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 Three Simons: Messrs. Armitage, Critchley, and Reynolds

The Three Simons: Messrs. Armitage, Critchley & Reynolds 

(SA/2026) 

 

 

I. 

 

I'm guessing that Simon was a very popular name for boys in the UK during the 1960s [1]. Perhaps not as popular as it was during the first century AD in Roman Judea, but popular all the same. 

 

In any event, there are three Simons of increasing interest to me, each born in the early sixties and each characterised by a specific late-twentieth-century British sensibility: they are the poet Simon Armitage; the philosopher Simon Critchley; and the music critic Simon Reynolds [2].  

 

I don't know what these three figures think of one another or whether they have ever met socially, but one assumes they must have crossed paths or shared a stage in a professional capacity at some point. But perhaps not [3]. 

 

Either way, I thought it would be nice to bring them together here and briefly note one or two of the parallels between them, whilst remaining aware of the fact that their fundamental modes of inquiry are distinct.    

 

 

II.

 

The first thing to say is that each of the above are adept at translating complex aesthetic and metaphysical concerns into accessible (though always cleverly crafted) text. 

 

Perhaps it's a post-punk thing - or possibly a working-class thing [4] - but all three Simons, whilst capable of scaling the icy heights, always seem happiest when descending back into a world where cabbages grow in the dark earth. 

 

Armitage, as a poet, is particularly skilled at finding meaning and beauty in the mundane with linguistic precision. But Critchley and Reynolds are also very good at mixing critical theory with references to popular culture moving from Derrida to David Bowie and back again in order to conceptualise (and deconstruct) political and socio-cultural trends.     

 

 

III. 

 

Another thing which, as a thanatologist, one can't help noticing, is that the three Simons seem to be  fascinated by death and related issues to do with memory, mortality, and loss. 

 

This is particularly true of Critchley and Armitage, with the former adopting the Heideggerian position that thinking the thought of death is essential to guarantee an authentic human life and the latter recently publishing a collection of poems entitled New Cemetery (2025), wherein he uses moths as an indicator species to comment on death in nature and the threat of mass extinction due to environmental breakdown.

 

But Reynolds too is thanatologically inclined, utilising Derrida's concept of hauntology to explore spectral presence and what he terms retromania (i.e., a culture's fixation with its own immediate past leading to a form of stasis or living death). He has a particular concern with suicide, both as a mental health issue and as something around which there is an entire mythology, referencing the cases of Ian Curtis and his friend Mark Fisher.   

 

 

IV. 

 

Politically, all three Simons can best be described as left-leaning, although they occupy different positions within this broad cataegorisation. 

 

One might have imagined that Critchley's tragic pessimism would have inclined him in an opposite direction, but, no, he's a radical leftist advocating for a form of ethical anarchism and a politics of resistance to the established order (not that this prevents him from holding a highly prestigious and well-paid named professorship at a private institution). 

 

Similarly, Simon Reynolds frequently engages with post-Marxist (and poststructuralist) thought in order to critique neoliberalism's stifling effect on culture and our ability to even imagine an alternative (non-capitalist) future. At the same time he has established a long and successful career on the back of this critique and built a nice family life in South Pasadena, California, so must surely concede there are some advantages to a free market economy ...?

 

As for Simon Armitage, despite accepting the role of Poet Laureate and thus having the seal of royal approval stamped on his work, he likes to think of poetry as inherently radical and, in some sense, offering a form of dissent to the powers that be. If wary of being too overtly political, he nevertheless attempts to articulate the concerns of the poor and marginalised (and, indeed, of wildlife). 

 

   

V. 

 

Finally, I'd like to touch on the inclination all three Simons have towards concepts that might be described as spiritual or transcendent (if in a secular or non-religious context) ... 

 

I would certainly endorse Armitage's belief that poetry is a way of inventing meaning in a meaningless world and, perhaps more importantly, ritualising events and giving ordinary objects back their magic and mystery. Ultimately, and to his credit, Armitage rejects spirituality and consistently describes himself and his work as down to earth. 

 

I'm happy also, like Reynolds, to regard music and dance as powerful expressions of our inherently religious or creative nature. This will to euphoria - which should not be confused with ecstasy [5] - is, says Lawrence, our prime motivity. Unfortunately, Reynolds, like many others associated with rave culture, does seem to conflate the two terms euphoria and ecstasy and then conceive of the latter in relation to the synthetic psychoactive drug of that name [6].  

 

As for Critchley, he directly explores those intense feelings that lift us out of ourselves in his book Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy (2024) and openly discusses the building of an atheist utopia on the basis of mystical anarchism and new forms of consciousness - all of which makes me fearful of the direction he's dragging philosophy. 

 

The mystical Professor Critchley ... where he leads I cannot follow. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For those who just have to know the facts: the name Simon experienced a significant rise in popularity  between 1955 and 1965 as part of a wider trend for traditional names with a biblical ring. 

      In the early 1970s, Simon even briefly broke into the top ten of British boy's names, but then rapidly went out of favour; its sharp decline in popularity continuing in the 21st century; it is presently ranked outside the top 500 with only a handful of newborn baby boys being given the name (compared to the 1000s of Muhammads and Olivers). 

 

[2] I'm assuming that most readers will know of the three Simons and have some familiarity with their work, or can quickly google details if not. However, for those who might appreciate a quick line or two of biographical information right here, right now ...

      Simon Armitage was born in Huddersfield, in May 1963, and is a celebrated English poet, playwright, and novelist who currently serves as the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and holds a post as a Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His debut collection - Zoom! (1989) - brought him immediate fame (although he wasn't able to become a full-time professional writer until 1994). Armitage is rightly-celebrated for his darkly humorous and often northern-inflected style that blends colloquial accessibility with formal precision. His most recent work has focused heavily on the natural world and the human experience within it. His influences include Philip Larkin and W. H. Auden. His official website can be accessed by clicking here.  

      Simon Critchley was born in Liverpool, in Feb 1960, and is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, in New York. His work engages in many areas of philosophy, literature, and contemporary culture and he has written over twenty books, including studies of Greek tragedy, David Bowie, Shakespeare, football, and the ethical practice of joy before death. Critchley is a public intellectual in the best sense; reminding us all that in a world shaped by nihilsm we must root our ethics and politics not in the old ideals, but in an acknowledgement of limits and failure and the fact that this is an essentialy tragic age. His philosophical influences include Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. Critchley's recent work has taken a somewhat troubling mystical turn as he attempts to attune himself to the silence and find a form of secular transcendence. His official website can be accessed by clicking here. 

      Simon Reynolds was born in London, in June 1963, and is an independent music critic and cultural commentator who has a real knack for identifying trends and inventing new terms to discuss them in. He has published several definitive works on pop history, including, perhaps most famously, Rip It Up and Start Again (2005) - his study of the post-punk era (1978-1984), framing it as a period of avant-garde ambition and political radicalism - and Retromania (2011), a seminal investigation into pop music's zombification in the digital age, due to its obsessive recycling of its own sounds and fashions. Crucially, his work often explores how music intersects with issues of class, race, and gender and he isn't afraid to infuse his journalism with theory drawn from the likes of Derrida and Deleuze. He is a long-time and brilliant blogger: click here to access Blissblog, just one of many sites he maintains.

 

[3] I could find nothing to suggest bonds of friendship between the three Simons, so must conclude that whilst they are contemporaries in British intellectual life, their relationship is, at most, one of mutual awareness rather than close personal acquaintance. 

 

[4] Whilst Reynolds comes from a rather more middle-class background than Armitage and Critchley, he doesn't seem to identify with such. Rather, Reynolds posits the idea of a liminal class existing in the void between the upper-working and lower-middle classes and he seems to place himself here. He credits this liminal class with possessing creative (and radical) energy which results in significant cultural production.

 

[5] See the post 'Euphoria Contra Ecstasy' (26 Nov 2025), where I explain the distinction as I understand it: click here.  

 

[6] Reynolds views the drug ecstasy as integral to rave culture, shaping the sounds and experiences and enabling a form of communal bliss, whilst acknowledging its rather more troubling aspects. See his book Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture (Routledge, 1999). 

      For a more recent work on the synergistic link between dance music and MDMA (Methylenedioxymethamphetamine), see Kirk Field's Rave New World (Nine Eight Books, 2023). 

 

 

For a follow up to this post on the monstrous creation of a fourth Simon, click here.   

Reflections on the Ghost of Vivienne Westwood

Walking down the King's Road, one encounters many ghosts but I was still rather taken aback by the spectral image of Vivienne Westwood rising up before me: 

 

 

Vivienne Westwood by Invader (2024)  

 

Known for his ceramic tile mosaics based on the pixelated art of early 8-bit video games, the French street artist Invader [1] has created a spooky posthumous portrait of the iconic British fashion designer wearing a version of the Destroy shirt created in collaboration with her partner Malcolm McLaren. 

 

Readers familiar with the photo taken at Seditionaries upon which the portrait is based, will note how an alien figure has replaced the swastika and inverted crucifix of the original design:

 

 

Vivienne Westwood by Norma Moriceau (1977)

 

 

On entering the tiny store based at 430 King's Road - forever preserved in its final incarnation as Worlds End - one can't help but remember the dead: not just Vivienne, but Malcolm, Jordan, Sid, Debbie Wilson, Tracie O'Keefe ... et al.  

 

And one can't help wondering if there are ways of being haunted by the past which are vital and allow for a critical nostalgia which troubles the present and enables us to live yesterday tomorrow. 

 

To paraphrase Heidegger, mayn't it be the case that only a ghost can save us now ...? [2]

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Invader is a pseudonymous French street artist whose work can be found in major cities in numerous countries around the world, often in culturally and/or historically significant sites, although Paris remains the primary location for his work. 

      Often deriving inspiration from the video games he loved to play when growing up in the 1970s and '80s - Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Super Mario, etc. - he often publishes books (and maps) to accompany his installations (or 'invasions' as he calls them). 

      As one might imagine, like Banksy his works have attracted the attention of wealthy collectors and have sometimes been stolen to order off of the walls upon which they were installed (something he has tried to counteract by selecting sites that are more difficult to reach and creating larger works with more delicate tiles that cannot be removed without damaging the piece). When legitimaely sold in galleries, his work can fetch six-figure sums. 

      Shepard Fairey, again as one might imagine, was an early admirer, writing: 

      "Invader's pop art may seem shallow, but by taking the risk of illegally re-contextualizing video game characters in an urban environment that provides more chaotic social interaction than a gamer's bedroom, he makes a statement about the desensitizing nature of video games and consumer culture. In a postmodern paradox, a game like Grand Theft Auto takes the danger of the streets and puts it in a safe video game, while Invader takes a safe video game icon and inserts it into the danger of the streets." See Shepard Fairy, 'Space Invader', Swindle magazine, No. 3, 2004.

 

[2] Heidegger's famous statement - Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten - appeared in a 1966 interview with Der Spiegel, published posthumously in 1976. It reflects his belief that modern humanity is trapped in a crisis that cannot be resolved through human agency alone. 

      Not that he was referring by his use of the term 'god' to a traditional religious deity or a personal savior, anymore than by my use of ther term 'ghost' I am referring to a sheet-wearing apparition or supernatural entity in the clichéd sense. Like Heidegger, I'm calling upon an event outside of human control that triggers a radical and transformative cultural shift that allows for a new revealing or mode of being; or, like Mark Fisher in his hauntological writings, I'm referring to a manifestation of a lost future or a potentiality that has not been actualised.  

      The interview with Heidegger, conducted by Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff, was translated by William J. Richardson and can be found in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. Thomas Sheehan (Transaction Publishers, 1981), pp. 45-67. Click here to read on the Internet Archive.  

      See Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Zero Books, 2022) - a work on which I published a three part post in November 2023: click here for part one on lost futures and here for part three on hauntology.   

 

Back of the Net mit Martin Heidegger

Back of the Net mit Martin Heidegger 

(SA/2026)

 

 

I.

 

Did Heidegger like TV? 

 

I very much doubt it ... 

 

One strongly suspects that he would view it not for amusement, but with extreme prejudice; just another example of technology which enframes human existence at an essential level and which abolishes distance by bringing far away events into the living room on the one hand and transporting the viewer to far away places on the other, so that they are never really at home even when they are physically slouched in their favourite armchair.  

 

The constant stream of news and entertainment communicates nothing and ultimately the medium alienates the viewer from their own life.   

However, despite his philosophical objections to television, Heidegger was prepared to place his principles to one side when it came to football: the question of being and the overcoming of metaphysics mattered a very great deal; but the beautiful game mattered more ...   

 

 

II.

 

Amusingly, because he refused to own a set of his own, Heidegger was obliged to visit his neighbour's house on match day and this he would frequently do if it was a major European Cup match or when the national team were playing and Germany's 2-1 victory over the Netherlands in the 1974 World Cup gave him a good deal of satisfaction and pride in his final years.  

 

Heidegger was a huge fan of the German captain Franz Beckenbauer - der Kaiser - in particular and would often express his admiration for the latter's skill on the ball and the way in which he could take control of a game in his role as a centre-back sweeper. Beckenbauer, he said, was an inspired player [1]. 

 

Now, for some readers this will simply reveal Heidegger as a hypocrite. 

 

Others, however, might defend his actions by referring to his concept of Gelassenheit; sometimes, in life, you just have to accept things as they are (let them be) and surrender to the world as it is (rather than as you would have it). And that means that, on occasion, even a committed Heideggerian can use mechanical devices whilst remaining troubled by the question concerning technology.     

As this is the more generous reading of Heidegger's football-loving, TV-watching actions, I think I prefer to accept this line of argument.  

 

 

III.

 

Heidegger, of course, was by no means the only philosopher to have loved - and played - Fußball. 

 

One immediately thinks, for example, of Camus and Derrida who were also enraptured by the beautiful game, the former famously declaring that what he knew for certain about ethics and our obligation to others he had learned from football [2] and the latter once confessed that he would "rather have been known as an international footballer than a philosopher" [3].   

 

Perhaps Simon Critchley is on to something when he suggests that football offers pitchside supporters and even TV spectators a shared and ecstatic experience that is at the same time authentic. It certainly provides a very different experience of time; 90 minutes in the world of football is strangely subjective and waiting for the final whistle can sometimes seem like an eternity, or an agony of extended duration, as Critchley writes [4].  

 

 

IV.

 

In sum: if the philosophical question concerning technology (and the legitimacy of watching TV) remained essential for Heidegger, in his later life he was evidently just as preoccupied by whether Geoff Hurst's controversial extra-time goal in the Wembley final had or had not crossed the line ...      

    

 

Notes

 

[1] See Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, trans. Ewald Osers (Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 428. 

 

[2] Camus originally made the remark in an article he wrote for a sports magazine produced by his former club, Racing Universitaire d'Alger (RUA), in April 1953. He repeated the claim in an interview after he won the Nobel Prize (1957), saying: 'What little I know about morality, I learned it on football pitches and theatre stages - these were my true universities'. 

      See 'The morality of football and the philosophy of Albert Camus', on the website Scottish Sport History (4 Jan 2020): click here.   

 

[3] See Michael Dillon writing on Derrida in Palgrave Advances in Continental Political Thought, ed. Terrell Carver and James Martin (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 260. Cited by Matt Qvortrup in 'Philosophers on Football', in Philosophy Now, Issue 159 (Dec 2023 / Jan 2024): click here.   

 

[4] See Simon Critchley, What We Think About When We Think About Football (Profile Books, 2017). Critchley amusingly uses Heidegger's concepts from Being and Time to understand football's unique temporal flow, where objective time differs from subjective experience. 

      More widely, Critchley argues football is more than merely a game; that it is rather a vital cultural activity providing insights into memory, identity, class, and the human condition and I would recommend this work, even if Geoff Dyer was less than impressed; see his rather scathing review titled 'Dead Ball Situation', in Harper's Magazine (Dec. 2017): click here.

 

 

For a sister post to this one - 'Lost in Space mit Martin Heidegger' (12 Jan 2026) - click here.          

 

Lost in Space mit Martin Heidegger

Lost in Space mit Martin Heidgger 

(SA/2026)

 

'It is no longer the Earth on which human beings dwell today ...'  

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things I have to remind myself of when reading Heidegger is that even if he was born in the year Nietzsche went mad and published Sein und Zeit a few months before The Jazz Singer premiered in New York, he lived for a significant number of years after 1945 and so witnessed (whether he wished to or not) a period of rapid global transformation marked by huge geopolitical events and socio-cultural shifts.

 

We know what he thought about the Cold War - that it was a battle for technological mastery of the Earth fought between two superpowers that, whilst ideologically opposed, were metaphysically identical - and yet we have no idea what Heidegger thought about the sexual revolution, the extension of civil rights, England winning the World Cup, or a thousand other things that he could have commented on had he wished to do so. 

 

However, thanks to a posthumously published interview with Der Spiegel, we do know how he regarded the space race ... [1]

 

 

II.      

 

Whilst Heidegger did not comment directly on the 1969 Apollo moon landing, in the above interview he did express his horror at the idea of humanity venturing into space; one small step for a man, one giant leap further into the void for Dasein. 

 

Looking at photographs of the Earth taken from space by the robotic lunar orbiters launched by NASA in 1966-67, Heidegger said he was frightened, regarding the images as evidence that we no longer dwell (i.e., have our being) on Earth in any meaningful sense. Instead, our relationship with the world had become, he said, purely abstract, reducing the Earth to a planetary object to be surveyed and enframed (i.e. reduced to a mere resource for exploitation).  

 

For Heidegger, das Raketenzeitalter, as he called it, was perhaps even more disasterous than the Atomic Age; for whilst the latter threatened to blow us all to kingdom come, the Rocket Age essentially evicted humanity from its terrestrial home. He provocatively claimed that nuclear weapons were thus no longer needed as the technological revealing exemplified within the space race had already resulted in mankind's existential uprooting.   

 

For Heidegger, the idea of colonising the Moon (or other planets, such as Mars) was anathema; for the Moon was a physical environment that could never be a world in the true sense of the term, only a site for technical manipulation. Far from expanding the human horizon, space exploration would only reduce and narrow such by making everything distanceless. 

 

Heidegger also criticised the modern scientific jargon used to describe the heavens; what he called rocket language made words purely functional and thereby rendered authentic communication or poetic engagement with the world impossible. 

 

In sum: Heidegger wholeheartedly rejects the idea advanced by Captain Kirk and the crew of the starship Enterprise that our destiny as a species is to "explore strange new worlds" and to "boldly go where no man has gone before" [2]. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] This interview with Der Spiegel was conducted on 23 September, 1966, by Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff. It had been granted by Heidegger only on the condition that it remain unpublished during his lifetime and so was not published until 31 May, 1976. 

      The interview is commonly known by the title 'Only a God Can Save Us' in the English translation by William J. Richardson, which can be found in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. Thomas Sheehan (Transaction Publishers, 1981), pp. 45-67. Click here to read on the Internet Archive. 

 

[2] I'm quoting here, as I'm sure most readers will know, from the opening monologue spoken by William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk during the opening title sequence of the original Star Trek series (1966-69).

 

 

For a sister post to this one - 'Back of the Net mit Martin Heidegger' (13 Jan 2026) - click here.    

 

 

Reflections on the Loss of UR6: A Commentary by May Spear

Image by Zanda Rice (2024)

collider.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Nobody likes to go to the dentist, not even a poet. 

 

However, several poets have attempted to write of the experience and aftermath of dental surgery, particularly the sense of loss and trauma that follows an extraction. 

 

One thinks of Simon Armitage's 'For the Record', for example, a humorous yet savagely detailed account of having four wisdom teeth pulled; a procedure which leaves him talking with another man's mouth [1]. 

 

And one thinks also of Stephen Alexander's 'Reflections on the Loss of UR6' which formed the very first published post on his long-running blog Torpedo the Ark back in November 2012 [2], and it's this poem - reproduced below - that I'd like to offer a commentary on here.

 

 

II.

 

Reflections on the Loss of UR6

 

Extraction is dental-speak for an act of extreme violence, 

carried out in the name of oral hygiene: a final solution 

to the question of what to do about those teeth that cannot be 

coordinated into a Colgate-clean utopia. 

 

Afterwards, your mouth feels like a crime scene; 

a bloody site of trauma and violation rinsed with 

a saline solution. 

 

The sense of loss is palpable: it makes me think of her 

and the manner in which I too was extracted like UR6. 

 

Yet Bataille insists that a rotten tooth - even after removal - 

continues to function as a sign and provocation, just like an 

abandoned shoe within the sphere of love.

 

 

III.  

 

Like Simon Armitage, Alexander uses a mundane surgical procedure as a darkly comic metaphor for an emotional trauma that seems to extend far beyond the dentist's chair.  I love the way he juxtaposes terms in order to strip away the façade of clinical sterlity that modern dentistry prides itself on and exposes the underlying physical violence. 

 

And I love too how his closing reference to Bataille adds a pleasing philosophical layer to the work [3], although his attempt to elevate the poem from being merely a poignant personal account into a political critique of fascism is not entirely successful; describing a dental extraction as a final solution is a hyerbolic historical allusion that some will find insensitive, to say the least. 

 

My main disappointment with the poem, however, is the fact that it fails to develop the tragic love story at its heart: I want to know more about her and what it means to be extracted (and abandoned) like a troublesome tooth. Ultimately, political metaphors and philosophical references need to be balanced with more concrete images and personal details. Alexander tells us his sense of loss is palpable, but he doesn't allow us to share the actual feeling and that, unfortunately, is a serious weakness in any piece of writing. 

 

And yet, for the record, I still prefer it to Armitage's (technically superior) poem which, in my view, lacks danger or any underlying sense of menace. Indeed, if asked at drillpoint by a Nazi dentist I would have to say it's safe.     

   

  

Notes

 

[1] Simon Armitage, 'For the Record', in CloudCuckooLand (Faber and Faber, 1997). The verse can be read on Google Books: click here. 

      The poem was also published in the London Review of Books, Vol. 19, Issue 16 (21 August, 1997) and subscribers can access it by clicking here. 

    

[2] This post - which comes with a photograph of Alexander's dentist at the time, Georgie Cooper, BDS (Hons) MFDS RCS Eng. MSC - can be accessed by clicking here.   

 

[3] An academic colleague of mine insists that the Bataille reference is problematic in that it relies on the reader having a specific intellectual background and that without such the final stanza may appear to be an unnecessary philosophical footnote rather than a thoughtful poetic conclusion. I don't agree with this, however.   

 

 

On Spinoza's Four Great Disciples

Les quatre grands disciples de Spinoza

(Nietzsche - Lawrence - Kafka - Artaud)

 

I. 

 

Spinoza is one of those philosophers I have never read and about whom my knowledge is extremely limited: I know, for example, that he was a 17th-century Dutch thinker of Portuguese-Jewish origin and a founding figure of the Enlightenment who preferred to earn his living as a lens grinder, rather than accept an academic post that might compromise his intellectual independence. 

 

I also know that he rejected the idea of free will and divine judgement and argued for a kind of pantheistic monism (i.e., the belief that God and Nature are one and the same identical and infinite substance). Such thinking made him a controversial figure at the time and and a thorn in the side of the religious authorities. 

 

Finally, I know that Deleuze was a great admirer; that Spinoza was the thinker who provided him with the basis for his own work on immanence and encouraged a joyful affirmation of life free from belief in a world beyond, or tedious moral concepts that always terminate in judgement and punishment.  

 

For Deleuze, Spinoza was le prince de philosophes and he had four great heirs or disciples: Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, Kakfa, and Artaud [1]. The question that interests me here, however, is not how or why Deleuze arrives at this conclusion, but what did each of these four think of the renegade Jew who gave us modernity ...? [2]

 

II.  

 

Let's work backwards and begin with Artaud, who, as far as I'm aware, never mentioned Spinoza in his writings, suggesting that the link between the two is something formed almost exclusively in Deleuze's philosophical imagination. 

 

Deleuze (and Guattari) may like to think of Spinoza's Ethics (1667) as anticipating Artaud's notion of the body without organs, but that's not something that ever occured to the French dramatist who introduced the world to the theatre of cruelty. 

 

Indeed, according to one scholar, Artaud's work is ultimately incompatible with Spinoza's rationalism [3]. For whereas Artaud aims to liberate libidinal energy and resist the body's rational organ-isation, Spinoza, in contrast, wished to perfect man via reason and an active form of knowledge. Both spoke about joy and passion, but each conceived such terms in radically different ways.    

 

 

III. 

 

Unlike Artaud, Franz Kafka apparently did acknowledge his indebtedness to Spinoza - even if he didn't do so in his published writings - considering him a spiritual mentor during his younger years when part of an intellectual circle in Prague which often discussed the Dutchman's work [4].

 

Kafka was particularly interested in Spinoza's notion of an indifferent deity; i.e., one who was blind to the suffering of humanity. This idea shaped Kafka's construction of an amoral fictional universe in which there is ultimately no justice, despite all the mechanisms of law and order put in place by mankind.      

 

 

IV.

 

Amusingly, one commentator has described Lawrence as a "sort of sexy Spinozist" [5], which I think is pushing things a bit too far, even if it's fair to say that Lawrence's own thinking does align in certain key aspects with Spinoza's philosophy. 

 

For example, Lawrence's model of pantheism which insists that God exists only in bodies; or his concept of blood-knowledge, which has echoes of Spinoza's intuitive science (a third way of knowing beyond imagination and reason which allows one to grasp the essence of things and experience a sense of blessedness or oneness with the universe).     

 

But again, as with Kafka and Artaud, there is hardly a mention of Spinoza in any of Lawrence's writings; the only one I can recall from memory is in the short prose piece 'Books' in which he dismisses him as another of those philosophers who, like Kant, only thought "with his head and his spirit" (and never with his blood) [6]. 

 

 

V. 

 

Finally, we arrive at Nietzsche  ... 

 

And finally we find actual written references to Spinoza that we are able to cite, such as the postcard sent to his friend Franz Overbeck in the summer of 1881, in which Nietzsche expresses his astonishment and delight at having found a precursor - i.e., someone in whose work he recognises himself, even if, due to differences in time and culture, there remained certain important points of divergence [7]. 

 

In the Genealogy (II.15), meanwhile, Nietzsche acknowledges Spinoza's insight into (and the need to overcome) traditional moral concepts. Material found in his notebooks from this period also show Nietzsche turning to Spinoza for ideas, particularly concerning the transformation of knowledge into a passion. 

 

Ultimately, Nietzsche saw in Spinoza someone who was able to think beyond good and evil - someone who scorned the teleological fantasy that the universe had some ultimate goal, or that man possessed free will.

 

Having said that, however, it's also true that Nietzsche viewed his own concept of will to power as superior and more radical than Spinoza's insistence that life strove above all for its own preservation. And in his mature (some might say mad) Dionysian phase, it's hard to believe that Nietzsche would have had much time for Spinoza's defence of reason as the essential human faculty leading to freedom.       

 

 

VI.

 

In sum: whilst Deleuze isn't simply joking or trying to be provocative by grouping together Nietzsche, Lawrence, Kafka, and Artaud as disciples of Spinoza, we need to take this idea with a pinch of salt and remember that none of the above saw themselves as such. 

 

Essentially, Deleuze was highlighting a number of conceptual connnections between them which might otherwise go unnoticed. He was probably also attempting to make Spinoza more relevant to a contemporary readership and, perhaps, inseminate Spinoza with his own ideas. 

 

Thus, it might be best to think of Nietzsche, Lawrence, Kafka, Artaud, and Deleuze himself as a line of thinkers who share common ground with Spinoza, but are not followers per se (more like fellow travellers); artist-philosophers who above all else want to have done with judgement.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the essay 'To Have Done with Judgement', in Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Sith and Michael E. Greco (Verso, 1998), pp. 126-135. 

      According to Deleuze, it was not Kant but Spinoza who, in breaking with the Judeo-Christian tradition, carried out a true critique of judgement and had "four great disciples to take it up again and push it further: Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, Kafka, Artaud" (126). 

 

[2] This description was coined by the American philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein and formed the subtitle of her biographical study Betraying Spinoza (Random House, 2006). 

 

[3] See Jon K. Shaw, 'Athleticism Is Not Joy: Extricating Artaud from Deleuze's Spinoza', in Deleuze Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, (Edinburgh University Press, May 2016), pp. 162-185. 

      As Shaw writes in the Abstract to this essay, "much of Artaud's metaphysics is incompatible with Deleuze's Spinozism, not least the relation between a body and its constitutive outside, and the questions of affect and expression": click here. 

 

[4] In the absence of direct references to Spinoza in Kafka's writings, we have to rely on biographical studies and scholarly analysis to confirm the latter's interest in (and sense of kinship with) the former. I'm not sure I'd speak of parallel destinies between the two, however, although that's the argument put forward by Carlos García Durazo in his essay on Medium (24 Oct 2024): click here. 

 

[5] See Mattie Colquhoun, 'Rainbows: From D. H. Lawrence to the NHS', on Xenogothic (23 Dec 2020): click here.  

 

[6] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Books', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 198. 

 

[7] Nietzsche, postcard to Franz Overbeck (30 July, 1881). It can be read (in English translation) on The Nietzsche Channel: click here. 

      It is interesting to note that Nietzsche doesn't simply identify with Spinoza because of certain shared ideas, but also because the latter was, due to his radicalism, very much a maligned and marginalised figure in his own day (much as Nietzsche felt himself to be in modern Germany). 

      It is also important to remember that Nietzsche's understanding of Spinoza was mostly based on his reading of secondary sources, such as Kuno Fischer's highly influential six-volume study Geschichte der neuern Philosophie ['History of Modern Philosophy'] (1854-1877). 

      See Andreas Urs Sommer, 'Nietzsche's Readings on Spinoza: A Contextualist Study, Particularly on the Reception of Kuno Fischer', in the Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Autumn, 2012), pp. 156-184. This essay is available on JSTOR: click here. 

 

 

The Velvet Underground Versus the Sex Pistols: a Postscript

The Velvet Underground (Sterling Morrison / Maureen Tucker / Lou Reed / John Cale) 

Photo by Gerard Malanga (1966)

The Sex Pistols (Steve Jones / Glen Matlock / Johnny Rotten / Paul Cook)

Photo by Peter Vernon (1976) 

 

I. 

 

As conceded in a recent post contrasting 'Venus in Furs' by the Velvet Underground with 'Submission' by the Sex Pistols [1], the former song is undoubtedly the more interesting of the two. However, that's not to say I would agree with this which arrived in my inbox in response:   

 

Quite why anyone would choose the scuzzy little marketing joke of Sex Pistols over the catastrophic beauty and kinetic mystique of The Velvets is beyond me . . . 

 

 

II. 

 

It's a peculiarly affecting line of criticism; one that could only have been written by a fan of the latter - note, for example, the use of the shortened band name to indicate intimacy and insider status (although there was also an early 1960's doo-wop group called The Velvets and one is tempted to feign confusion just to be irritating). 

 

Clearly, the writer prioritises artistic complexity over what they see as crude commercialism. But what is also clear from the sentence structure and grandiloquent language employed, is that this critic is something of an intellectual and cultural elitist - catastrophic beauty ... kinetic mystique - who uses phrases like this without wishing to signal their superiority? 

 

By dismissing the Sex Pistols as no more than Malcolm McLaren's scuzzy little marketing joke, they also position themselves as someone who can see through popular cultural trends such as punk; trends that lack the depth, authenticity, and high aesthetic value of the kind of avant-garde pop (or art rock) produced by the Velvet Underground. 

 

 

III.

 

Of course, this subjective and judgemental style of writing is one that many music journalists have experimented with and, to be fair, it can be entertaining (even if some readers may find it a tad pretentious) [2]. And one is reminded also of a letter written by a teenage Stephen Morrissey to the NME critiquing the Sex Pistols for their shabby appearance and 'discordant music' with 'barely audible' lyrics [3]. 

 

However, before my anonymous correspondent gets too excited by this - for if he loves the Velvet Underground, he's bound to love Morrissey -  he should note that Morrissey also praises the punk band for knowing how to get their audience dancing in the aisles and compares them favourably to his beloved New York Dolls (another scuzzy group managed briefly by McLaren which, I imagine, my correspondent hates just as much as the Sex Pistols). 

 

 

IV.

 

Ultimately, whilst belonging to two very different eras, the Velvet Underground and the Sex Pistols were both seminal bands and it is beyond me why we should be forced to choose between them. 

 

Having said that, my love and loyalty remains with the peculiars of 430 Kings Road rather than Andy Warhol's Factory and I prefer the comic anarcho-nihilism of the Sex Pistols to the dark poetic surrealism of the Velvet Underground.      

 

  

Notes

 

[1] See 'The Velvet Underground Versus the Sex Pistols: Venus in Furs Contra Submission' (6 Jan 2026): click here.

 

[2] I am sympathetic to Thomas Tritchler who calls for a rethinking of the term 'pretension'; see the third and final part of his post 'On the Malign/ed Art of Faking It' (27 Dec 2014): click here.

 

[3] Morrissey's letter was published in the NME on 16 June, 1976. It was written in response to the Sex Pistols' gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, in Manchester, on 4 June, 1976. To read the letter on Laughing Squid, click here. See also Alice Vincent's article on the letter in The Telegraph (23 July 2013): click here. 

 

The Velvet Underground Versus the Sex Pistols: Venus in Furs Contra Submission

The Velvet Underground: Venus in Furs (Verve Records, 1967) [1]

The Sex Pistols: Submission (Virgin Records, 1977) [2]

 

 

I. 

 

Back in November 1977, I was one of the few who purchased the 11-track pressing of Never Mind the Bollocks, with 'Submission' included as a bonus 7" (later, this song would be included on the actual album) [3]. 

 

As I disliked the song, however, regarding it as one of the weakest of the thirteen tracks written by Jones, Matlock, Cook and Rotten, I very rarely bothered to play it.   

 

Funnily enough, I still dislike it now; whereas, in contrast, I have grown to increasingly love 'Venus in Furs' by the Velvet Underground, a song which forms an interesting point of comparison ... 

 

 

II.

 

Written by Lou Reed and originally included on The Velvet Underground's debut album in 1967, 'Venus in Furs' was inspired by the novel of the same title by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1870). And like the book, the song explores themes to do with BDSM. 

 

It's a great track: featuring Reed on vocals and lead guitar, the disturbing and decadent sound of John Cale's electric viola, and a tambourine played by Moe Tucker, it is rightly considered one of the band's most perfect songs.  

  

 

III. 

Whether Malcolm McLaren had a particular liking for 'Venus in Furs' I don't know. But he was certainly inspired by Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground and it was McLaren who suggested to Matlock and Rotten that they attempt to come up with a song entitled 'Submission', celebrating the kinkier aspects of human sexuality.  

 

Of course, Rotten being Rotten - more puritan than libertine and ever-ready to display his sophomoric sense of humour - there was no way he would (or could) write a lyrically sophisticated pop song along the lines of Reed's 'Venus in Furs'. And so we get a piss-take song in which the suggested title and theme of submission is taken literally as a 'submarine mission', which is kind of clever and mildly amusing, but not that clever or amusing [4].   

 

McLaren's thoughts on the end result (if he even bothered to listen to the song) are not recorded, but I can't imagine him being impressed with Rotten's little joke. 

 

 

IV.  

 

In sum: the Velvet Underground's 'Venus in Furs' and the Sex Pistols' 'Submission' contrast in their approach to a shared theme; whilst the former is a seductive art-rock exploration of BDSM, the latter is a punk-rock parody that subverts the intended meaning of the title suggested by their manager (I believe this is known as malicious compliance). 

 

In the end, I suppose, it's up to listeners to decide between shiny shiny boots of leather and an octopus rock and whether they favour the atmospheric and experimental music of the Velvet Underground, or the raw but ultimately more conventional sound of the Sex Pistols.  

 

Nine times out of ten, I would choose the latter; but not in this case.  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] This artwork, by Dave Lawson, inspired by the Velvet Underground song 'Venus in Furs', is available to buy from Indieprints: click here. 

 

[2] This is label of the one-sided 7" single 'Submission' given away with copies of the 11-track version of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977). See note 3 below. 

 

[3] Apparently, the 11-track edition of Never Mind the Bollocks with the 'Submission' single was the result of Virgin rushing to get the album released before a competing version was released in France on the French label Barclay Records, with whom McLaren had legitimately negotiated a separate deal. 

 

[4] It has been suggested by one commentator that the song does, in fact, retain a covertly sexual meaning and describes an act of cunnilingus. See 'The Story Behind the Song: "Submission" by the Sex Pistols', on the music website Rocking in the Norselands (10 March, 2025): click here.  

 

 

For a related post to this one - a post that I hadn't remembered writing or publishing until reminded by a torpedophile with a much better memory than mine - click here. And for a postscript to this post on the Velvet Underground and the Sex Pistols, click here. 

 

 

Musical bonus 1: The Velvet Underground, 'Venus in Furs', from the album The Velvet Underground and Nico (Verve Records, 1967): click here. 

 

Musical bonus 2: The Sex Pistols, 'Submission', from the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here. 

 

 

We're Off to See the Wizard ... On Oscar Diggs and Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Oscar Diggs as imagined by William Wallace Denslow 

in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

 

'Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain ...'

 

 

I. 

 

Even as a young child, I was no friend of Dorothy's and avoided spending time in Oz if I could possibly help it: I hated the Munchkins, had no time for the Scarecrow, Tin Man, or Cowardly Lion, and if my sympathies lay anywhere they were with the Wicked Witch of the West and her army of wolves, crows, and bees.  

 

Of late, however, I have become fascinated by the character of Oscar Diggs, the Wizard who, it turns out, is not so very wonderful at all; who is in fact a humbug - that is to say, a fraud, an imposter, a great deceiver ... 

 

 

II. 

 

I suspect we all know people like Oscar Diggs; individuals who, for example, use elaborate titles and self-descriptions to appear more important, more successful, and more interesting than they actually are; individuals who mask a very ordinary nature behind a carefully crafted image that is projected for so many years that they themselves come to believe it real. 

 

Such individuals are not bad people; just fake magicians or fake whatever else they try to pass themselves off as, unable to perform the miracles that they promised. 

 

This is not to deny they may have certain gifts and achieve certain things of which they are rightly proud. But, alas, they are not the mighty figures, the wonderful wizards, or true talents they pass themselves off as and they maintain a facade of accomplishment only through lie and illusion.         

 

 

III.

 

It's possible, of course, that certain individuals exhibiting the Wizard of Oz syndome are not faking things, but are, rather, suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder; i.e., a mental health condition characterised by an inflated sense of self-importance and a deep need for attention and admiration often masking fragile self-esteem and leading to arrogant behavior, entitlement, and difficulty handling even the mildest criticism. 

 

Other symptoms include: preoccupation with fantasies, unreasonable expectations, and resentment and envy of others, making both personal and professional relationships strained and often unsustainable.     

 

I'm not a therapist, so I don't know what causes this condition. Nor do I know what can be done to treat it. I would, however, encourage those who recognise something of themselves in the character of Oscar Diggs to seek treatment unless they wish to spend their lives behind the curtain, dreading the day when they might be exposed ...