In Defence of My Essay on D. H. Lawrence's Dendrophilia

Illustration by Efrat Dahan

behance.net

 

 

I. 

 

An academic journal [1] has rejected the following short essay:

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence's Dendrophilia 

 

In an attempt to move beyond established parameters, this short essay examines the perverse materiality of Lawrence's relationship with the botanical world. It affirms dendrophilia not merely as a form of sexual deviance, but as a formal mechanism through which Lawrence facilitates amorous contact with the otherness of the arboreal environment. 

      Lawrence is often situated within the paradigms of vitalism and panpsychism. But such taxonomies often obfuscate the more radical and disturbing dimensions of his work. For far beyond the therapeutic frameworks of nature-immersion and forest bathing, Lawrence delineates a queer ontology of compulsion and, in this context, the tree transcends its status as a mimetic symbol of life to become a literal and figurative object of desire. As a nonhuman entity, its resinous allure facilitates a form of sexual communion that systematically transgresses heteronormative boundaries. 

      In the pornographic imagination, 'wood' is frequently employed as a crude metonym for male arousal. Lawrence, however, specifically via the figure of Rupert Birkin, reclaims the term's material density. Birkin's forest delirium in chapter VIII of Women in Love serves as a seminal text for Lawrentian dendrophilia, characterized by the categorical rejection of human intimacy in favour of a birch tree's tactile specificity; "its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges" (WL 107). 

      This represents a more radical eroticism than the mere instrumentalisation of nature seen, for example, in Fortune and Wells's novel A Melon for Ecstasy (1971). Whereas the protagonist of the latter, Humphrey Mackevoy, requires the artificial modification of the botanical body to simulate human anatomy, Birkin seeks a communion predicated on the tree's alien nature. In other words, Lawrence eschews the anthropomorphic impulse that would reduce the tree to a vaginal substitute; instead, he insists on the tree as an autonomous object-in-itself. Birkin, the amorous male subject, does not seek to master the natural environment, but to be penetrated by its "raw earth-power" (MM 159) and to deposit his seed in the "folds of the delicious fresh growing leaves" (WL 108). This is a sexual communion defined not merely by tenderness, but by a deadly serious longing for ecstatic, inhuman contact and involves violent struggle as much as sensual delight. 

      The specific parameters of Lawrentian dendrophilia are further elucidated through his visceral repudiation of Ben Hecht's Fantazius Mallare (1922). For despite this work's controversial reputation and Wallace Smith's explicit illustrations of a man enjoying coition with a tree, Lawrence dismissed the novel as "crass" and "strained" (IR 215). His critique was not born of moral prudery, but from a fundamental ontological divergence: Lawrence argued that Smith failed because, unlike Beardsley, he lacked a sense of malicious irony; "to be really wicked he'd see that even a tree has its own daimon, and a man might lie with the daimon of a tree" (IR 215). 

      In other words, Lawrence's aversion to Smith's artwork again stemmed from its reductive anthropomorphism. By imposing a distinctly all-too-human female form on the tree, Smith transposed a transgressive encounter into a tedious heteronormative cliché. For Lawrence, the erotic charge of the tree resides exclusively in its non-humanity. To "nestle against its strong trunk" (PFU 86) is to engage with an object that is "fierce and bristling" (MM 158), whose "root-lust" (PFU 86) does not mirror human emotion but rather challenges the human subject to reorganise their life in relation to the tree's own onto-botanical reality. 

      This erotic fascination is grounded in a form of object imperative, wherein Lawrence frames his encounter with an American pine, for example, not as a romanticised union, but as a meeting of two lives that "cross one another, unknowingly" (MM 158). This facilitates a materialist union; "the tree’s life penetrates my life, and my life, the tree's" (MM 158). 

      Lawrence's prose adopts an increasingly somatic register when describing this interaction - one which Rupert Birkin describes as a "marriage" (WL 108). In 'Pan in America', he speaks of "shivers of energy" crossing his "living plasm" (MM 158), suggesting a biological and erotic osmosis where the man becomes "a degree more like unto the tree" (MM 159). The "piney sweetness is rousing and defiant" and the "noise of the needles is keen with aeons of sharpness" (MM 158). This is not the language of pastoral bliss; it is the language of a "primitive savageness" (MM 159) that Lawrence seems to find particularly stimulating. To borrow Graham Harman's concept of the withdrawn but irresistible object, the tree's "resinous erectness" (MM 159) acts as a black sun, radiating a gravitational force that holds birds, beasts and dendrophiles in its orbit. 

      Lawrence, then, moves beyond botanical observation or even a chaste form of tree worship, activating "doors of receptivity" that allow the "relentlessness of roots" (MM 159) to fundamentally restructure the internal architecture of human being. His dendrophilia ultimately points toward a perverse and pantheistic sensuality that complicates the traditional boundaries of religious and erotic experience. Lawrence's desire to venerate arboreal being is inseparable from his (Birkinesque) desire to nakedly rub against young fir-trees that "beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles" (WL 107), etc. 

      By situating this engagement beyond the historical paradigms of domestic or recreational intimacy, Lawrence effectively posits a third category of desire: the pursuit of bliss via the non-human. Rejecting, as mentioned earlier, the mimetic reductions of the artificial vagina, Lawrence reconfigures the tree as a site of profound paraphilic contact. This vision moves sex beyond the procreative or banally pleasurable, allowing readers to conceive of his phallic philosophy as a passionate ontological encounter with responsive vegetation. [2]

 

 

For me, this decision taken by the editor on the advice of two anonymous reviewers [3], is disappointing to say the least; as is the accusation that my text lacks nuance, misunderstands Lawrence's language, and fails to see that his dendrophilia is actually just a repressed expression of same-sex desire.  

 

Of course, rejection is all part of the game and, ultimately, every writer has to accept this. However, I'd like to offer a modest (but robust) defence of the essay and attempt to explain some of its finer theoretical points; not by way of launching a formal appeal or seeking the support of someone to intervene on my behalf, but more as a piece of rhetorical pushback (hopefully not too soured with grape juice).  

 

 

II. 

 

Essentially, the thousand-word text was an attempt to make an original and provocative contribution that veers away from the cosy and conventional literary traditions of Lawrence scholarship - such as vitalism or pastoralism - and engages with the visceral, transgressive character of his prose. The essay also aimed to subvert the green readings that would place Lawrence's work within a network of environmental moralism; by boldly reframing Lawrence's relationship to trees as paraphilic, we move the conversation from eco-mysticism to perverse materialism.  

 

And by making a clear distinction between the instrumentalisation of nature and Lawrence's object-eroticism, suggesting that the tree's otherness is the source of Birkin's desire, the essay aligns Lawrence with recent developments in European philosophy, thereby disrupting the tired heteronormative/homoerotic binary that dominates Lawrence studies. It suggests a queer ontology where the human/non-human boundary is the primary site of sexual tension. 

 

Further, the work - if I do say so myself - displays a certain degree of linguistic and critical wit, uniquely connecting well-known Lawrentian texts, like Women in Love, with more obscure cultural references - such as Fantazius Mallare and A Melon for Ecstasy - as well as Graham Harman's philosophy, thus providing a rigorous intellectual framework for what might otherwise be dismissed as an eccentric reading. 

 

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, of course, the reviewers' rejection stems from a fundamental clash between my object-oriented reading of Lawrence's perverse materialism and their traditional humanist framework. It's not that they fail to understand the work; rather, they understand it all too well - and do not like it. And so they fall back on a gatekeeping strategy that reinforces established biographical and linguistic nuances over radical theoretical interventions. 

 

It was said that I had conflated the terms dendrophilia and paraphilia and that this was problematic. Actually, however, the problem is that the reviewers prefer to define dendrophilia via a standard etymological lens; i.e., simply as a love of trees rooted in Lawrence's documented life and his arboreal writings. 

 

But I'm using the term in a wider, more critical and clinical sense to suggest a non-symbolic sexual communion and highlight the libidinal character of Birkin's desire. It's not that I'm being careless or clumsy with language, it's a deliberate theoretical move. Whether it works or not, is, of course, open to debate. 

 

Moving on, we arrive at the (predictably reductive and, frankly, risible) idea that Birkin's dendro-floraphilia is actually a repressed (and/or displaced) form of same-sex desire; that when he rubs against the trees he is actually thinking of Gerald and that the tree is thus merely a human substitute, rather than an autonomous object-in-itself with its own allure. 

 

To be clear: I'm not overlooking or denying Birkin's attraction to Gerald (or, indeed, Ursula), I'm simply not interested in these all-too-human desires and relations. I'm more concerned with taking Lawrence's demonology and dendrophilia seriously. Clearly, however, these are things my critics prefer to leave vague: the latter is the love whose name they dare not speak. 

  

IV.

 

How, then, might we summarise this conflict of opinion? 

 

Clearly, the editorial board of the journal in question tends to favour research grounded in archival evidence and historical context. My essay probably seemed too speculative for a forum that still prioritises Lawrence's intent and his complex relationship with human sexuality over modern queer or object-oriented readings (indeed, it was probably foolish and mistaken on my part to submit it in the first place).  

 

Sadly, the rejection of the essay reflects an all-too-common tension in academic peer review between radical theoretical intervention and traditional scholarly maintenance. I wouldn't say the editorial board is cowardly or even particularly conservative, it's more a case that they are operating in a very different world with different rules to the "unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge" [4], that Nietzsche speaks of and in which Lawrence challenged us to do our thinking.  

 

Thus, whilst they wish to preserve the historical and biographical authenticity of Lawrence's work and safeguard his reputation as an author; I want to corrupt and destroy everything (not least of all journals that operate as academic echo chambers). 

 

  

Notes 

 

[1] Out of professional courtesy, the title of this journal has been omitted. 

 

[2] The following books by D. H. Lawrence were referenced in the text (as IR, MM, PFU, and WL):

 

-- Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

-- Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009). 

-- Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious / Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 

-- Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1987).

 

[3] Again, out of professional courtesy - and because this is not a personal issue - the name of the editor has been omitted. 

 

[4] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), I. 23, p. 53. 

 

In Defence of Stephen Alexander's 'Fragments of Glass' (2006) - by May Spear

Costas Varotsos: Dromeas (1994)

Glass and iron sculpture (Athens, Greece) 

Photo: Stephen Alexander (2006)

 

   

I. 

 

Recently, a cutting and rather condescending review of Stephen Alexander's poetic series Fragments of Glass (2006) was published by an anonymous critic assisted by artificial intelligence - or was it the other way round - in the comments section following a post published on Torpedo the Ark dated 19 Dec 2012: click here.  

 

Essentially, the critic targeted Alexander's morbid narcissism and the fact that his text allowed little space for the reader to move around in and do their own thinking (that it was authoritarian).  

 

The review certainly contained some clever insights; I particularly liked the idea of triangulation [1] i.e., that the poet positioned himself (somewhat self-dramatically) between two poles of delirium - love and death - symbolised by the two women. But to extrapolate from this that Alexander is simply posing and manipulating situations and that the fragments lack genuine feeling seems to me unfair and, in fact, mistaken. 

 

By viewing the two women as 'props' in a 'self-centred drama', the critic fails to see the fragmentation of identity common in traumatic experiences. The women represent two versions of the poet's own future; one of connection (a life together) and one of total collapse (suicide). 

 

Obviously, there is a degree of staging and performance - and yes there's an aestheticisation of trauma - but it's a work of art, after all, not a news report or a clinical history. And is it really so unusual for a poet to write about their bodies and their experiences? I think not. The kind of poetic reflection demanded by the critic is somewhat like the moon-cold objectivity that Nietzsche derides in Zarathustra as 'immaculate perception' [2].

 

Re context: the poem is set in Athens: but clearly it is not about the Greek capital and Alexander is not offering these fragments as pieces of travel writing, or postcards from a holiday destination. One might even suggest that the loss of context is crucial here; in a moment of crisis, time can stand still and the external world suddenly disappear. The poem thus accurately reflects an aspect of shock.   

 

Re scabs and scars: despite the critic's insistence that the latter are 'aged scabs in effect', that is not true. For as any nurse will tell you, whilst both are features of the healing process, a scab is a temporary protective crust formed by blood cells to seal a wound; a scar, meanwhile, is the permanent, fibrous tissue that replaces normal skin after a deeper injury has healed. 

 

It's a small point to pick at, perhaps, but indicative of the often slipshod thinking that the critic practises and by denying the difference between scabs and scars he misses the point; namely, that the poet is expressing a preference for the spectacular moment of crisis over the mundane process of healing. 

 

Re comparisons of Alexander to other poets, such as Plath and Sexton: this seems to me a pointless exercise; for as the same unnamed (but not unrecognised or unknown) critic often likes to say: All comparisons are odious. Having said that, the poppy imagery does, of course, reference Plath's work - of which Alexander is an open admirer - and the phrase 'little hell flames' is borrowed from her [3].    

 

Finally, the remark about Alexander being left to die 'once of blood loss and a second time of aesthetic delight' is admittedly humorous (one assumes AI came up with this cruel gem) and it made me smile like a splinter of glass. But there are, however, equally fine - and equally - sharp lines to be found in Fragments of Glass ...

 

 

II.  

Fragments of Glass consists of seven short verses, each six or seven lines in length. It opens with a crash and a 'sparkling chaos of glass, blood and sunshine' and ends with the shamefulness of scabs. 

 

In my view it's a fantastic work of trauma poetry, the logic and the beauty of which our anonymous critic often fails to grasp (or chooses not to acknowledge). It is also a visceral meditation on the fragility of the body and the malevolence of the inanimate universe; one that transforms trauma into art which delights in a mix of surrealism and synaesthesia. 

 

As the boundary between selfhood and the external world is shattered, the narrator of the poem is left to reflect on existential questions of the heart whilst quite literally watching his blood spill and splinters of glass assume mocking agency (the work pre-dates Alexander's interest in object-oriented ontology, but one can see already his fascination for things). 

 

To not see how glass might smile is a literalist failure.    

 

Ultimately, the poem promotes a tragic philosophy: life bleeds and we are born to 'embody our scars', a line borrowed from Deleuze, I believe, and one that further reveals Alexander's philosophical background; as does the celebration of vitality and 'everything that flows'.  

 

Fragments of Glass has its shortcomings: here, as elsewhere, Alexander tends toward the clichéd and melodramatic at times and his imagery lacks a certain nuance. I personally don't like the Alice metaphor, for example. But then, he's not pretending to be a professional poet, so I feel we can allow him some clumsiness (the same quality that resulted in his walking into a glass door in the first place).  

 

Notes

[1] For those who might be unfamiliar with this psychological concept, triangulation refers to a dysfunctional relationship dynamic where two conflicting subjects involve a third person in order to reduce tension, stabilise the relationship, or manipulate situations. 

 

[2] See Nietzsche writing in the section 'On Immaculate Perception', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[3] See Alexander's post on Torpedo the Ark titled 'Little Hell Flames: On D. H. Lawrence's Poppy Philosophy' (29 May 2021): click here.  

 

 

May Spear is a contributing editor to the underground French literary magazine Pourquoi es-tu une con aussi odieuse? 

 

On the Seven Noses of Soho

One of the Seven Noses of Soho by Rick Buckley (1997)

(Meard Street, London W1)

Photo by Stephen Alexander (Feb 2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Connecting Wardour Street in the West to Dean Street in the East, there are many reasons to love Meard Street in the centre of Soho. 

 

Firstly, there's the beautiful Georgian architecture to admire; Meard Street is one of the few surviving streets in London from the early 18th century (most of the houses were built by John Meard, between 1720 and 1732). 

 

Secondly, Meard Street was home to the great English artist Sebastian Horsley, who lived at (prostitute free) number 7. 

 

Thirdly, it's on Meard Street that one can find - should one wish to - one of the Seven Noses of Soho ...

 

 

II.   

 

The Seven Noses of Soho are the work of British artist Rick Buckley [1], dating to 1997. Plaster cast reproductions of his own nose, they protrude from the walls of buildings to which they are glued in a pleasingly surreal manner. 

 

Initially, there were over thirty noses, but now only a handful survive [2]. 

 

Intended as a political gesture, the noses are a protest against the introduction of CCTV cameras across London and the threat posed by a surveillance state (Buckley had been inspired by his reading of the Situationists).      

For Nietzsche, of course, the nose was the refined philosophical organ par excellence, not merely a political symbol. He used his nose to sniff out the corruption in modern morality and culture and thus saw it as an essential tool for the revaluation of all values: "My genius is in my nostrils", as he once informed his readers [3].

 

But, however we think of it, placing noses on buildings is no real countermeasure to the spread of CCTV cameras and since 1997 the increase in their number - not just in central London, but across the UK - has been truly frightening. 

 

If one includes private and commercial cameras as well as those operated by the authorities, it is now estimated by the British Security Industry Association that there are around twenty-one million of the fucking things snooping on us all [4].     

 

Whether we see this as the triumph of Mr Nosey Parker or of Big Brother, depends, I suppose, on how seriously one views this development.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For more information on Buckley, visit his website: rickbuckley.net

 

[2] The other six Soho noses are located at Admiralty Arch, Great Windmill Street, Bateman Street, Dean Street, Endell Street, and D'Arblay Street. 

 

[3] See Nietzsche, 'Why I Am a Destiny' (1), in Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126.   

 

[4] See the recent report published on the Clearway website: click here. The UK may not be top of the list of most surveilled countries in the world - that spot is taken by China - but we're not far behind and on a short walk through London you can be expected to be filmed at least 300 times (entirely without your consent).   

 

 

Notes on a Psychodrama: A Guest Post by Ronald S. Foelles

Psychodramatists: 

Stephen Alexander and Simon Solomon

 

 

I. 

 

I have been following the recent (often acrimonious) exchange between Stephen Alexander and Simon Solomon in the comments section of Torpedo the Ark following the post titled 'Why Me Contra So What' (6 Feb 2026): click here.  

 

And whilst I have no wish to become embroiled in what is clearly a lovers' spat between the two as much as it is a philosophical debate, I thought it might be helpful to offer some objective third party observations.

 

Ultimately, what we see unfolding here is a textbook clash between a defender of secular reason (Alexander) and a defender of sacred wisdom (Solomon). What complicates matters somewhat is that Alexander understands reason from a Nietzschean perspective (as a gay science), whilst Solomon wishes to ground his faith in analytic psychology which he regards as a form of empiricism. 

 

 

II. 

 

Whilst Solomon appears the more learned of the two - dropping not one, not two, but four Ancient Greek terms for fate early into the discussion and providing a wealth of textual support for his arguments - I feel that Alexander nevertheless holds his ground and presents his case in a more concise and open manner (even if it is sometimes shot through with sarcasm as well as scepticism). 

 

Both men, it seems to me, are unnecessarily aggressive; although as they both graduated from the Philosophy Department at Warwick University in the 1990s, that is perhaps understandable. Whilst Alexander retains a veneer of calm and coolness, he still manages to weaponise such in order to antagonise the more hot-under-the-collar figure of Solomon. 

 

It's hard to say who is the most dismissive and condescending, but whilst Alexander is more mocking, Solomon is certainly more abusive and also more pedantic - in a debate of this kind, Simon, a spelling error really doesn't matter. 

 

Solomon also likes to pathologise his opponent; that is to say, instead of refuting Alexander's logic, he attempts to discredit it by suggesting it is a symptom of mental or emotional deficiency: You only think that way because you're a damaged individual! He doesn't want to win the argument, but shame his opponent and expose them as an inferior (and possibly a fraud).    

 

To be fair to Solomon, however, I think his defensiveness stems from a perceived threat to his identity founded upon the mysterious and imaginative sensibility of the poet. Thus, when Alexander reduces his compellingly empirical experiences to mere statistical inevitability, Solomon is offended at the core of his being. 

 

The odd thing is that whilst neither seems particularly fond of the other, their familiarity suggests they are long-term friends. 

 

 

III. 

 

Were I to move from my role as unofficial moderator to unofficial adjudicator and choose between the two - in terms not so much of their ideas, but their writing style and public persona - I'd probably have to favour the somewhat mercurial figure of Alexander.

 

For the latter writes with a lot less seriousness and doesn't sermonise in an ex-cathedra manner like Solomon; there's more sunlight and fresh air in Alexander's texts and less metaphysical solemnity. His use of slang and colloquialism can be a little wearisome at times - when he tries a little too hard to be the cheeky chappie - but, again, I prefer his playful irony to Solomon's haughtiness.          

 

Thanks to short, pithy sentences, it's easy to follow Alexander's arguments. Solomon's construction of a complex textual labyrinth, on the other hand, can leave one feeling a little lost and confused (although, to be fair, Solomon does produce some very powerful and very beautiful turns of phrase). 

 

Just as there are times when one wants to tell Alexander to knock off the performative game and be serious, so too are there times when one wishes one could tell Solomon that the fate of the world's soul isn't always hanging in the balance and he isn't the appointed guardian of ineffable mystery.

 

If he isn't careful, Solomon is, ironically, in danger of something Jung often warned about: inflation, i.e., over-identification with an archetype; in this case that of the Sage or Poet-Priest. 

 

He should thus be grateful to Alexander, for the latter occupies the role of his shadow; i.e. the one who obliges him to confront those parts of himself he has repressed in order to construct an ideal (if somewhat monstrous) post-Romantic persona.  

 

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.  

 

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.   

 

 

AI and the Irony of Torpedo the Ark

I Recognise the Irony, But I Don't Really Get It ...

(SA/2025)

 

  

I.

 

I recently went to a talk on the slop-ification of literature: click here. It wasn't very good, but, nevertheless, the question raised about what role AI will play in the future is an interesting and important one. 

 

The three speakers, who all subscribed to ideals of sincerity and authenticity, argued that these moral qualities define us as human and are traits which machines will never be able to replicate even if they learn via complex algorithms how to simulate certain aspects of thinking, such as problem-solving and decision-making. 

 

I don't know if that's true and, besides, what really interests me is not whether AI can or cannot express itself with genuine feeling, but whether it recognises when the rhetorical device of irony is at play within a text. 

 

Thus, for example, can AI detect the humourous incongruity in a blog entitled Torpedo the Ark, which preserves ideas gathered from all over, even if it lacks human understanding, emotional intelligence, and lived experience? Does pattern recognition, the identifying of syntactical markers, and the gathering of contextual clues suffice for it to get the joke?        

 

 

II. 

 

In order to find out, I asked a commonly-used model of generative AI - Gemini on Google Search - what the essential irony of Torpedo the Ark is and it replied:  

 

. The core irony of the blog Torpedo the Ark, authored by writer and philosopher Stephen Alexander, appears to be that a project with a title suggesting the destruction of a refuge has become a significant digital repository and platform for discussing and preserving ideas, particularly in literary and philosophical contexts. 

     

. The blog frequently features detailed philosophical and literary analyses, often focusing on various aspects of contemporary culture. These are often complex or niche subjects that might be considered under threat of being forgotten or misunderstood in mainstream discourse. 

 

. The title Torpedo the Ark implies an intent to destroy or subvert a place of safety or preservation. In practice, the blog acts as an 'ark' by offering a haven for critical discussion and detailed exploration of specific, often challenging, ideas and authors, thereby preserving them and giving them continued relevance.

 

. The author engages in in-depth intellectual discourse and critique, providing a space for these ideas to survive and flourish in an environment that values humour and intellectual rigor, contrasting with the destructive implication of its title.  

 

 

III.

 

That's fairly impressive, I have to admit. There are phrases I'd probably not use (in-depth) - and I don't think for one moment that Gemini understands why this is amusing, even if it can accurately process the mechanics of irony - but, still, that's pretty, pretty, pretty good, as Larry would say.  

      

What Gemini doesn't point out, however, is how Torpedo the Ark differs from the original ark constructed by Noah and as described in Genesis. For one thing, I'm not interested in saving every author and every idea; just certain authors and certain ideas. 

 

And for another, I haven't been instructed by God to build a blog and I regard TTA as something that operates in defiance of the Lord and his judgement; it's a space of evil rather than obedience and righteousness and serves not as a testament to my faith, but as an indication of my scepticism and cynicism.  

(Re)turn to Red

Fig. 1 Killing Joke: Turn to Red  

(Malicious Damage, 1979) [1] 

Cover design by Mike Coles [2] 

 

 

It's amazing how certain songs and certain images can stay with you for many years after you first encountered them. 

 

Take, for example, the debut EP by Killing Joke with a sleeve design by Mike Coles (fig. 1). It's over forty-five years since its release and yet whenever there's a red sunrise - as there was this morning over Harold Hill (fig 2): 

  

 

Fig. 2 I Wonder Who Chose the Colour Scheme ... 

Photo by Stephen Alexander 

 

 

- it's not shepherds that I think of, but the track 'Turn to Red' that begins to play in my head (even though, ironically, the song twice informs us that the sky is turning grey). 

 

And it's Mike Coles's Mr Punch figure [3] that I look to see dancing across the rooftops; which, I suppose evidences the power of his design, as recognised by Russ Bestley: 

 

"One mark of a great designer in the field of music graphics is in the way that the audio and visual become almost inseparable - you can't listen to the music without picturing the cover artwork, and vice versa." [4].

 

Bestley, in fact, is a huge admirer of Coles's work: more so than me, to be honest; I'm far more of a Jamie Reid fan and punk purist [5]. 

 

Having said that, I agree with Bestley that Coles's images for Killing Joke set the scene for the music; that you can almost hear the band's "dark, raw power when you look at their early record covers" [6], including the Turn to Red EP, which nicely combines collage with drawing and photography set against a flat red background [7].

 

And, coincidently, it was Mike Coles's Turn to Red design that influenced me when asked a couple of months ago by Catherine Brown to come up with an image to promote her walking tour of Hampstead, following in the footsteps of D. H. Lawrence, as part of this year's Being Human Festival [8]. 

 

I hope - should he ever see the image (fig. 3) - that it makes Mr Coles smile ... 

 

 

  

Fig. 3 Turning Hampstead Red with D. H. Lawrence (2025) 

Stephen Alexander (in the manner of Mike Coles)

 

Notes

 

[1] The Killing Joke EP Turn to Red was released in a 10" format by Malicious Damage on 26 October, 1979. It had two tracks - 'Nervous System' and 'Turn to Red' - on the A-side and just one track on the B-side; 'Are You Receiving?'. 

      It was then re-released on 14 December of that year in a 7" and 12" format by Island Records, with an additional track; a dub remix of the title track called 'Almost Red'.   

      The title track, featuring a closed groove so that the word red is repeated endlessly (or at least until you lift the needle of the record), can be played by clicking here. And for the remastered 2020 version, with a video by Mike Coles, click here.

 

[2] Mike Coles can be found on Facebook: click here. Or visit the Malicious Damage website: click here. Coles's artwork is also available to buy from the Flood Gallery: click here. Finally, readers may be interested in Coles's book; Forty Years in the Wilderness: A Graphic Voyage of Art, Design & Stubborn Independence (Malicious Damage, 2016), which traces a pictorial history of his work under the Malicious Damage  label, including the record sleeves, posters and flyers promoting Killing Joke. 

      Historian of punk and post-punk graphic design, Russ Bestley, writes of this book: 

      "Part autobiography, part personal reflection, part celebration, this publication may lead to a critical reappraisal of the designer's work alongside more widely acknowledged contemporaries, though such considerations are far from being a driving force for the project, and the title ironically sums up Coles' attitude towards independent and autonomous production." 

      See Bestley, 'I wonder who chose the colour scheme, it's very nice …': Mike Coles, Malicious Damage and Forty Years in the Wilderness', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Issue 3, (Sept. 2016), pp. 311-328. The essay, which I shall refer to throughout the post, can be downloaded as a Word doc from the UAL research depository: click here.

 

[3] Coles already had a long interest in the traditional British puppet character of Mr Punch and the latter would become a key figure in his work: "'Mr Punch was something that fascinated me before Malicious Damage or Killing Joke. That drawing from the first single was done in 1977 after I'd been to the Punch & Judy festival in Covent Garden'". 

      Mike Coles, quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 18 August, 2016.

 

[4] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.

 

[5] Whilst Coles is to be respected as an image-maker who developed his own unique aesthetic, for me, he strays just a little too far from what I would consider a punk visual style. And indeed, by his own admission, he "'never took much notice of all the punk stuff'" and "'never really felt a part of the punk movement'". He was more influenced by "'Victorian freak show stuff'" than the Situationists. Quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 14 August, 2016.   

 

[6] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.  

 

[7] Readers might be interested to know that along with the hand-drawn image of Mr Punch and the picture of two smiling figures taken from a toothpaste ad, the cover features a (high-contrast) photo of Centre Point (which remains a London landmark to this day).   

 

[8] The Being Human festival is an annual celebration of the humanities led by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, working in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. 

      Each November they put on hundreds of free public events across the UK in the hope that they might garner support for the continued study of art, literature, history, and philosophy, etc. by demonstrating the value and relevance of such disciplines; the humanities, it is argued, enable us to understand and fully appreciate what it means to be human. For further information, click here.  

      Dr Brown's Hampstead walk took place on 8 November, 2025 (11:00 - 13:00): click here. It will be noted that it was decided to use an alternative (inferior and far less humorous) image to advertise the talk for reasons unknown.    

 

 

Douglas Murray Contra Michel Foucault

The Ghost of Michel Foucault Haunting Douglas Murray

(SA/2025) 

 

I. 

 

Readers familiar with Torpedo the Ark may recall that I have written several posts which mention the neoconservative political commentator and cultural critic Douglas Murray: click here.

 

And whilst I wasn't exactly blown away by either of the books of his that I've read - The Strange Death of Europe (2017) and The Madness of Crowds (2019) - I still find him in many ways an admirable figure and, if forced to choose, would still rather go to dinner with him than Gaby Hinsliff.   

 

However, the fact that Murray continues to denigrate Michel Foucault's work - or, more precisely, abhor Foucault's influence within academia - is something I still find disappointing (and kind of irritating) ...

 

 

II.

 

Speaking in conversation with philosopher Roger Scruton at an event organised by The Spectator in 2019 [1], Murray concedes that, as a writer, Foucualt is often brilliant and his books are "filled with resonant phrases and so on" [2]. 

 

However, Murray cannot forgive the fact that Foucault deconstructs the notion of truth as an objective thing in itself, to be pursued rigorously and maintained as an absolute standard or ideal: "I finally read Foucault last year and I have to say: I'm so appalled ..." 

 

And why is he so appalled? 

 

Because, says Murray, whilst he'd previously read about Foucault's work and heard others discuss it - and whilst he'd always known that he "sort of instinctively disliked it" - it was only after reading it [3] that he realised how catastrophic Foucault's philosophical project really is:  

 

"this sort of perversion of all life [...] as being solely about power, and the ignoring of every other human instinct - the total ignoring of love, the total ignoring of forgiveness; power, only power." 

 

That, I think, is an unfair and grotesque caricature of Foucault and his work; one that goes beyond being a gross oversimplification [4]. 

 

I'm not a Foucault scholar, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't think of power as something that could be possessed and didn't think either in terms of oppressed groups needing to be emancipated from the domination of more powerful oppressors; he was a post-Nietzschean thinker, not a neo- or quasi-Marxist [5]. 

 

Thus, whilst power certainly plays an important role in his philosophy, he conceives of it in a highly novel manner as something complex that produces things (including us as subjects) and puts something new into the world; it induces pleasures, generates discursive practices, forms bodies of knowledge, etc. It is power - not love - which runs through the entire social body and which, as a matter of fact, calls love into being [6]. 

 

For Murray this is a distortion of the truth: but then, he would say that wouldn't he, as an idealist who, despite professing to be an atheist, still affirms Christian virtues [7].  

Oh, and whilst we're discussing this: I think it's also profoundly mistaken to blame Foucault for the rise of identity politics (which Murray does): Foucault, the masked philosopher and anti-essentialist, argued that identities are not inherent but socially and historically constructed and could easily become traps or a form of subjugation.

 

Instead of creating or maintaining identity, Foucault's political strategy was more focused on refusing it and developing new forms of resistance and even a cursory reading of his work makes it pretty obvious that he would have very little time for today's identity politics (would, in fact, see it as reactionary; a return to the same old bullshit to do with fixed categories and subjectivation). 

 

I really don't understand why Murray fails to see this; particularly as he claims to have read Foucault. It's almost a wilful misunderstanding - one which Jordan Peterson also buys into - and if I said earlier that I'd rather go to dinner with Murray than Gaby Hinsliff, I'd like it to be noted that I'd sooner go to dinner with Foucault than Murray (even if dinner with Foucault often involved nothing more than a club sandwich and a Coke) [8].  

 

Notes

 

[1] The full transcript of Douglas Murray's conversation with Roger Scruton (8 May 2019), in which they discuss what it means to be a conservative, can be found on The Spectator website: click here. All lines quoted in this post from Murray are taken from here. 

      The relevant clip from the night in which Foucault is condemned by both men, has been posted by Culture Wolf on YouTube: click here. Anybody who thinks they might like to watch the entire event online can visit The Spectator website: click here.     

 

[2] Note how Murray doesn't say ideas; implying Foucault was a mere stylist rather than a major thinker. 

 

[3] The fact that Murray doesn't mention any specific books or essays, leaves one to wonder the extent of his reading of Foucault who published around a dozen books during his lifetime and who has had at least twice as many posthumous publications of essay collections, lecture series, etc.

 

[4] It is also, of course, a live paraphrase of a passage that will appear in The Madness of Crowds:    

      "From Michel Foucault [...] thinkers absorbed their idea of society not as an infinitely complex system of trust and traditions that have evolved over time, but always in the unforgiving light cast when everything is viewed solely through the prism of 'power'. Viewing all human interactions in this light distorts, rather than clarifies, presenting a dishonest interpretation of our lives. Of course power exists as a force in the world, but so do charity, forgiveness and love. If you were to ask most people what matters in their lives very few would say 'power'. Not because they haven't absorbed their Foucault, but because it is perverse to see everything in life through such a monomaniacal lens."

      See Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury, 2019), p. 53. 

 

[5] As one commentator has recently pointed out:

      

"Right-wing critics frequently label Foucault's thought as another species of Marxism. Douglas Murray wrote in The War on The West (2022) that  'Foucault's obsessive analysis of everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of power relations diminished almost everything in society into a transactional, punitive and meaningless dystopia.' Jordan Peterson has also been fond of calling Foucault a 'postmodern neo-Marxist'.

      It's a popular and long-held narrative, but there are several problems with it. For one, it is incoherent to describe Foucault as a 'neo-Marxist' or a  'cultural Marxist'. He, like other postmodern thinkers, was broadly opposed to Marxism."

      - Ralph Leonard, 'Michel Foucault still confuses the Right, 40 years later', Unheard (25 June 2024): click here. As Leonard rightly goes on to argue, it's Nietzsche, not Marx, that haunts Foucault's philosophy. 

 

[6] I'm thinking here of something written by D. H. Lawrence:

      "For power is the first and greatest of the mysteries. It is the mystery behind all our being, even behind all our existence. Even the phallic erection is a first blind movemet of power. Love is said to call the power into motion: but it is probably the reverse; that the slumbering power calls love into being."

      See Lawrence's essay 'Blessed Are the Powerful', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 327. 

 

[7] In a live streamed video conversation on a Christian radio podcast with the theologian and former Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, Murray confessed:      

      "I was brought up a Christian, a believing Christian into my adult life, and am now, I suppose, in a self-confessedly complex situation of being among other things an uncomfortable agnostic who recognises the values and the virtues that the Christian faith has brought."

      See 'The Big Conversation' (season 3, episode 3), hosted by Justin Brierly (13 May 2021): click here.

 

[8] In an amusing interview, Foucault expressed his preference for American fast food over French cuisine; specifically mentioning a club sandwich and a Coke, followed by ice cream. 

      The interview, with Stephen Riggins, was first published in the Canadian journal Ethos (Autumn, 1983). As well as revealing his favourite meal, Foucault also voiced his thoughts on the quest for monastic austerity and a cultural ethos of silence. It can also be found under the title 'The Minimalist Self' in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. Alan Sheridan and Lawrence D. Kritzman (Routledge, 1988), pp. 3-16.  

 

An Open Letter to Simon Reynolds on Malcolm McLaren and the Art of Living Like a Hobo

Simon Reynolds and Stephen Alexander 

 

I.

 

Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Destroy Success' (7 Nov 2025), in which you were either highlighting (without judgement) the paradoxical aspect of Malcolm McLaren's life and multifaceted career as an artist - the successful failure; the professional amateur; the bourgeois anarchist, the inside outsider, etc. - or you were making some kind of moral appraisal [1] and suggesting (without actually using the terms) that he was a fraud and a hypocrite.

 

I'd like to think you were doing the former and that any antipathy towards McLaren that you feel is nonethless born of love and an ongoing obsession with this fascinating figure: "Even now, despite all the reprehensible things he did and the suspicion that he helped misdirect a generation [...] I can't quite amputate McLaren from my consciousness." [2] 

 

I couldn't help wondering if perhaps you also begrudge the fact that, in his final years, Malcolm was paid large sums of money to give talks all over the world to people in business as well as the arts, travelling first class and staying in the best hotels, etc. But then, why would that be the case when you also give lectures and interviews on an international stage in your capacity as a hard-working pop-historian and pedagogue ...? 

 

 

II. 

 

Your main gripe seems to be that enjoying the rewards of such a lifestyle is further evidence of Mclaren's hypocrisy: "I mean, it's not exactly 'living like a hobo' ..." [3]

 

But, here again, I would disagree: for living like a hobo doesn't mean begging in the streets like a bum [4], anymore than being a punk means adopting a certain look or thinking one has to be angry and miserable all the time in order to be militant, like the po-faced political ascetics who would preserve the purity of the punk revolution. 

 

Whilst the etymology of the term hobo is uncertain, I like to imagine it could be an abbreviation of homeless bohemian, a description that could well be applied to McLaren who "cultivated the mannerisms and appearance of a bohemian outsider" [5] and whose life involved constant travel and a deliberate rejection of conventional work and societal norms; partly out of a desire for freedom and sometimes just for the fun of it. 

 

Malcolm may not have illegally hopped freight trains, but he rarely paid for his own travel - or even his own cigarettes! - and, just like a hobo, he was an extremely resourceful individual, flitting between London, Paris, and New York just as he had once flitted from art college to art college, living on his wits and other people's generosity. 

 

Above all, McLaren stayed true to the number one rule of the Hobo Code [6]: Decide your own life; don't let another person run or rule you. 

 

And one recalls, of course, that Duck Rock (1983) may have thanked many people for their collaboration on the project, but it was solely dedicated to Harry K. McClintock; better known by his hobo name, Haywire Mac, whose Hallelujah! I'm a Bum (1981) Malcolm insisted was crucial to an understanding of duck rock or hobo-punk as he conceived it and an album he made me buy in Collet's bookshop [7].  

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: living like a hobo is primarily about adopting a certain attitude and recognising the creative potential within failure - if I may return to this word. In a piece for The Guardian written two years before he died, McLaren wrote:

 

"I've always embraced failure as a noble pursuit. It allows you to be anti whatever anyone wants you to be, and to break all the rules. It was one of my tutors [...] when I was an art student, that really brought it home to me. He said that only by being willing to fail can you become fearless. He compared the role of an artist to that of being an alchemist or magician. And he thought the real magic was found in flamboyant, provocative failure rather than benign success. So that's what I've been striving for ever since." [8] 

 

McLaren's, therefore, is a very special understanding of failure; an artistic and philosophical understanding of the term. 

 

One is almost tempted to bring Samuel Beckett in at this point; for Beckett (as I'm sure you know) uses the symbolic figure of the tramp to explore various existential themes and informs us that what we learn from failure is not how to succeed in the future, but, at most, how to fail better [9]. Success, says Beckett, is not even an option; we are destined to fail - such is the tragic character of Dasein.

 

The fact that Beckett - like McLaren - affirms this and finds in it a source of darkly comic satisfaction, is something admirable I think. Nietzsche would call it a pessimism of strength [10] and he made it a central teaching of his Dionysian philosophy; a philosophy that, like McLaren's vision of punk, finds creative potential in destruction and flamboyant failure. 

 

McLaren had his successes - but he didn't chase or desire success. Indeed, if anything - and again to quote your own words Simon, if I may - he was thwarted by success [11]. His dream was always to go down in flames or sink beneath the waves [12].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the claim made by Reynolds that Paul Gorman's excellent biography of McLaren failed to give a "moral appraisal of its subject". It was an allegation swiftly refuted by Gorman, who rightly pointed out that the primarly task of a biographer is to write a critically objective study, not pass judgement. 

     See: Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', a review of Paul Gorman's The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2021), in The London Review of Books, Vol. 44, No. 5 (10 March 2022), and see Paul Gorman's letter in response in the following issue (44. 6), dated 24 March 2022. Both can be read by clicking here.             

 

[2] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to above.   

 

[3] Simon Reynolds, comment on the TTA post 'Destroy Success' posted on 10 Nov 2025 at 16:56. Click here. 

 

[4] In the revised and expanded fourth edition of his The American Language (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937), H. L. Mencken argued that although commonly lumped together, tramps, hobos, and bums are actually distinct fron another. Both tramps and hobos like to travel around and lead an itinerant lifestyle, but the former try to avoid work preferring just to dream (and drink), whereas the latter, whilst enjoying some prolonged periods of unemployment, essentially want to work, albeit in a series of jobs with no desire to establish a long term career. As for the bum, according to Mencken, he neither wanders nor works.  Obviously, such a fixed and rigid classification is highly questionable.     

      

[5] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to in note 1 above.  

 

[6] A set of ethical guidelines known as the Hobo Code was created by a hobo union during its 1889 National Hobo Convention, in St. Louis, Missouri.  It consists of more than a dozen rules intended to govern the conduct of hobos nationwide and help dispel negative stereotypes associated with their lifestyle. These rules essentially boil down to: 1. Respect the law. 2. Help fellow hobos. 3. Protect Children. 3. Preserve the natural environment.

      The National Hobo Convention continues to be an annual event - held in Iowa since 1900 - where the Hobo Code is still recognised. Readers wishing to know more are encouraged to visit the Open Culture web page on the subject: click here.  

 

[7] Collet's was a bookshop (that also stocked selected records and tapes) founded by Eva Collet Reckitt in 1934. It was famous for selling radical and revolutionary publications, particularly those from Russia and Eastern Europe, and acted as a hub for left-leaning intellectuals. 

 

[8] Malcolm McLaren, 'This much I know', The Guardian (16 Nov 2008): click here. 

[9] See my post on Beckett's short prose work 'Worstward Ho!' (1983) and the idea of failure (11 Jun 2013): click here.   

 

[10] This phrase - Pessimismus der Stärke - can be found, for example, in Nietzsche's 1886 preface to The Birth of Tragedy (1871), where he describes it as a "predilection for what is hard, terrible, evil, problematic in existence", arising from strength and well-being rather than decadence or enfeebled instincts. 

      See 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism', in The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, ed. Michael Tanner (Penguin Books, 1993), p. 3.    

 

[11] Simon Reynolds, 'Serious Mayhem', as cited and linked to in note 1 above.  

 

[12] It is interesting to note that, etymologically, the term flamboyant that Malcolm used in relation to the kind of failure he aspired to, comes from the French and means 'flaming' or 'wavy'.