On the Monstrous Creation of the Fourth Simon: A Short Story Written in the Manner of Mary Shelley

Simonstein (SA/2026)

 

It was an unholy and tempestuous winter's night when I, Victor Frankenstein, completed my most singular transgression against the natural order ...

      For months, I had been gathering the disparate remains of three men named Simon [1] in order to create a singular, supreme intellect whom I would name Solomon [2]. 

    The torso and lungs I took from Simon Armitage, ensuring the Creature would breathe with pleasing rhythm and its heart beat with the metrical precision of a poet. To this, I grafted the hyper-attuned nerves of Simon Reynolds, that Solomon might perceive the vibrations of the modern world with the vital energy of a thousand subcultures. Finally, I encased these within the shining skull of Simon Critchley, layering the grey matter of the philosopher over the soul of the poet, providing the capacity for tragic pessimism and existential depth. 

      By the glimmer of a nearly extinguished candle, I applied the spark of life; a bolt of blue lightning captured from the screaming heavens. The composite frame shuddered and the eyes - squinting, yet filled with a terrible, multifaceted intelligence - threw open and Solomon spoke: 'Those who know not evil, know not of anything good.'

      I recoiled in horror. I had sought to create the ultimate post-Romantic intelligence, but I had instead birthed a chimera of restless critique and malevolent verse. 

      Solomon rose from the copper-plated operating table, his movements jerky like those of a monstrous marionette. He did not seek my blessing; only a pen with which to write. As he departed across the fog-choked moorlands, I realised I had not merely animated a corpse - I had unleashed a critic from whom no aspect of cultural life was safe. 

      Locals say that on certain nights, one can hear a voice on the wind, deconstructing the aesthetics of the Abyss in perfect, terrifying meter. 

   

Notes

 

[1] Simon Armitage is the current UK Poet Laureate, known for his accessible verse often rooted in everday life; Simon Critchley is the British-born Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (New York); Simon Reynolds is a music critic known for his chronicling of glam, post-punk, rave, and pop culture's endless recycling of its own history. 

      For my post on the Three Simons, click here.     

 

[2] Síomón Solomon - of whom this is an affectionate fictional portrayal - is a Dublin-based writer and independent scholar who, arguably, embodies elements of the above figures, whilst giving his own unique post-Romantic take on things informed by the schizopoetics of Hölderlin. 

      His 2021 publication, Hölderlin's Poltergeists: A Drama for Voices, was a translation and ingenius remix of an audio drama by Stephan Hermlin which has been much discussed on Torpedo the Ark; as has his disturbing debut play, The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020), a theatrical ghost-cum-love story based on actual events. 

      Whilst he may lack the public profile of the Three Simons and his work may not have the same broad appeal, for me, he is very much their peer and not just a contemporary who happens to share the same prénom.    

      For posts written on (or inspired by) Síomón Solomon's Hölderlin's Poltergeists, click here. And for posts written on The Atonement of Lesley Ann, click here.  

 

On the Monstrous Nature of Philosophy

 Frankenstein's Monster x Ludwig Wittgenstein [1]

 

'Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living ...' [2] 

 

I. 

 

Philosophers, like monsters, "are creatures that fail to meet prevailing measures and norms by radically exceeding or falling short of them ..." [3]. 

 

Their form of life - to use a term favoured by Wittgenstein in his later work - is unconventional to say the least; and some might even describe it as inhuman, although that is perhaps going a little too far, as even the most monstrous (and unintelligible) of philosophers share certain practices and customs with others and their thinking ultimately springs from the same bio-cultural reality [4].  

 

In sum: philosophers are not monsters per se; but their thinking is a monstrous form of life; i.e., both unnatural and prophetic [5]. And such a monstrous form of life "is not homogenous and smooth; its language is not a common and transparent one; it is not the unanimous and harmonious sound of angelic tongues" [6]. 

 

II.

 

According to the film theorist and philosopher Noël Carroll, the word monster is - rightly or wrongly - one that might easily be applied to philosophers. 

 

Why? 

 

Because monsters, like philosophers, "are unnatural relative to a culture's conceptual scheme of nature. They do not fit the scheme; they violate it. Thus, monsters are not only physically threatening; they are cognitively threatening. They are threats to common knowledge" [7].  

 

As David Birch notes: "There is an uncanny parallel here between the characterisation of monsters and the work of philosophers." [8] 

 

Indeed, we might even conclude that the best collective noun for a group or gathering of philosophers might not be a school, but a den of monsters.

 

Having said that, I repeat what I say at the end of section I: philosophers are not monsters per se; but their thinking is a monstrous form of life ... And, for me, the person who has developed this line of thought to its nihilistic limit, is Ray Brassier ...

 

 

III.  

 

In a book that I often return to and never tire of reading - Nihil Unbound (2007) - Brassier savages those philosophers who would attempt to stave off the threat (he would say promise) of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning and everything else that humanity clings to and believes in. 

 

In brief, Brassier wishes to accelerate the process (or logic) of disenchantment that began with the Enlightenment and turn philosophical thinking into what he terms the organon of extinction:

 

"Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity." [9]  

 

However else we might describe this speculative realism, it's certainly not thought as most people think it; it's thought in a monstrous form; "throwing us into a world we no longer recognise, and that does not recognise us" [10].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Obviously, by linking the names of Frankenstein and Wittgenstein I do not wish to imply that the latter was a fan of Mary Shelley's 19th century queer gothic novel. Indeed, as far as we know, he never read the book, nor did he refer to it in any of his writings. 

      And whereas Shelley was very much influenced by David Hume - her novel might even be read as an exploration of the tragic consequences of a skeptical worldview and the limitations of empiricism - the same cannot be said of Wittgenstein, who had a largely negative view of the 18th century philosopher. 

      Interestingly, as David Birch reminds us, there is an astonishing passage in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) in which Hume confesses that philosophical solitude results in his feeling like 'some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate' (Treatise, Book 1, Part 4, Section 7). 

      See David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?', The Philosophers' Magazine - click here. I shall return to this essay later in the post. 

 

[2] Ray Brassier, Preface, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi. 

 

[3] Jasmin Trächtler, 'Speaking in Monster Tongues: Wittgenstein and Haraway on Nature, Meaning and the "We" of Feminism', in Forma de Vida (2023): click here. 

 

[4] Should AI systems ever achieve independent consciousness, we might not be able to say the same of them. For perhaps they'll reason in a way that is truly posthuman (or techno-monstrous) and we'll no more be able to understand than we would a speaking lion; see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1953).   

 

[5] The word monstrous derives from the Latin mōnstruōsus (from monstrum), meaning unnatural. But it also etymologically relates to the Latin verbs mōnstrare and mōnēre, which mean to reveal and to warn.  

 

[6] Jasmin Trächtler ... op. cit. 

 

[7] Noël Carroll, 'The Nature of Horror', in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 46, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59. Click here to access on JSTOR. The lines quoted here can be found on page 56. They are also quoted by David Birch, in his article cited above. 

 

[8] David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?'

 

[9] Ray Brassier, Preface, Nihil Unbound ... p. xi. 

      This quote is not only pinned above the desk at which I write, but pretty much encapsulates what Torpedo the Ark is all about; i.e., that the disenchantment of the world "deserves to be celebrated as an achievement of intellectual maturity, not bewailed as a debilitating impoverishment" and nihilism is the "unavoidable corollary of the realist conviction that there is a mind-independent reality, which, despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable" [xi]. 

 

[10] David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?' We should note that Birch is speaking of Hume here, not Brassier. 

 

 

On the Politics of the Mob

The angry mob confront the Monster (played by Boris Karloff) 

in Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931)

 

'Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, 

and ages, it is the rule.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The term mob was a late-17th century slang abbreviation of the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, referring to an excitable and disorderly crowd of people who would often seek out a target or scapegoat on whom they could vent their fury and frustration over some matter or other.    

 

Even as a young child, long before I knew anything about mass psychology, I had an instinctive aversion to the mob. 

 

I remember, for example, watching Frankenstein for the first time and - without feeling particularly sorry for the Monster - intensely disliking the torch-bearing villagers who formed an angry mob in order to hunt him down [2].    

 

I may not have had the language at ten-years-old to articulate how I felt, but I could see there was something far more frightening - far more monstrous - about mob justice (i.e., vengeance) than about the Creature in all his otherness.     

 

 

II. 

 

And today, when I do possess the language (and know a fair bit about mass psychology), I still don't like to see any individual - whatever crimes they are accused of - being intimidated and, on occasion, torn limb from limb or burnt alive by the mob (again, this doesn't necessarily mean my sympathies lie with them). 

And that's why I cannot support any populist political movement or join in with any act of indecent bullying. As D. H. Lawrence writes, any man or woman who would affirm their own starry singularity must refuse to identify with the baying mob. It is not sentimentalism: it is just abiding by one's own feelings no matter what [3]. 

 

It's unfortunate, therefore, that today politicians on all sides seem intent on making an appeal to the masses (manipulating their concerns, their fears, their insecurities, etc.) and, on account of this intention, are compelled to "transform their principles into great al fresco stupidities" [4] and start waving flags (which, to my mind, belong in the same category as burning torches and pitchforks).  

 

To paraphrase Voltaire: As soon as the mob gets involved, then all is lost ... [5]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), Pt. IV, §156, p. 103.  

 

[2] The famous scene of Frankenstein's monster being chased by an angry mob of peasants (eventually being trapped and burned alive inside an old windmill) belongs to the 1931 cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel; such a scene does not occur in the book.

      To be fair to the villagers, the Creature was responsible for the drowning of a young girl, Maria, whom he throws into a lake (albeit in playful innocence rather than with murderous intent). Click here to watch the formation of the mob. And here for the terrible conclusion to mob justice (what Jean-François Lyotard terms paganism).  

 

[3] See the famous 'Nightmare' chapter of Lawrence's 1923 novel Kangaroo in which the protagonist Richard Somers refuses under any circumstances to acquiesce in the vast mob-spirit that prevailed during the years 1916-19 when, in his view - thanks to the War - so many lost their individual integrity. 

      The Cambridge edition of this work, ed. Bruce Steele, was published in 1994. The long 'Nightmare' chapter is on pp. 212-259.     

 

[4] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Vol. I, Pt. 8, §438, p. 161.

[5] The actual line written by Voltaire reads: Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu. It can be found in his Collection des lettres sur les miracles, Vol. 60D of his Œuvres complètes, ed. Olivier Ferret and José-Michel Moureaux (Voltaire Foundation / University of Oxford, 2018). 

      The original work of this title - a 232 page volume composed of various short writings from the period - was published in 1766.