Notes on Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Imp of the Perverse'

 

'The Imp of the Perverse' - Illustration by Arthur Rackham 

in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1935) [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

'The Imp of the Perverse' is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, examining how a desire to do those things that we know we should not do can lead to our own destruction. 

 

This desire is imagined by Poe in the form of a small and mischievous being prone to causing trouble and leading men astray; i.e., what is called within European folklore an imp [2].   

 

Recommended to me by the Irish poet Síomón Solomon, I thought it might be nice to while away the hours on a Sunday afternoon reading it together ...

 

 

II. 

 

The story reads initially almost as an essay, as the narrator explains at length his theory on the imp of the perverse. 

 

Describing it as a primitive propensity of the human soul that causes people - including himself - to commit acts against their self-interest, he claims that it has been overlooked by scientists, priests, and other scholars because they could not perceive its necessity or understand how the imp of the perverse might advance knowledge of the human condition. 

 

In brief: the idea of it simply never occurred to them; it didn't fit into their scheme of things, including their map of the brain (the latter having been designed according to popular moral superstition by a rational and purposeful deity who had made man in his own image).   

 

Our narrator says: "Having thus fathomed to his satisfaction the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions [man] built his innumerable systems of mind" and a well organ-ised human body; i.e., one with a mouth for eating, an arse for shitting, and - having determined it to be God's will "that man should continue his species" - an organ of amativeness as well.      

 

In this way, we can conceive of man as an ideal creature, with every organ representing either "a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect". 

 

Deleuze and Guattari may not be happy with this arrangement, but they are in a minority; most people are content to believe they have a divine origin and a preconceived destiny (remember, dear reader, that this tale was written in 1845, thirty-seven years before Nietzsche's madman was to announce the death of God and over a hundred years before Aratud introduced the idea of a body without organs) [3].     

 

 

III. 

 

The narrator goes on to say that it would have been wiser to have classified man according to his actions, "rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do". For if we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, "how then in his inconceivable thoughts" ...? 

 

If only more attention had been paid to man's actions, then perverseness - "for want of a more characteristic term" - would have been recognised as "an innate and primitive principle of human action"; albeit an irrational one in that it obliges us to act in a way that often makes no sense and has no benefit (which, in fact, is often harmful): 

 

"In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse - elementary." 

 

And this, says the narrator, is undeniable: "No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question." 

 

I suppose, if I stop to think about it, there may well be something in what he says. Certainly, whenever I'm presenting a paper to an audience and I look around the faces gathered before I begin, I'm often tempted, sensing no connection, to simply walk off the stage and out of the room without a word of explanation (something Larry David was notorious for doing during his early days as a stand-up comic).  

 

Either that, or to stay and piss people off with deliberate vagueness and a refusal to take a position: 

 

"The speaker is aware that he displeases [...] yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and parentheses, this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing [...] is indulged." 

 

Having said that, sometimes, like Sebastian Horsley, I'm only too happy to flatter an audience and adapt my views to suit them [4] (being transpositional means I can move swiftly from one side of an argument to the other - or neither - without too much cognitive dissonance). 

 

As for procrastination ... Well, I'll say something about that later [5].

 

 

IV. 

 

Is it the imp of the perverse that ultimately brings us to the brink of suicide? That tempts us to "peer into the abyss" until we grow sick and dizzy? 

 

Possibly. 

 

"Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degree our sickness and dizziness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling" 

 

Is the ultimate practice of joy before death to imagine "our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height"? 

 

Again, that's possible - and it would explain Annabella's ecstasy as she stands atop the Eiffel Tower and contemplates jumping to her death [6]. This thought of falling - "for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination" - is the thing she most vividly desires. 

 

"And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of one, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge." 

 

Again, it's not rational; it's a perverse defiance of logic, sound reason, and common sense. But without a "friendly arm to check us" - Annabella looks round for someone strong and brave to save her - there's a very strong possibility we will jump and meet a very sticky end. 

 

 

V.

 

It turns out that the narrator is in chains sitting in a condemned man's prison cell; that the above is an attempt to explain how he came to find himself in such circumstances. He's not mad, as most people think, but is rather "one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse".   

 

What happened, exactly? 

 

Well, the narrator commited murder in order to inherit a man's estate: 

 

"It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection."

 

Eventually, after reading some French memoirs, he hits on the idea of using a poisoned candle (i.e., one that releases toxic fumes when burned): 

 

"The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim’s habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated."  

 

And although he effectively got away with it after a coroner declared the death to be in accordance with the will of God, he is eventually gripped by a self-destructive impulse to confess his crime in public:

 

"Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper, I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clue by which it would he possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security. For a very long period of time, I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin. But there arrived at length [...] a haunting and harassing thought [...] I could scarcely get rid of for an instant." 

 

"One day, while sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud [...] 'I am safe - I am safe - yes - if I be not fool enough to make open confession!'  No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart."

 

For our narrator knows where his perversity would lead; first to jail and then to the gallows - and that there was nothing he could do about it: 

 

"I had had some experience in these fits of perversity [...] and I remembered well, that in no instance, I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual self suggestion, that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered - and beckoned me on to death." 

 

Poe concludes his tale with the following passages, spoken by the narrator:

 

"At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorously - faster - still faster - at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror [...] I still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares. At length, the populace took the alarm, and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate. 

      Could I have torn out my tongue, I would have done it - but a rough voice resounded in my ears - a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned - I gasped for breath. For a moment, I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then, some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back. The long-imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul."

      They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell. 

      Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon."

 

 

VI.

 

Is there any more to say? 

 

Only that Poe's abysmal theory - and I'm using that word in the literary-philosophical sense - of the imp of the perverse is, as fearful thoughts go, one that I like very much; it might not be quite as chilling as he intended, but it certainly makes one question one's own self-destructive tendencies and the desire to deliberately give the game away as it were [7].    

 

It's surely better to think we confess our sins not from guilt or a moral sense of right and wrong (conscience) but from perversity; I for one would rather have a little imp on my shoulder than that annoying little twat Jiminy Cricket.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] All quotes from and references to 'The Imp of the Perverse' are to the version published in this edition of Poe's tales which can be read free online by clicking here. 

      The tale first appeared in the July 1845 issue of Graham's Magazine (Vol. XXVIII). 

 

[2] I'm assuming that Poe decided on the figure of an imp rather than that of a demon or some othersupernatural entity because it might be read as short for impulse (i.e., a strong and sudden urge to act). It might also suggest the related term impetus (i.e., a force which drives something forward).  

 

[3] Antonin Artaud first used the phrase corps sans organes in his 1947 radio play known in English as To Have Done with the Judgment of God, describing it as a state of liberation from imposed structures and automatic reactions, allowing for true freedom. It was later developed as a philosophical concept by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their two-volume study of capitalism and schizophrenia: L'anti-Œdipe (1972) and Mille Plateaux (1980). 

      Nietzsche first used the phrase Gott ist tot in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), III. 125. It quickly became so well associated with him that it has almost become his catchphrase.

 

[4] Upon seeing someone make for the exit in the middle of a talk he was giving about his life as a dandy in the underworld, Horsley magnificently said: 'Don't go, I'll say the opposite if it will make you love me.' 

 

[5] Only joking. And in fact I have already written about this topic; see the post of 14 June 2014: click here. The narrator of Poe's tale does provide a nice description of procrastination for those who are interested: 

      "We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse using the word with no comprehension of the principle."   

 

[6] I'm referring to the Bow Wow Wow song 'Sexy Eiffel Towers' which first appeared on Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980) and, later, on the compilation album Girl Bites Dog (Parlophone Records, 1993): click here.  

 

[7] I think it may be stretching things to suggest that Poe's fictional theory of the imp of the perverse anticipates Freud's psychoanalytic concept of the death drive, but, nevertheless, several commentators have been quick to see and insist upon a connection.  

Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley ... Starring Sebastian Horsley as Maxim de Winter

Maggi Hambling: Sebastian Horsley XI (2021) 

Oil on canvas (125 x 95 cm)

 

"The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. 

But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. 

And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea."

- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)

 

 

I. 

 

I honestly can't remember what visions (if any) disturbed my sleep last night, but, earlier today, I went to an excellent group exhibition curated by Daniel Malarkey at the Alison Jacques gallery, whose title is a paraphrase (or perhaps misremembering) of the opening line to Daphne du Maurier's famous Gothic novel Rebecca (1938): 

 

Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley ... [1]  

 

 

II.

 

According to Malarkey, who spent over 18 months working to stage this show, it wasn't until he came to name it that he realised that he had subconsciously been curating an exhibition about the favourite novel of his adolescence [2]; a book that I came to know much later, but have also grown to love [3].

 

Malarkey's aim, according to the gallery's press release, is to "retell the story of Rebecca, taking the viewer on a path which explores notions of memory, darkness and transformation" [4], forming temporal connections and demonstrating the potential of narrative to facilitate all kinds of strange becomings. 

 

In order to accomplish this, Malarkey brings together the works of over 30 artists, some of whom - such as Leonora Carrington, Maeve Gilmore, and Torpedo the Ark favourite Aleksandra Waliszewska [5] - I am familiar with; whilst others - including Jean-Marie Appriou, Leonardo Devito, Graham Little - I am now grateful to have discovered. 

 

 

III. 

 

To be honest, as much as I love Rebecca - and as interested as I am in the folk and fairy tale tradition which more obviously inspires many of the works in this exhibition [6] - I felt compelled to attend the show more for the opportunity to see (in the decomposing flesh, as it were) one of Maggi Hambling's portraits of much-loved (and much-missed) Sebastian Horsley [7]: 

"Finally, the viewer is led downstairs through an arch into the 'Underworld', where Maggi Hambling's portrait of Sebastian Horsley presides over the space, introducing themes such as the conflict between morality and religion, resistance to authority, and a questioning of established traditions." [8]

 

Whether we are invited to imagine Horsley as the character of Maxim de Winter (crossed with Dorian Gray), I don't know - but it's a nice idea, I think, and not one that would displease Horsley who, like de Winter, was a passionate floraphile (although not, as far as I'm aware, a wife killer).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, curated  by Daniel Malarkey (24 Jan - 8 March 2025) at Alison Jacques, 22 Cork Street, London W1. For full details and to view all the artworks included in the show, click here.

 

[2] Like Alice Inggs, I'm tempted to question whether Malarkey's claim about Rebecca being a once favourite book that exerted a subconscious influence on his thinking when assembling this exhibition is "strictly true or a retroactive application to works very much open to allegory", but it doesn't really matter either way.

      And, as Inggs later concedes, you can certainly find more than a few "curious (and apparently incidental) parallels between passages from the book and the artworks [...] wherever you walk, there is Rebecca: the windows open to the sea, the white cats, the uncanny figures, the wrought-iron gates, the driftwood and rope, the rhododendrons, the antique wallpaper, the almost-silhouettes, the subtly erotic scenes, the sense of expectation …" 

      See her (cleverly titled) review, 'Psyche For Sore Eyes', in The World of Interiors (7 Feb 2025): click here. 

 

[3] For a two part post published in November 2024, in which I explore my own memories of Manderley,  please click here and/or here. 

      Interested readers can also find several other posts written on the work of Daphne du Maurier on Torpedo the Ark; simply go to labels and click on her name. Many of these posts are also reproduced on the official Daphne du Maurier website: click here.  

 

[4] This press release, written by Bella Kesoyan, can be found on the Alison Jacques website: click here.

 

[5] See the post entitled 'Why I Love Aleksandra Waliszewska' (13 Oct 2023): click here.

 

[6] To quote from the press release once more: 

      "All the works in the show challenge conventional notions of fairytales as children's stories and idealised narratives. While often adopting the visual language of magical landscapes, imaginary beings, and extraordinary human powers, the exhibition also explores darker and complex readings of this age-old genre." 

      That being so, one might have just as easily called this show Last Night I Dreamed of Angela Carter and one wonders how familiar Daniel Malarkey is with The Bloody Chamber (1979), her collection of ten short stories in which, to use Carter's own phrase, she extracts the latent content from traditional tales including 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Little Red Riding Hood'.     

 

[7] As Emily Spicer notes: 

      "Hambling painted Horsley several times after his death, imagining, it would seem, his decomposing body, his likeness falling from his bones to reveal the white skull beneath. In all of these paintings he is disintegrating, melting or dissolving into oblivion. Hambling has said that Horsley’s life was an elaborate rehearsal for death and we feel her coming to terms with this, searching, unflinchingly, for an image that reconciles this tragic irony." 

      See her review of The Quick and the Dead exhibition at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (20 Oct 2018 - 6 Jan 2019) on the Studio International website: click here. This show included Sebastian Horsley VIII (2011). 

      See also the post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'The Picture of Sebastian Horsley' (6 Sept 2019), in which I muse on Hambling's 2011 portrait of Horsley: click here. 

 

[8] Bella Kesoyan, press release for Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, as linked to above in note 3.

 

 

This post is for Ann Willmore, who encouraged me to write it. 

 

 

All That Jazz

Theodor Adorno, D. H. Lawrence, 

and Sebastian Horsley: they fucking hate jazz

 

'Jazz is the false liquidation of art [...] the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment ...' [1]  

 

 

I.

 

Sebastian Horsley famously didn't like jazz and refused to believe that other people liked it either; "once they're in Ronnie Scott's, they're asleep like everybody else" [2]. 

 

Of course, Horsley is not alone in hating jazz and certainly not the first person to express his contempt for the genre. One recalls that Adorno, for example, wrote a number of essays that expressed his negative evaluation of jazz as an art form and dismissed the claims made on its behalf by exponents and admirers. 

 

In brief, for Adorno, jazz was not only formulaic and banal, but it also lacked moral-aesthetic truth value and was essentially alienating and dehumanising (and not in a good way). Mostly, however, he despised it for being popular; a commodity born of modern mass society and the music industry. 

 

Although Adorno lived until 1969 - and despite the fact that jazz became increasingly complex and avant-garde, deviating significantly from its own origins as an upbeat genre to which the Bright Young Things of the so-called Jazz Age could dance the night away - he never revised his opinion of it.   

 

 

II. 

Another famous critic of jazz and popular modern culture in general - including the cinema and the radio - was the English writer D. H. Lawrence, who, in many ways, anticipated what Adorno would say, albeit using less openly Marxist terminology [3].

For although Lawrence was from a working-class background and frequently expressed concern with how he might appeal to as wide a readership as possible, he often used the word popular negatively to denote cultural forms that, in his view, lacked the spiritual and intellectual value that he believed genuine art possessed. 

 

As he grew older, Lawrence became increasingly critical of popular culture and the "bulk of our popular amusements" [4], including gramophone records; famously breaking one on Frieda's head in a notorious incident of domestic violence after she played it over and over, driving him into a rage with its dreary jazz trombone and crude sexual innuendo [5].

 

Does this make Lawrence and Adorno reactionary cultural elitists? Maybe. At the very least, we can agree that their views are out of tune with more informed opinion on the subject of jazz and popular culture - although Horsley would certainly have been sympathetic.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Adorno wrote that "Jazz is the false liquidation of art" in his 1967 essay 'Perennial Fashion - Jazz'. It can be found in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, ed. Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner (Routlege, 1990).

      He described jazz as the "mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment" in his much earlier text, 'On the Fetish Character in Music and Regression of Listening' (1938), which can be found in his book The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein (Routledge, 1991).     

 

[2] For Sebastian's highly amusing take on punk, jazz, and Notting Hill contra Soho, click here.   

[3] See Gemma Moss, ‘Popular Culture’, in The Cambridge Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts, ed Catherine Brown and Susan Reid (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), pp. 145-159. 

      As Moss rightly notes, Lawrence and Adorno were both living in a period when European culture was becoming increasingly Americanised and transforming into commercial mass culture with its standardised models of entertainment generating mechanical responses in the audience. In other words, both Lawrence and Adorno believed that popular art forms - such as jazz - create a public who become used to a limited range of emotions and ideas.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 244. 

 

[5] The record - 'Empty Bed Blues (Columbia, 1928) - was by the African-American singer Bessie Smith, with Charlie Green on trombone and Porter Grainger on piano. Smith was extremely popular during the Jazz Age and is now regarded not only as one of the greatest singers of her era, but a major influence on many other blues singers and jazz vocalists. 

      For an interesting essay on Lawrence and Bessie Smith, see Fiona Becket, 'A Brand New Grind: D. H. Lawrence, Manliness and the Blues', in the Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies - click here to access as an online pdf. 

      Readers who wish to listen to the track can do so by clicking here.  

 

Vive le flâneur - et la flâneuse!

 

Mariateresa Aiello: The Flâneur

(Ink on paper, 2011)

sketchbloom.com 

 

"Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. 

The flâneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them." - Walter Benjamin

 

I. 

 

In comparison to the concept of dandyism, which has often been referred to on Torpedo the Ark [1],  the idea of  flânerie - as embodied by the figure of le flâneur - has, rather mysteriously been overlooked.

 

I don't know why that is, particularly as this blog is essentially a form of strolling amongst literary leftovers, philosophical fragments, and the ruins of contemporary culture; coolly observing what passes for (and remains of) the real world whilst collecting images and ideas as I go, thereby making me a kind of postmodern flâneur in all but name.

 

For although the term flâneur threatens to transport us back to the arcades of 19th-century Paris and the musings of Baudelaire and Benjamin [2], that needn't be the case. For the concept of the flâneur - and flânerie as a practice - has been brought into the 21st-century by those who are more interested in moving through virtual spaces and exploiting the opportunities afforded by mobile technologies than actually standing on street corners. 

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, as someone who has concerns with the question of technology, I'm not averse to physically still drifting through Soho; gazing in the windows of shops and restaurants; observing the street life whilst sipping coffee on Old Compton Street; jotting down notes for future blog posts; vaguely hoping someone I know will pass by, or that I might encounter the ghost of Sebastian Horsely; essentially just idling time away (much as I have the last forty years) [3].

 

Paradoxically, as a flâneur one is both an essential part of urban life and yet detached or set apart from it - which kind of suits me as I want to belong, but only on the margins or fringes of society; Johnny Rotten may want to destroy the passer-by, but I'm happy to be a non-participant who is not caught up in events or overcome with enthusiasm (for one thing, this provides a certain degree of immunity from infection by political or religious fanaticism).

 

 

III. 

 

Of course, it isn't easy to be a flâneur in the poetic-philosophical sense today.

 

Some (perhaps overly pessimistic) commentators suggest that the flâneur has been supplanted by the badaud - an open-mouthed bystander who simply gawks without intelligence or aesthetically attuned appreciation for what he sees; one who is enchanted by the Spectacle and is a representative of das Man [4].

 

Way back in 1867, before Debord and Heidegger were even born, the French journalist and author Victor Fournel wrote this:

 

"The flâneur must not be confused with the badaud; a nuance should be observed here. […] The simple flâneur […] is always in full possession of his individuality. By contrast, the individuality of the badaud disappears, absorbed by the outside world, which ravishes him, which moves him to drunkenness and ecstasy. Under the influence of the spectacle that presents itself to him, the badaud becomes an impersonal creature; he is no longer a man, he is the public, he is the crowd." [5]

 

However, just as I believe in fairies, so too do I believe there are flâneurs still amongst us today; just much rarer in number and harder to spot. And I was reinforced in this by a chance meeting a couple of weeks ago at the National Poetry Library with an astonishing young woman called Tamara who gaily confessed herself to be a flâneuse ... [6]

Notes

 

[1] Click here for several posts on TTA which have mentioned dandyism over the years.  

[2] Developing the work of Charles Baudelaire, who described the flâneur both in his poetry and the seminal essay Le Peintre de la vie moderne (1863), Walter Benjamin spurred artistic and theoretical interest in the flâneur as a key figure of the modern world; see The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Harvard University Press, 1999). And for a short discussion of this work by Benjamin - and my convoluted relationship with him - see the post dated 21 October 2024: click here. 

 

[3] Readers will doubtless understand that this is a form of active idleness; as one French literary critic noted, flâneurie is tout le contraire de ne rien faire. 

     

[4] The badaud is essentially the anti-flâneur; more bystander than passer-by; the sort of person who today films events on their mobile phone, bartering away the sheer intensity and joy of experience for mere representation. This includes filming those terrible sights from which any decent person would look away; the mangled remains of some poor devil who jumps from the platform in front of a train, for example. 

      In contrast, the flâneur takes single snaps that are technically imperfect and full of flaws, but never obscene or sensational; images that give a fleeting glimpse without exposing objects or making them strike a pose (thereby allowing objects to retain their allure). 

 

[5] Victor Fournel, Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris [What One Sees in the Streets of Paris] (1867), p. 263. The (uncredited) English translation is cited on the Wikipedia entry for the subject of badaud: click here.  

      Walter Benjamin essentially adopts this distinction between the two figures of flâneur contra badaud in his work. 

 

[6] The feminine term flâneuse was born of recent feminist lit-crit and gender studies scholarship; previously, the term passante was used to describe the somewhat elusive modern woman who liked to wander round the city, experiencing public spaces in her own manner. Proust famously favoured this term.  

      Readers who are interested, might like to see Lauren Elkin's book: Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London (Chatto & Windus, 2016), in which she discusses a number of flâneuses, including George Sand, Virginia Woolf, Agnès Varda, Sophie Calle, and Martha Gellhorn.    

 

A Brief Note on the Resurrection of the Damned and Johnny Rotten as an Artist in Decline

The Damned - Rat Scabies, Brian James, Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible - 

proving that whilst punk rockers never die, they do, sadly, grow old ...

Photo credit: John Nguyen / JNVisuals (2022)

 

 

Readers who, like me, still retain a vague interest in how the story of punk unfolds in its twilight years, will have doubtless noticed a couple of stories in the news recently. 

 

Firstly, the original line up of the Damned have reunited to play live, 46 years after they initially took to the stage, offering us not so much an opportunity to smell once more the sweet scent of a new rose, as witness the sad spectacle of human decay.

 

Their show at the Hammersmith Apollo earlier this week - the first of five UK gigs - was described by Neil McCormick in The Telegraph as a 'cacophony of amateurish noise and chaos', so it certainly sounds like it was fun [1]. 

 

But, ultimately, apart from sixty-something die hard fans, to whom does such a event really mean anything? 

 

Secondly, a sheet of handwritten lyrics by Johnny Rotten has sold at auction for more than £50,000; well over the estimated sale price of between £15,000 and £20,000. 

 

The songs featured are 'Submission' - a track written in mocking response to Malcolm's request for a song with a sadomasochistic theme - and 'Holidays in the Sun' - the Sex Pistols' fourth single, which opens with the memorable line 'A cheap holiday in other people's misery' [2].    

 

Lyrically, neither song is at the same level of brilliance as 'Anarchy in the U.K.' or 'God Save the Queen' and arguably Rotten never wrote anything as good again as this verse taken from the latter:

When there's no future, how can there be sin?

We're the flowers in the dustbin ...

We're the poison in the human machine ...

We're the future, your future! [3]

 

However, even Rotten's weakest songs written as the charismatic young singer of the Sex Pistols look like works of genius compared to the dispiriting rubbish he now offers us as the fat old man fronting Public Image Ltd. 

 

I very much doubt people will be paying tens of thousands of pounds for the handwritten lyrics to 'Double Trouble', for example. 

 

Nor can I imagine that Sebastian Horsley would still describe Rotten as "Rimbaud reborn in Finsbury Park" - with all the intelligence and vision of an extraordinary poet [4] - were he able to hear Lydon moaning about his domestic life and indoor plumbing issues: 

 

What - you fucking nagging again? 

About what? What? What? 

The toilet's fucking broken again 

I repaired that, I told you 

Get the plumber in again [5]

 

It pains me to say it, but I'm tempted to agree with Vivienne Westwood that whilst Johnny Rotten was a sensation when performing with the Sex Pistols, once he was thrown out of the band "he didn't have any more ideas" [6]. 

 

And so he turned inward and began to exploit his memories and feelings; this internalisation being one of the defining characteristics of post-punk. Indeed, Lydon himself has confessed that whilst he invested the Sex Pistols with his intelligence, he poured his heart and soul into PiL. 

 

This may have produced some interesting work at first - I'm not denying the brilliance of Metal Box (1979) - but, ultimately, it resulted in a steady decline of his writing skills, just as age and increased girth have, sadly, led to a deterioration of his ability to sing and perform [7]. 

 

Johnny Rotten at the Cruel World Festival (14 May 2022)

Photo by Alex Kluft

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Neil McCormick, 'The Damned are just as amateur now as they were in 1976', The Telegraph (29 Oct 2022): click here. 

      For those who want a reminder of just how great the Damned were back in the day, click here. 'New Rose' was the first single released by a British punk rock group, on 22 October 1976 (one month prior to the Sex Pistols releasing their debut single, 'Anarchy in the U.K.'). 

 

[2] Both these songs can be found on the Sex Pistols' album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977). Click here to listen to 'Submission' and/or here to play 'Holidays in the Sun'.

 

[3] Lyrics from the Sex Pistols' second single 'God Save the Queen', released May 1977 on Virgin Records, written by Johnny Rotten and © Warner Chappell Music, Inc. The track is credited to all four members of the band; Steve Jones, Johnny Rotten, Glen Matlock, and Paul Cook. Click here to play.

 

[4] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), pp. 57-58.

 

[5] Lyrics from 'Double Trouble' written by Lydon, although the track is credited to all four members of PiL; Scott Firth, Lu Edmonds, John Lydon, and Bruce Smith. It can be found on the album What the World Needs Now ... (PiL Official Ltd., 2015): to play, click here.

      Although the album received mostly favourable reviews, it is, in fact, fucking awful. Middle-class music critics working for The Guardian might find the songs exhilarating, foul-mouthed fun, but I don't.

[6] Vivienne Westood interviewed by Alex Flood (13 May 2022) for the NME. Click here to read online.

[7] This is evidenced by a charmless live performance at the Cruel World Festival earlier this year: click here to watch an excruciating version of 'Shoom' (another track from What the World Needs Now ...).

How Things Protect Us From the Void

Pupils at Bosworth Junior School (Harold Hill) c. 1972

 

Rather like Sebastian Horsley, I have always been happy to have my existence confirmed by official documentation: police files, medical reports, tax returns, etc. are, as he says, for many of us, our "only claim on immortality" [1].

So you can imagine my distress when I discovered that my mother and/or sister acting as self-appointed memory police had thrown away my school reports, neatly handwritten by my teachers in royal blue fountain pen ink at the end of each year and offering an assessment not only my academic ability (limited), but character (flawed) [2].  

 

It is, as I say, not simply that these things had sentimental value; they had also existential import and their disappearance from the world matters to me more even than the disappearance of the schools themselves or the disappearance of old school friends.

 

Of course, my mother and/or sister didn't simply dispose of my school reports; toys, games, letters, and assorted treasures from the past that had helped ground me in being, were all brutally shoved into bin bags. 

 

In the name of tidying up and making space, all traces of my childhood which I had lovingly sought to preserve, were casually eliminated; "replaced by an emptiness that would not be filled" [3] ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), p. 102. 

[2] From memory, I can recall that the consensus seemed to be that whilst I was capable of producing good work, I was too easily distracted, too chatty, and too keen to amuse my fellow pupils by playing the class clown. No doubt they would simply stamp the letters ADHD on the reports were they written today.  

[3] Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police, trans. Stephen Snyder, (Vintage, 2020), p. 14. 

 

 

For further remarks on this subject, with reference to the work of Michael Landy, click here.

When Even the Flies Leave You Alone: Ernest Becker's 'The Denial of Death' as Interpreted by Sebastian Horsley

 

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else. - EB

It's only death; it's not the end of the world, is it? - SH

 

 

As a thanatologist, I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I still haven't got round to fully reading Ernest Becker's seminal - and Pulitzer Prize winning - text The Denial of Death (1973); a psychological and philosophical examination of how mankind has attempted to deal with (and disguise) the fate that awaits. 

All forms of human culture and civilisation, argues Becker, constitute an elaborate defence mechanism against biological reality. That's what we, as symbolic animals, are extremely good at; defiantly creating a world of meaning which allows us to transcend the fact that we end up as worm food or a few pounds of ash.

 

Becker seems to find this ability heroic, but that's not the term I'd use. For a fantasy of immortality remains just that and, ultimately, no life matters and no great work will be remembered. 

 

In other words, in the grand scheme of things, there is no grand scheme and Becker's privileging of religious illusion in which our animal and mortal nature is given spiritual significance - over what he dismisses as hedonistic pursuits and petty concerns - is just conventional moral prejudice [1]. 

 

It's surprising, therefore, that Sebastian Horsley - a man who loved taking drugs and admired those who delighted in their own triviality - should claim that no book, before or since, has had such a powerful effect on him as The Denial of Death. 

 

I'm not sure, however, that Horsley carefully follows the thread of Becker's argument. Does the latter, for example, really want us to admit that we are merely "doomed and defecating creatures"? [2] I don't think so. His project is founded upon man's dual nature as he understands it and wishes to affirm that we are so much more than simply animals that eat, shit, and die. 

 

One can also see from the quotations above, that Becker and Horsley have a radically different attitude towards death; the former's existential anxiety is amusingly negated by the latter's dandyesque insouciance and flippancy.

 

And, finally, I very much doubt that Becker would endorse Horsley's scatological and masturbatory attempt at terror management: 

 

"I was so affected by [The Denial of Death] that I felt I had to respond. [...] So I locked myself into my own flat, stripped myself naked and sat there listening to Beethoven's Ninth. After a few hours I defecated in a neat pile on the floor and scooped it up in my hands. Running it through my fingers, like a gardener assessing the friability of the soil, I examined it. It was slimy as wet clay.

      It would do. I used my shit to swipe the word MAN on my chest, and then PIG on the walls. Then I covered the rest of my body in ordure until no flesh was visible. Beethoven swelled through the room. I sat there musing. Sex, I decided, returning to a favourite subject, was interesting. But not as important as excretion. [...] My philosophical insight gave me a hard on. I had a wank to quieten the imperious urge." [3]

 

Horsley remains, so he tells us, lying on the floor, eating and sleeping amid his bodily waste, for three whole days, until he finally felt able to crow like a cock on his own dunghill:

 

"When the whiff got a bit too much - it was high summer - I opened the patio door. I was a little concerned about the neighbours. And slightly worried that my landlords [...] would stage one of their impromptu checks. But I needn't have worried. Even the flies left me alone." [4]     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In an essay on The Denial of Death, Daniel Podgorski comes to a similar conclusion and describes reading Becker's celebrated work as an unexpectedly disappointing experience. For concealed behind "the parade of theorists and the solid analytical prose" is an "old-fashioned, moralizing, pessimistic set of theses: that humanity is in denial of mortality because of a 'necessary' denial of the human body and reality; that humanity can only exorcise the dread of death by embracing blind faith and rooting out 'aberrant' thoughts and behaviors; and that death can only be truly faced by those who approach the study of humanity and society through a (reductive) structuralist lens".

      Like Podgorski, I think all three of these notions deserve to be critically examined and that, upon such an examination, they reveal themselves as misguided and false.  

      Podgorski's essay - 'The Denial of Life: A Critique of Pessimism, Pathologization, and Structuralism in Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death' - can be found on The Gemsbok (22 Oct 2019): click here.

 

[2] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), p. 94. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid., pp. 94-95.  

Get It On and Punk It Up With Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan with Dave Vanian of the Damned 

and Siouxsie Sioux in 1977

 

According to Sebastian Horsley, Marc Bolan was super-plastic profound:

 

"A curious hybrid of dandy and poseur, street urchin and visionary. The mass of contradictions could be held together only by the unifying power of art. The only real philosophy he had was that a human being was an art form in itself. He was entirely his own creation: A creature lovingly constructed from the materials of his imagination. He was important for being trivial yet deep, poppy yet interesting - all the things I came to love in one person." [1]

However, whilst this loving description is undoutedly true, I have to admit that back in the day - i.e., the 1970s - I was never a great Bolan fan and when I stomped around the bedroom wearing my sister's platform boots, I was pretending to be a member of Sweet or Slade, not T. Rex. 

 

As was also the case with David Bowie, I was just a little too young - and perhaps a little too straight - to fully appreciate the queer sophisticated pop genius of Bolan and his "gorgeously nonsensical and deliciouly fey lyrics" [2]. 

 

And so, although I remember listening to his songs on the radio and used to love watching him on TV, it was Gary Glitter's poster which hung on my wall and Gary Glitter's singles I used to buy with my pocket money at the local record store. 

Only retrospectively, can I now see that I should've given my heart to this East London boy who, unlike many of his peers, embraced punk rock and was - again unlike many of his peers - embraced by the younger punk generation, as the photos above illustrate [3]. 

 

Whether Bolan genuinely loved the so-called New Wave, or simply wanted to ride along on it as he had once ridden a white swan in order to sustain his own career, I don't know. But I like to think this one-time hippie folk musician who became a glam superstar was more of a punk at heart than many might imagine [4].

 

Sadly, we never really got to find out, because Bolan was killed in a car crash on 16 September, 1977, aged 29.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), pp. 29-30. 

      Horsley borrows the title for his autobiography from the T. Rex single released 30 May 1977 (from the album of the same name released 11 March 1977 on EMI). Click here to enjoy a performance of this song on the children's TV show Get It Together, presented by Roy North (sans Basil Brush).

 

[2] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, p. 27. 

 

[3] There are also photos of Bolan with the Ramones and Billy Idol - and, speaking of the latter, Generation X performed their debut single, 'Your Generation', on the final episode of Bolan's own TV show Marc (broadcast 28 September 1977): click here.  

[4] This is further evidenced by the fact that he chose the Damned to support him on a short tour in March 1977, which began at City Hall, Newcastle (10/03) and ended at the Locarno, Portsmouth (20/03), where the Damned joined Bolan and T. Rex on stage to perform 'Get It On' as an encore.    

On Those Who Have Been Refused Entry Into the Land of the Free ...

Photo by John Tiberi of the Sex Pistols 

(Steve Jones / Johnny Rotten / Sid Vicious / Paul Cook) 

on the eve of their first American tour (January 1978)

 

 

I. 

 

As might be imagined, there exists a fairly extensive list of notable persons who have been deported from the United States for one reason or another, often on the grounds that they are aliens who are hostile to the American way of life defined in terms of motherhood and apple pie [1].  

 

It's a list that includes, for example, the English comic actor and director Charlie Chaplin and the Russian political activist and writer Emma Goldman; the latter described by J. Edgar Hoover shortly before her removal in 1919, as one of the most dangerous women alive.

 

II. 

 

But it's not this list or the figures upon it which interests me here: I am, rather, concerned with the list of notable people who have been refused entry into the Land of the Free ...

 

This a list that includes Kurt Blome, the high-ranking Nazi scientist who performed illicit medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein President and IRA sympathiser, and, rather more surprisingly, footballer Diego Maradona, domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, and singer-songwriter Lily Allen [2].    

I think my favourite entry on the list, however, is Sebastian Horsley, who, after arriving at Newwark Airport in March 2008, was denied entry into the United States on the grounds of moral turpitude. 

 

After eight hours of questioning - and despite the fact that he had removed his nail polish as a concession to American sensibilities - Horsley was placed on a plane and sent back to London; his planned book tour and six-month stay in the US over before it had even begun [3]. 

 

In failing to enter and tour America, Horsley actually goes one better than his heroes the Sex Pistols, who, seen above in passport photos taken at the time, were initially denied visas by the US Embassy in London on the eve of their first American tour (members of the band having committed a number of criminal misdemeanours).   

 

Although obliged to cancel several shows, the band were, of course, eventually allowed in to the States, thanks to the efforts of their American record company, Warner Bros., and the lawyers acting on their behalf. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, things did not go well - which is not to say they didn't go as Malcolm hoped; the plan being not to sell tickets or records, but incite mayhem and disillusion [4]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It might be noted that only those designated as aliens are subject to removal from the United States. In other words, a U.S. citizen or a U.S. national cannot be removed from the United States under any circumstances.  

[2] Maradona had numerous criminal convictions in Argentina, Italy, and elsewhere; Nigella was barred from boarding a flight leaving London for LA in 2014, having recently confessed to a cocaine habit; Lily Allen was refused a U.S. visa for having assaulted a photographer in 2007 and for singing in a mockney accent. 

 

[3] Torpedophiles will be aware that I have already written a post on the idea of moral turpitude with reference to the case of Sebastian Horsley: click here.   

[4] At the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, on the 14th of January, 1978, the Sex Pistols self-imploded before the eyes of the world and exposed rock music as a dying beast that needed putting out of its misery. To watch the show in full, click here. 

Sweet Death (In Memory of Steve Priest)

Sweet in 1973: Steve, Mick, Andy and Brian
Photo: Jorgen Angel

Back in my pre-punk, glam-rocking, teeny-bopping days the band by whom I was most bedazzled were The Sweet (also known simply as Sweet).

They had hits before 1973 - Wig Wam Bam (1972) - and they had hits after 1973 - Teenage Rampage (1974) - but the three big hit singles I bought and played over and over and over again until I knew every word and every note, were all released in that golden year of British pop 1973: Block Buster, Hell Raiser, and Ballroom Blitz.

Even now, almost 50 years later, I still think they're brilliant tunes and that the band perfectly capture the non-essential essence of glam; an outrageously camp image and performance coupled with a stomping drum beat and heavy guitar riffs. Of course it was contrived, but, as Sebastian Horsley would say, it was an authentic contrivance; i.e., Sweet were fakes, but they were real fakes (like him).

Thus, I was sorry to hear the news that bassist Steve Priest died last month, aged 72, leaving guitarist Andy Scott as the last surviving member of the original group (singer Brian Connolly having died in 1997 and drummer Mick Tucker in 2002).

So, that's another childhood hero gone ... Soon, of course, they'll all be dead (and so will we).

To watch Sweet perform 'Block Buster' on Top of the Pops (25 Jan 1973): click here.

To watch them perform 'Hell Raiser' (Disco 26 June 1973), click here.

And, finally, to watch them perform 'The Ballroom Blitz', click here.

The Picture of Sebastian Horsley

Maggi Hambling: Sebastian IX (2011)

Oil on canvas (53 x 43 cm)

There have only been two deaths that have touched me to the extent that I often dream of the individuals in question and wake up thinking of them. Both men died in the same annus horribilis (2010) and both men I continue to mourn to this day: Malcolm McLaren and Sebastian Horsley.

Malcolm I knew better and for much longer and he had the more profound effect upon me. Sebastian, I met only twice, if I recall correctly, and although we exchanged a few emails - and I attended his funeral at St. James's Church, at the invite of one of his former lovers - I wouldn't say we were friends or close in any respect.

It's rather queer, therefore, that since his death my affection for Horsley has intensified and he has continued to haunt my imagination and dreams. In other words, he means more to me dead than he meant to me alive and perhaps that explains why the (slightly ghoulish) posthumous portraits of Horsley painted by Maggi Hambling continue to fascinate.

Hambling, well-known for her portraits of the dead, has said it's her way of coping with the loss of persons, like Sebastian, to whom she was close, whilst at the same time honouring their memory. It is, of course, a strategy other artists have also employed; see for example Heide Hatry's Icons in Ash project: click here. 

Having little talent for image-making, however, this isn't a strategy of mourning that's open to me. All I can do is write little posts like this one, in fond memory; admire the work of others, such as Hambling; and keep dreaming ...