LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Friday, October 30, 2009

It's Halloween -- It Must Be Vampires





Kevin Jackson, author of Bite: A Vampire Handbook: A Vampire Miscellany, lists the top 10 vampire novels.

He intelligently leaves out Rice and Meyers:  "(Anne Rice needs no plugging here; nor does Stephenie Meyer, nor Charlaine Harris ...)"

2 comments:

Foxessa said...

OOOh, but here's this, also from Britain, about contemporary Whitby, compared with the Whitby of Dracula's landing!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/oct/29/whitby-britains-spookiest-town

Love, C.

Foxessa said...

I tend to disagree with the later assessments about Stoker's Dracula, that is a clumsy and non-intelligent novel.

It feels to me, with all its use of the most contemporary technology then, almost a modern novel -- I'd kind of like to compare it with what Scott F. Fitzgerald did with This Side of Paradise, also so filled with the modern, though in his case it was contemporary thought and popular culture, which previously you had not found in fiction, generally (though it seems that Austen's Sense and Sensibility in particular could be perceived as a foreshadowing of such novelistic devices in the future).

Stoker's Dracula was really new -- a novel -- in many ways! that we don't even notice now.

Though just lately the Steampunkers have claimed Dracula as one of their own, and it makes a great deal of sense, it seems to me.

Love, C.