

SCP: What was the band’s songwriting process like, especially for the construction of your longer, more complex tracks? How did the addition of Dave Fridmann as producer for The Great Eastern affect that process?

PS: We spent a long time writing the songs in our rehearsal space. It would usually start with Alun or Emma playing a song in its simplest form on guitar. Stewart and I would try and find an interesting way to represent that song–which would sometimes mean completely changing the feel, tempo or even time signature. Dave tended to cut a lot of stuff out of our songs rather than have stuff added. We recorded it all in Glasgow so it was ready for Dave to mix when we brought it over to him, but it was way too full and Dave was able to make sense of what we had.

SCP: To my view, Hate is the The Delgados’ greatest album, but it’s very dark, both musically and lyrically. What inspired the band to make such a bleak record?

PS: A few things influenced the making of Hate. My mother died very unexpectedly just after we finished touring The Great Eastern. It obviously affected me very deeply but I think it also was very hard for the rest of the band as well. Emma and I had just got married and my mother was very close to her. She had always been very supportive of the band from the very beginning and had known Alun and Stewart for years as we’ve been friends from high school. The first song on the album is one that Emma wrote in the months after she died. I always feel it describes the sadness, numbness, and eventually, the healing process that we went through.

Another influence was a project that we did which was to put music to the very dark and disturbing paintings of Joe Coleman. These paintings were shown on film at the Barbican in London while we played live to it. The paintings usually depicted gruesome portraits of famous tragic “celebrities” like Ed Gein, Jayne Mansfield and Mary Bell. A lot of the complex sections and darkness came from the pieces that we wrote for this—“Child Killers,” “Never Look at the Sun,” and “Coalman” (which was a b-side).

SCP: Were the more hopeful lyrics and the stripped-down, pop-influenced sound of Universal Audio a conscious reaction against the previous album?

PS: Yes it probably was. I think with The Great Eastern and Hate we’d taken that sound as far as we could and wanted to try something different. I personally have always found that the hardest thing to do properly is “pop” music. It’s pretty easy to hide behind obscure, dark, obtuse music and lyrics which can give a the impression of depth (please don’t think that’s what we were doing–I just think that’s the case with so many bands). It’s much harder to come out with direct, clever popular music that resonates with a lot of people.

SCP: How difficult was it to balance the demands of both running a record label and being in a band?

PS: At times it was very difficult but the truth is that we never knew it any other way so couldn’t really say we missed just being the band. We could see how other bands functioned and we would be envious of their freedom but we got a lot out of working both so I don’t think we’d have had it any other way.

SCP: Scotland has a great indie rock scene, with bands like Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks, and The Twilight Sad achieving international success. Paul, I know that you’ve done some production work for The Twilight Sad; would you say that any of these bands are consciously influenced by The Delgados?

PS: I know Scott from Frightened Rabbit likes some of our stuff but I don’t think we’re really an influence on them or the others mentioned.

SCP: Many of the iconic indie bands of the 1990s have gotten back together for reunion tours. Have the members of The Delgados ever considered reuniting either live or in the studio?

PS: We’ve never talked about it. We get on and see each other a lot but I can’t see any reason for it to happen.

SCP: Will we see any new material from Emma Pollock or Alun Woodward soon?

PS: They’re both writing new material so hopefully 2012 will see them getting albums together. That probably means late 2012 or 2013 before anything new comes out for either of them.

SCP: Finally, how would you summarize the continuing legacy of The Delgados?

PS: That’s tough. I still think we’re still too close to the end of the band to talk of legacy–it still feels to me like last year that we split up so can’t really think of us as having any great lasting effect. I’m very proud of the records and I suppose that’s the most important thing we’ve left behind.

SCP: Paul, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you!

Here’s my list of my favorite lps and eps released in 2011:

1. Aesthethica – Liturgy
2. Celestial Lineage – Wolves in the Throne Room
3. The King of Limbs – Radiohead [and their "Supercollider / The Butcher" and "The Daily Mail / Staircase" singles]
4. Ravedeath, 1972 – Tim Hecker
5. New Brigade – Iceage
6. David Comes to Life – Effed Up
7. Street Halo – Burial
8. Mammal – Altar of Plagues
9. Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I – Earth
10. Burst Apart – The Antlers
11. Violet Cries / Hexagons - Esben and the Witch
12. James Blake / Enough Thunder / Love What Happened Here – James Blake
13. Bon Iver, Bon Iver – Bon Iver
14. A Winged Victory for the Sullen – A Winged Victory for the Sullen

In this essay, I’d like to posit Henry James as the Father of the Weird and to nominate Robert Aickman as his truest literary heir. What follows is only a preliminary exposition of this postulated relationship and of these writers’ aesthetics of the uncanny, but I hope it will serve to encourage readers not only to reexamine the artistry of Henry James but also to seek out Aickman’s fiction and to subject it to the close readings it richly deserves.

The weird is, of course, as old as storytelling itself, but it’s my contention that of all modernist writers, Henry James laid the psychoanalytical foundations for twentieth-century weird fiction–the finest author of which was surely the undeservedly neglected Robert Aickman. When we examine their striking textual similarities, the distance between James’ late novels and Aickman’s stories is not nearly as great as we might otherwise believe. (And if you’re interested in reading Aickman, you might as well splurge on the gorgeous Tartarus Press editions of Sub Rosa and Cold Hand in Mine–his best collections–I’ve linked to above [1].)

James is infamous for the fine-grained detail of his explorations of phenomenological consciousness; the late novels which constitute his supreme literary achievement–The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl [2]–seem as though they could swell endlessly in length, their serpentine sentences coiling inexorably around the reader’s mind. But the constant calculations of the characters in these works result in deception instead of comprehension; with few exceptions (like Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove), they can understand their own consciousness no more than they can grasp the minds of others. As in Hegel’s concept of the Beautiful Soul, James’ characters often disavow their libidinal investments, their unconscious knowledge of repressed content, in order to preserve the world of social appearances (like Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl)–what Jacques Lacan called the Big Other of the symbolic order. (Lambert Strether, the protagonist of The Ambassadors, stands somewhere between the two subjective positions represented by Verver and Croy.) A master of restraint, James demonstrates the failures and limitations of the bourgeois ego as he lets that unconscious knowledge speak through the silences and aporias of his texts.

This acknowledgement of the primacy of the unconscious–which is, as Lacan noted, like a Möbius band, simultaneously inside and outside of the subject–is what points the way to the essentially Freudian nature of James’ fiction. It’s not coincidental, I think, that James’ main supernatural or uncanny texts (“The Turn of the Screw” chief among them) were written during this late phase of his career. In these works, the weird is identified with the return of the repressed. Even if James’ characters succeed in not disturbing the symbolic order, in maintaining social appearances, their unconscious knowledge is nevertheless inscribed or registered in the uncanny underside of the Big Other, from which it will inevitably return. To invoke Lacan once again, the message returns to the sender in inverted form, this time disclosing its latent content. The supernatural, it would seem, is a symptom in the precise Freudian sense of the word, and horror is a natural extension of the weird–Freud and Lacan both held that the affects of fear and anxiety signal the proximity of the real, the proximity of the objet petit a of one’s jouissance (or the unattainable object of desire). (For Aickman, as for Charles Baudelaire, horror can be an oasis in “a desert of boredom.”)

The weird, then, is not a reaction against modernism, but rather a further dialectical twist, one which radicalizes the premises and impasses of modernism itself. In the psychoanalytical epistemology of modernism, the subject can touch the unsymbolizable real (whose foreclosure guarantees the consistency of the symbolic order itself–a key theme in James’ fiction) through a kind of aesthetic grace, through the epiphanies central to the work of Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, Woolf, etc. In weird fiction, though, the real is always-already repressed because of its traumatic nature, its status as “forbidden” knowledge. The weird is heightened realism, with the supernatural as an irreducible, ambiguous supplement: simultaneously otherness and literalized metaphor. Early Lovecraft exemplifies this stance, although he eventually returned to a more conventionally modernist praxis in which the real is no longer traumatic per se.

Which brings us to Robert Aickman, the author of some of the most exquisitely stylized, and exquisitely terrifying, weird fiction ever written. The most salient similarities between the fiction of James and Aickman are their characters’ penchant for (self-)deception and their authorial love for ambiguity. In Aickman’s allusive, oneiric fiction, nothing is ever explained definitively or conclusively; all is made strange. The wonderful epigraph to Cold Hand in Mine, which serves as Aickman’s aesthetic credo, tells us that “in the end it the mystery that lasts and not the explanation.” Because Aickman’s elegantly constructed fiction is so dreamlike, it readily lends itself to psychoanalytic interpretations of its symbolism–for a perfect example, see Aickman’s classic horror story “Ringing the Changes.”

But these parallels conceal a deeper difference in their aesthetic ontologies, a fundamental gap between two logics of sexuation [3]. A queer writer par excellence, James’ protagonists are almost always sexuated as feminine regardless of biological sex, pointing the way toward a logic of the non-All. James was a materialist; for him, the uncanny is inexistent, an epiphenomenal projection of the subject’s unconscious–in Lacanian terms, the uncanny serves the same structural role as the subject supposed to know. For Aickman, though, the supernatural has an autonomous existence and causal power of its own, as in the films of David Lynch (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire…). With some fascinating exceptions in which Aickman writes of the masculine acceptance of loss and lack, his fiction remains caught in the phallic logic of the signifier. Aickman thus lacks James’ characteristic reticence: while his prose is elegant and restrained in form, it is pure id in content.

[Furthermore, does not the difference between Aickman and James exemplify the passage from the symptomatic discourse of the hysteric to the subversive discourse of the analyst? In Lacan's theory of the four discourses, the discourse of the analyst (the position of Henry James) is produced by giving an interpretive twist to the discourse of the hysteric (the position of Robert Aickman)--the same theoretical turn that led Freud to develop psychoanalysis from his case studies of hysterical patients. The analyst's discourse is also the inverse of the despotic discourse of the master and another turn away from the disciplinary discourse of the university.]

Eros, in its guise as Thanatos [4], is Aickman’s ultimate source of terror (and terror in his fiction takes the form of romantic humiliation, depression, and existential loneliness as frequently as it does the affect of fear): literally so in his most Jamesian story, “Never Visit Venice,” and more figuratively in the remainder of Sub Rosa and Cold Hand in Mine. The uncanny women in “Ravissante” and “The Swords” initiate the male protagonists into fearful mysteries of art and sex; in “No Stronger Than a Flower” and “Pages From a Young Girl’s Journal,” they become terrifying avatars of the inherent violence of gender roles; in “Niemandswasser” and “Meeting Mr Millar” they revenge themselves upon men or lead men to their doom; and in “The Unsettled Dust,” “The Same Dog,” and “The Clock Watcher,” they serve as haunting symbols of loss, lack, mortality, and the passage of time. In “The Inner Room” and “The Hospice,” Aickman chillingly, ruthlessly satirizes and deconstructs ideals of feminine domesticity. What unites all of these stories, however, is not gynophobia, but rather a Freudian awareness that the figure of the Woman is one of les noms-du-père.

Aickman’s most extraordinary work of fiction, though, is arguably neither a ghost story nor a horror story: it’s titled “Into the Wood,” and it features his most sympathetic female  character. The story’s central conceit–a remote hospice in the mountains (shades of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain) in which the insomniac guests wander mysterious forest paths all night long–is a metaphor for the link between melancholia and creativity, which any keenly sensitive person will recognize. I found “Into the Wood” achingly poignant and ultimately moving in the protagonist’s courageous decision to abandon her former life and, upon developing insomnia herself, to remain among her fellow sleepless. She accomplishes the passage of jouissance from symptom to sinthome.

Henry James was one of fiction’s greatest masters, but he never permitted his characters the inner strength, the ability to act and determine their fate as Aickman allowed in “Into the Wood.” James was too aware of socioeconomic constraints upon subjectivity to do otherwise; conversely, Aickman–far more more a romantic than James–realized that traversing the fantasy can have the perverse effect of liberating our desires. Indeed, Lacan identified this as the ethics of psychoanalysis itself: “ne pas ceder sur son desir.” An encounter with the real, Aickman seems to say, does not necessarily end with the traumatic return of the repressed; if we can pass through the eponymous dark forest and emerge from the other side [5], we can achieve a sort of maturity, courage, and even, perhaps, the beginnings of hope.

1. Intriguingly, Tartarus Press also once published Henry James’ collected tales of the uncanny, titled The Sense of the Past.

2. James’ bizarre psychological novel The Sacred Fount, which written directly before the three aforementioned works, is an important precursor both to his major phase as a novelist and to Aickman’s later strange stories.

3. Lacan’s formulae of sexuation refer not only to a fundamental impasse / gendered subjective gap within ontology but also to different ways of relating to or obtaining jouissance, or enjoyment.

4. It should be noted that in psychoanalysis, Eros and Thanatos are not separate archetypes but rather identical: two aspects of the Freudian death drive.

5. See also the Inferno by Dante Alighieri: “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, / Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / Che la diritta via era smarrita.”

Lucius Shepard needs no introduction: he’s one of speculative fiction’s finest prose stylists, smartest critics, and best raconteurs, and the forthcoming publication of his collected The Dragon Griaule stories (from Subterranean Press in May 2012) will cement the status of that story cycle not only as one of the greatest achievements of fantasy fiction, but also as a true masterpiece of contemporary literature. I’ve known Lucius through many years of commenting on his discussion board and blog (usually to talk about movies and music), and he and I conducted this interview via email. Interested readers may also wish to check out Shepard’s account of Griaule’s genesis.

SCP: You’ve returned to the world of “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” more frequently than almost any of your other fictional settings. What draws you to this setting and to the conceit of Griaule itself?

LS: Some of reasons have been cynical, money and so on, but I guess the main reason is that people kept asking if there were going to be more of them. Then, too, Griuale is quite a flexible conceit, one that will support every type of story, and do so with an entertaining level of invention. Thinking about stuff like the amount of blood in the dragon’s body, the kinds of parasites that might thrive inside him, and all that is fun for me. I doubt I’ll ever finish with Griaule.  Even now that he’s dead, doubly so, I still have the authorial right to set more stories at different points during his long life.  In fact, I’m working on one now, a short novel about a doctor who discovers something miraculous about Griaule’s blood.

SCP: How much of Griaule’s world was inspired by your travels in Central and South America?

LS: Pretty much all of it. The landscapes are all modeled after places in Honduras, except for the short novel, “The Skull,” which is set in Guatemala, and the mix of expatriates in the various stories are loosely based on people I’ve known down there.

SCP: How has your conception of this story cycle (and its thematic relation to the modern world) evolved over the past twenty-five years? How does your new novel, “The Skull,” fit into the sequence?

LS: Early on, I wasn’t really thinking about the modern world, except in terms of some general human considerations–I mean I didn’t intend the stories to be allegorical, although I considered the dragon to be a sort of mirror to human need, being all things to all men. But as the stories and the years went by, I began to realize the dragon’s personality was becoming manifest, and that he was, in the end, a villain. So if one thinks of the dragon as a type of governance, a restraint upon people’s behavior, like the threat of God or some more worldly authority…well, then Griaule reflects the progression of the public’s relation to government (in the west, at any rate), at first seeing it vaguely to be a benign necessity, and finally viewing it as an enemy, recognizing that the main function of every government is to mold its citizenry into an obedient mass and kill or in some other fashion neutralize those who are disobedient. So the stories reflect that progression, at least.

SCP: There are certain philosophical and political concepts that weave throughout the series—fate vs. free will, the relationship between love and creativity / storytelling, state and capital as non-All, etc. Does your fictional handling of these themes more or less reflect your own personal beliefs?

LS: Yeah, more or less, though I doubt that I’d ever spend much tine wondering whether a dragon was to blame for my personal condition, and I’m far more of a pinko than comes across in the stories. That’s not as true in other stories, in which I’m trying to define a wider range of characters.

SCP: One of the things I admire about your prose writing is your command of rhythm. Would you attribute this quality more to your literary influences or to your background in rock music?

LS: I don’t think rock and roll was much of an influence. My childhood grounding in English lit, which was intense, likely has much more to do with it. From the age of five I was taught to have a good ear for language, and that stands me in good stead. I’ve always been conscious that readers–intelligent readers, anyway–possess an ear and are sensitive to the sonority of the words or the lack thereof, so I try and satisfy that aspect of things.

SCP: How would you characterize the current political situation in the United States? In particular, what are your thoughts on the Occupy movement?

LS: The current situation is dire. The middle class is crumbling under the onslaughts of the right and is, mostly, too anaesthetized to respond. Our freedoms are being stripped away, while the idiot groundlings of the right wave flags and celebrate our right to have these freedoms stripped. I support the Occupy movement, I support anything that disrupts the status quo, but I fear it’s too little too late. The powers that be are learning how to suppress the Occupiers and the public attention span is so short and the media’s suppressive force so potent, I doubt the movement will survive the winter in more than a skeleton form. But I’d love to be wrong about that.

SCP: Lastly, what can you tell us about your upcoming publications for 2012 and beyond?

LS: I working on a bunch of short fiction, but I’m unsure what will be out in 2012–one novella at least, “American Police Haiku,” and probably a fantasy novella set in Tibet with a very long title. Working on a couple of novels, one a big adventure book and the other a post-apocalyptic thing with an unusual twist.

SCP: Lucius, thank you for your time!

“Les non-dupes errent.”–Jacques Lacan

Film, as we once knew it, is over: all that remains of cinema is the spectacle, and the future history of motion pictures will be the history of animation.

America’s preeminent film critic, J. Hoberman, has been advancing an argument to this effect (in essays like “The Film Critic of Tomorrow, Today,” whose title and thesis follows that of early theorist Rudolf Arnheim) for several decades. His forthcoming book Film After Film (from Verso) will expand on his theories regarding post-cinema and the digital turn, and as a fan of Hoberman’s reviews and essays, I’m very much looking forward to reading the book.

But while I don’t want to turn Hoberman into a rhetorical strawman through a premature, reductive caricature of his central claim, I’ve just seen a movie so good that it calls his entire theoretical project into question.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo–his best work in ages, adapted from Brian Selznick’s excellent  children’s book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret–is the finest, most lovingly crafted, and most moving film I’ve seen this year. It’s one of Scorsese’s most passionate and personal films, presenting a founding myth of cinema (and cinephilia) and eloquently advocating for the preservation of its history. Anyone who genuinely cares about movies as an art form will find it deeply affecting.

Hugo tells the story of the rediscovery of the life and work of Georges Méliès, the pioneering French filmmaker best known for Le Voyage Dans La Lune. The steampunkish universe of Hugo is resolutely Newtonian, a clockwork world in which everything, and everyone, falls into place; the narrative, once wound up, patiently unspools in its own time. Scorsese seems to suggest that there is an inherent symmetry to all stories and all characters. There is nothing so broken, he says, that it cannot be fixed, repaired, healed. Everyone finds their lost object or other half by the end.

Analogue film is but one of several retrofuturistic technologies in Hugo that reflect this mechanistic-humanistic order of things. Scorsese conjures up a bygone world of carousels and pocket watches, windup toys and automata. The plot literally hinges upon one of these constructs and the search for its missing piece. Indeed, Gilles Deleuze once observed (in Cinema 1: The Movement Image) that pre-WWII French film–the era of film that Hugo homages–seems to dance to the mechanical rhythms of a music box: film as automaton. Silent films portrayed humans as becoming-machine, as a kind of organic excess trying to extricate itself from between the gears of a technological society. For many theorists, the dialectic of film mirrored this relation; as Walter Benjamin discussed in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, the revolutionary potential of film can be located not only in the spectacle of the subject–the human actor–struggling within and against the technological apparatus of cinema, but also in the eponymous quality of reproducibility, which simultaneously undermines and reinforces the status of art as commodity. I will deal with these two claims separately.

By returning to the beginnings of cinema, Hugo proposes a different settlement with technology, a new kind of consilience opposed to Benjamin’s first thesis. Rather than reducing us to slaves of a mode of production or of instrumental reason itself, technology opens up alternative spaces for all manner of identities, spaces we can live inside. Our relationship with it is symbiotic.

Benjamin’s other thesis links together political economy, history, and aesthetics, but Hugo counters his argument by fashioning an alternative narrative of cinema history. Whereas Benjamin celebrated the immateriality of film, Scorsese, by contrast, emphasizes both its spectral nature (a ghost returned to haunt Georges Méliès after his bitter abandonment of the medium) and its inherent physicality; in the period during and immediately following WWI, Méliès’s reels of film were famously melted down and turned into boot heels, and his studio and sets were either abandoned or burned. Contra Benjamin, Hugo shows us that film can be lost and destroyed in very real and tragic ways. Its condition of being grounded in materiality and finitude makes it all the more precious. Film is thus sous rature, under erasure, forever suspended between presence and absence.

Following the work of Andre Bazin, Hoberman argues that cinema once had a privileged, unmediated relation to the real, a link that has been severed by the so-called digital turn. With the rise of animation, he claims, film no longer needs a camera or even a world. But by presenting Méliès’ work as the mythical-historical foundation of cinema itself, Hugo gloriously falsifies this hypothesis. Film was always-already fallen and fantastical; it has never been anything but a dream, a medium of the imagination; it is, at most, a mere trace or palimpsest of the real: illusion at 24 frames per second. (“Truth,” as Jacques Lacan reminds us, “has the structure of a fiction.”)

Scorsese seeks to enchant the audience with Méliès’ factory of the unconscious. In this context it’s particularly apropos that he filmed Hugo in 3D–the first film I’ve seen in which the potentials of this technology are fully realized and integrated into the themes and narrative of the film. Scorsese visually cites the profound effects the Lumière Brother’s first films had on the viewing public’s consciousness: the spectacle of a train racing toward the camera shocked the audience, causing them to instinctively dive away from the screen. While our “frame of reality” has shifted since then, rendering us desensitized to such perspectives, early film still had the power to short-circuit the imagination. Scorsese seeks to amaze us with 3D in precisely the same manner of those early filmmakers and their viewers, selecting stunning camera angles, tracking shots, and long takes to explore the gorgeously detailed space of the train station in which the film is set.

For a family film, then, Hugo is both nostalgic and oddly radical–radical in the literal sense of returning to one’s roots, to film before film, in order to draw a new line of flight. Scorsese’s excavations of the prehistory of cinema open up manifold possibilities for a cinema of the imagination, which, instead of being forced to choose between reflecting or escaping from the real world, can transform and recreate it in the most surprising and marvelous ways. Méliès, a magician as well as a filmmaker, knew this intimately.

Hugo‘s celebration of Méliès as the visionary founding father of cinema reminds me of nothing so much as the first stanzas of Wallace Steven’s “The Man With the Blue Guitar”:

The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

 

They said, “You have a blue guitar,

You do not play things as they are.”

 

The man replied, “Things as they are

Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

 

Film, far from being over, far from always being an empty spectacle, has never lost its power to project the individual imagination and thus change “things as they are.”  Which is, in the end, just another synonym for magic.

[Update: Here's some heartening new information: The Galaxy will not be closing, but rather transitioning from a record store to a music performance venue, art gallery, and cultural center. Please visit their website for more details and a schedule of upcoming shows. The Rock and Roll Era is still awake!]

“The future belongs to the analog loyalists.”–Steve Albini

Today I received an email announcing some deeply sad news—Galaxy CDs, my small but beloved local independent record store, is closing by the end of October (after a remarkable eleven years in business). I’ve only been a customer at the Galaxy for the past few years, but I purchased nearly every new release there, and I could almost always find something interesting in their selection of new and used CDs. (They were also incredibly quick about fulfilling special orders.) What I’ll miss the most, though, is the atmosphere. Ryan, the proprietor, did an incredible job of making the Galaxy a friendly, welcoming place for people of all ages to hang out and shop in—there was always good music playing, cool artwork, a couch to sit on and chat, and even the occasional live show. It’s a testament to how much loyal customers appreciated the Galaxy that the only thing I could think of when I read Ryan’s email was the chorus to Pavement’s “Fillmore Jive”: Goodnight to the Rock and Roll Era.

Spaces for alternative culture (and I still genuinely believe in the revolutionary potential of rock music and culture) are vital to the existence of a democratic society. Galaxy CDs was one such space for alternative culture, a space where music was not a commodity but a passion, a community, one which which celebrated the most ephemeral of all the arts. I’ve always loved the materiality of a vinyl record or a CD–the album as an art object–and I believe the finitude of music is what gives it value and beauty. This is why I encourage every reader to visit and support his or her local record store—they deserve your business far more than Amazon.com.

I’ll never forget the Galaxy and what its little corner of the world meant to me as a young indie music fan. Ryan and Galaxy CDs were truly a force for good, and for that I cannot thank them enough.

My dear friend Anna Tambour’s blog, Medlar Comfits, is always worth reading; it’s full of her lovely photography, keen wit, and intelligent and sensuous prose. But I thought her recent post about Facebook and social networking was particularly superb, so I decided to share it here as well.

Needless to say, I agree totally. Social networking trivializes real friendship, devalues relationships, commodifies enjoyment, privatizes the cultural commons, and annihilates language and aesthetics. This is precisely why I treasure the Cawein-Teasdale letters and Otto Rothert’s The Story of a Poet far beyond their relevance as historical documents–they conjure up a time when friendship and communication were meaningful, a sentiment that I try to value, preserve, and share in my life and relationships as well.

I’ve just learned of a new twist to the story of Madison Cawein (see my thesis on Cawein here) thanks to Sharon Cummings, a collector / dealer of literary memorabilia who  specializes in items from the poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933). Ms. Cummings recently came into possession of a trove of Teasdale’s letters, which were auctioned off at the estate sale of Teasdale’s friend and biographer Margaret Carpenter. Apparently, a handful of the letters were sent from Madison Cawein to Sara Teasdale, ranging from 1909 to 1912. To my delight, Ms. Cummings found my thesis in researching Madison Cawein online, and since I’m related, albeit distantly, she decided to contact me to ask if I would want the letters. I enthusiastically said yes.

These letters constitute quite an interesting rediscovery, one which further illuminates a forgotten corner of literary history. Otto Rothert says in his The Story of a Poet (which reprinted all of Cawein’s extant letters) that Teasdale thought her correspondence with Cawein was lost. Otherwise, the only mention of her in the book occurs in a letter from Cawein to the poet, critic, and anthologist Jessie B. Rittenhouse, a friend of Cawein’s. Cawein says he is anxious to meet Teasdale in person and to introduce her to Rittenhouse, and he goes on to claim that Teasdale “is writing exquisite verse” and “will be heard from unquestionably, in the world of poetry, later on, as one of our greatest poets.” Considering that Teasdale is still well known, this is a fairly accurate judgment.

The correspondence would have occurred near both the end of Cawein’s life (1914) and the beginning of Teasdale’s career (as she published her first of four poetry collections in 1911); when these cordial letters began, Teasdale would have been only 25 years old and Cawein 44. This age gap between the two poets suggests that Cawein may have been a direct influence on a new generation of younger and more modern writers. (Which, of course, we already knew re: T.S. Eliot.) All of this underscores my contention that Cawein is a crucial mediator / missing link in twentieth century poetry.

The letters discuss Cawein’s travels, the bad review given to his work by the New York Times critic Shaemas O’Sheel (which I discuss in my thesis), and his book Nature Notes and Impressions, of which he sent a copy to Teasdale. In return, she sent Cawein some of her verse, and because he introduced Teasdale to Rittenhouse, I would be willing to surmise that Cawein helped her first break into publication. Teasdale’s first collection, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, which was Cawein’s publisher at the time as well. And due to the Cawein connection, I’ve begun to read more of Teasdale’s poetry (having been previously familiar with only ten or so of her poems), and I can definitely see many strong similarities between the themes and styles of the two writers.

Thank you again to Sharon Cummings for these fascinating and charming letters! I have scanned and transcribed all seven to the best of my ability, so they are presented below for first time. Interested readers can click on any image to magnify it to full-size.

Envelopes 1-3: October 1909, March 1910, October 1911

Envelopes 4-6: December 1911, December 1911, April 1912

Envelope 7: December 1912

Letter 1: October 18, 1909

My Dear Miss Teasdale:–

You hit it correctly. It was last year at Annisquam, near Gloucester, in the month of September that I saw the wonderful display of Northern Lights. The meteor passed directly through the splendor overhead. Mrs. Cawein and I were the guests of Mr. Eric Pape for that month and it was at his artistic and hospitable home and in the surrounding woods that I wrote all the sonnets including the one on the Aurora.

This summer we were there again with Mr. Pape, at a house party which included the poet Percy Mackaye and the eminent dramatist Charles Rann Kennedy, author of The Servant in the House, and his wife, whose stage name is Edith Wynn Matthison, greatest of the living English actresses.

I want to thank you for your kind words regarding my work.

Your work impressed me greatly, as it has also impressed my most critical and poetry loving friend Dr. H.A. Cottell, who has several of your lyrics by heart and repeats them constantly.

Mr. Gibson can tell you all about Cottell and what a lover of good poetry he is and what it means to have won his approval.

With wishes for your success, believe me, faithfully yours, Madison Cawein.

Letter 2: March 17, 1910

Dear Miss Teasdale:–

Your letter was good to receive. I thought the poems about Florida would appeal to you. I am sending you today another book of mine entitled “Nature Notes.” In it you will find a long prose note made in one of my notebooks when I took a trip up the Ocklawaha.

Ere this, doubtless, you are home again, and probably have seen Mr. Gibson, from whom I had a letter yesterday. He writes me of a new poem of yours which he says he intends sending me as soon as Dr. De Menil returns it. I am sure that I shall enjoy it if it is on the order of the blank verse piece by you which I read with such great pleasure in the February Forum.

With best wishes, believe me, ever sincerely yours, Madison Cawein.

Letter 3: October 26, 1911

Dear Miss Teasdale:–

Thank you for your good words about my book of Poems. If it pleased you as much as your Helen of Troy delighted me I am satisfied.

As to Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse–I have had several communications from her this month. She has spent several weeks at her summer home in Michigan, Mullett Lake, it is, and is now back in New York at work on a book, she tells me, which occupies all her time. Probably she failed to receive your vol. of poems. Her address in New York is #602, West 157th St. You might write her there and get a definite answer as to whether or not she received your book. She is indeed a charming as well as an intellectual woman, to whom Mrs. Cawein and I are greatly attached.

Very sincerely, your friend, Madison Cawein.

Letter 4: December 27, 1911

Dear Miss Teasdale:–

Yours is a happy little greeting and one that added considerably to my Christmas pleasure. A lovely card; and the quatrain graceful and surest to the poet’s soul.

Well, I don’t know any more to say, except that your card outclasses all the Christmas cards I have ever received, or even have seen, in originality and beauty.

I wish you, profoundly, success and joy with the coming new year.

Very sincerely your friend, Madison Cawein

Letter 5: December 30, 1911

Dear Miss Teasdale:–

Mrs. Cawein has finally persuaded me to go on to the Poetry Society’s dinner and Miss Rittenhouse’s reception on the 21st. We leave on the 19th of Jan. and look forward to seeing you in New York, and shall be at the Martinique Hotel, cor. of 32nd and Broadway. It is a charming hotel, and we wonder if you could not make it your stopping place also while in New York.

It was only three or four weeks ago that I was East, and am due there again in Feb., I think, for the National Institute of Arts and Letters dinner. I prefer the latter to any of these dinners, as there all the most eminent men of the country are brought together at the University Club. However, I shall have to omit this meeting for the Poetry Society’s the coming year, and count myself as well repaid by meeting you; as I have already met the greater part of the poets who will gather around the festal board on the 23rd of Jan.

I send you a little booklet of mine under a separate cover, with new year’s greetings. Mrs. Cawein is anxious to meet you, and just as wild about going to New York. She too has to have something new to wear, but as for myself–well!

Very cordially yours, Madison Cawein.

Letter 6: April 30, 1912

Dear Miss Teasdale:–

Thank you for the clipping from the Chicago Post. I am glad to see that you are back in St. Louis.

I am sorry I did not get to see you again before leaving the East. Mrs. Cawein was luckier than was I.

Mr. Gibson, you may be glad to learn, is out of the asylum at last, and is with Dan’s Mercantile Agency. He’s busy riding around the country–so beautiful this spring–and is enthusiastic, poor fellow, about his better outlook. [Note: Mr. Gibson was an official, not a resident, at the St. Louis Insane Asylum.]

Did you see the notice of your Helen of Troy in the May Smart Set?

Very truly yours, Madison Cawein

P.S. The clipping refers to an ovation extended me here in Louisville on March 23rd in honor of my 47th birthday and publication of my first vol. 25 years ago. C.

Letter 7: December 5, 1912

Dear Miss Teasdale:–

I am very sorry to hear of your illness. I hope that your eye is perfectly well now. Too bad!

Your words about my book are most cheering, as Mr. Shaemas O’Sheel has pronounced the poems in “The Poet” etc. as being rank and absolute nonsense. [Note: You can read O'Sheel's review here.] This in the N.Y. Times two weeks ago. Miss Rittenhouse wrote the Times a long letter about the notice, which they refused to publish, because Mr. O’Sheel is a particular pet of the Times. They published mine, however, much to my surprise. [Note: You can read Cawein's reply here.]

Miss Rittenhouse’s review of the Lyric Year in last Sunday’s Times Book Review sums up the vol. to my thinking. [Note: Both Cawein and Teasdale appeared in this anthology.] Mr. Johns’ poem deserves the first prize, I think. But I question the other two. There is too much rhetorical fireworks in them. And this hard-spurring of Pegasus does not appeal to me for high flying. There are really only half a dozen lyrics in the book. It belies its title. How in the name of Heaven did the editors come to include such stuff as that rank imitation of Poe’s Raven–the poem called Miriam? a peacock, forsooth! One of Mr. Wheeler’s friends I suppose. And Julian Hawthorne too! What a mix up! Well, live and learn.

We are all quite well and Mrs. Cawein asked to be remembered to you with love.

Believe me ever sincerely yours, Madison Cawein

[Update: Please see also my subsequent interview with Paul Savage of The Delgados.]

The word underrated, particularly with regard to music, is so overdetermined as to be almost meaningless. The crucial question to ask is: underrated by whom? Slint, for example, is actually famous for being both massively influential and so chronically underrated: they are beloved by critics but remain unheard-of otherwise. On the other hand, there are critically underrated bands–like The Fall–which nevertheless enjoy a fanatically devoted cult following.

And then there are the truly, tragically underrated artists, a category whose parameters we might define as the bands possessing the highest ratio of musical greatness to popular acclaim. Every hardcore music fan will eventually happen across at least one such forgotten band, proclaim their awesomeness far and wide, and then wonder why critics and casual listeners alike seem to have completely ignored them. To such a listener, such a band will feel like theirs alone.

Mine was The Delgados.

I discovered them several years ago through the late lamented Stylus magazine, but unfortunately the band has stayed obscure since then. The Delgados didn’t make a single “best of the oughts” list or poll, their albums are mostly out of print, and their only brush with the mere possibility of a wider audience occurred when their music served as the opening theme to some anime. But despite all that, The Delgados recorded some of the finest indie rock albums of the past twenty years. Along with The Fall and The National, they comprise my holy trinity of favorite bands.

The Delgados were a Scottish band; they founded the important record label Chemikal Underground and released five albums before breaking up in 2005 (because they were tired of being persistently underrated). I would like to discuss their three consecutive masterpieces–Peloton, The Great Eastern, and Hate–with the hope that by doing so, I can persuade more listeners to check out their truly wonderful work.

While they weren’t the most innovative band the world, The Delgados were exceptionally good at what they did: combining delicate, lavish orchestral pop with the loudness and force of maximalist rock. Like The National, they actually merit the term baroque rock; their densely layered arrangements (of choirs, strings, horns, piano, glockenspiel, and flute) feel genuinely heavy. Most other baroque rock bands, by contrast, are better described as rococo, content only to hang pretty instrumental filigree on conventional songs.

The real beauty of The Delgados, though, is found in the band’s two vocalists. Alun Woodward’s dry Scottish lilt is a perfect foil to Emma Pollock’s reserved, sweet, smoky voice. When the two alternate lead vocals across a single album, the effect is riveting; when they duet, and the paired boy-girl vocals whirl and entwine around an single song, the result is pure magic.

Peloton was The Delgados’ stylistically varied second album. While it’s a little uneven, the individual highlights are many. “Everything Goes Around the Water” and “Pull the Wires From the Wall” demonstrate the band’s knack for drunken, swooning, lushly orchestrated melodies, which they carefully construct like fugues. “Clarinet” features one of my favorite moments in music, period: a brief, gorgeous section where nearly all the instruments drop away, leaving Woodward singing plaintively over a naked drumbeat and spare acoustic guitar line. And “The Weaker Argument Defeats the Stronger” finds The Delgados displaying an impressive command of soft-loud dynamics–they could rock out with the best. Elsewhere, the band explores  stripped-down pop music, shoegaze, and even trip-hop.

The Delgados perfected their style on their third album, The Great Eastern. Produced by Dave Fridmann (best-known for producing all of The Flaming Lips’s albums), it sounded more huge and expansive than anything they had recorded to date; the guitars are frequently distorted, and Paul Savage’s excellent drumming is higher in the mix. Opening with the lovely, drifting sonic collage “The Past That Suits You Best,” The Great Eastern achieves its best effects through its combination of rousing, anthemic music with sour and sarcastic lyrics, perhaps most evident in the wittily bleak “American Trilogy.” Emma Pollock shines on the guitar pop of “Accused of Stealing” and “Reasons for Silence,” while the stunning “Thirteen Gliding Principles” features her and Woodward trading short vocal lines back and forth, eventually building to a massive, crashing climax. The epic tracks “No Danger” and “Aye Today” follow a similar pattern but augment it with the band’s characteristic orchestration, while the three closing tracks move further in the direction of chamber pop.

Dave Fridmann also produced Hate, The Delgados’ towering artistic achievement. The blackly comic title track “All You Need is Hate” serves as the mission statement for this bleak–yet often humorous–masterpiece: while the instrumentation is as grand and bombastic as ever, the lyrics dwell on depression and anxiety (“The Drowning Years”), nightmares (“Woke From Dreaming”), wasted, empty lives (“Coming in From the Cold”), lost childhoods (“Child Killers”), failed relationships (“Favours”), and exultant self-loathing (“If This Is a Plan”). On this release The Delgados further incorporate electronic textures, creepy kids’ choirs, and waves of ringing or crushing distorted guitar, but the star remains Emma Pollock’s voice. She lends a cool detachment to the chiming “Coming in From the Cold,” evokes romantic desperation on “Favours,” but most of all blows minds on “The Light Before We Land,” which is the best song the band ever recorded.

“The Light Before We Land” is the finest opening song to any album since My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow” (on Loveless). In fact, the structural resemblance between these two classics is uncanny, as they both seesaw between dreamy melody and squalling noise. It begins with a sweep of strings and a swelling choir, but pounding drums soon enter, turning the soaring, gliding orchestra into a divebombing weapon. The song (in swinging waltz time) sways through alternating sections of weightless beauty, big sing-along choruses, and noisy, cathartic release, but Pollock anchors it all with her restrained yet passionate delivery. It’s a testament to the sheer quality of the rest of Hate that “The Light Before We Land” doesn’t overwhelm the many brilliant songs to come. (Also worth mentioning is the terrific b-side “Coalman,” which approaches the greatness of anything on the album proper.)

The Delgados’ fifth and final album, Universal Audio, is perhaps unsurprisingly a much lighter, happier affair than Hate, and it showcases the band’s talents at crafting simpler (and amazingly catchy) power-pop songs. The lyrics are as sharp as ever, but they exude a palpable sense of contentment, or at least acceptance. Universal Audio was a perfect end to a remarkably consistent career.

Since the band’s amicable split, they’ve continued to run their venerable record label while Paul Savage has become a respected record producer (both ventures focusing predominantly on Scottish bands). Emma Pollock is two albums into a fairly successful and enjoyable solo career, and Alun Woodward has released a debut album with his new Lord Cut-Glass project. Meanwhile, the baroque style The Delgados pioneered sounds as fresh and exciting as it was a decade ago; one can only hope that it’s poised to make a comeback and influence a new generation of fantastic indie rock bands.

Reissues of The Delgados’ catalogue would be welcome, but in a way, I don’t really want the band to reunite. As much as I would love to see them live or hear new material, I’m mostly just grateful for all the superb music they gave us during their existence. Being underrated has its advantages–for fans, The Delgados are a band to treasure; for everyone else, they are a gem waiting to be discovered.