1. Submersible Edgar Allan Poe was a trickster, a hoaxster; were he peering over our shoulders as we stare at pages of his words and, with the omniscience of a ghost, reading our thoughts, I have no doubt he would repeatedly whisper, like a dusty and demented raven, or […]
1. In the early morning hours of October 19, 1998, the Two Elk Lodge and other structures at the Vail ski resort in Colorado burst into flame, the result of an arson attack soon claimed by members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) movement. It was one of many arsons […]
Today is May 5, Karl Marx’s 208th birthday. Last night, celebrities got together for the annual display of wealth that is the Met Gala, this year with the billionaire Bezos family as honorary chairs. Could there be a more appropriate anticipation of Marx’s birthday? Protestors should have set up cake […]
0. When I was putting Finite Eyes together, the most fascinating pieces for me were the ones from right before COVID-19 hit the world and the pieces from that first pandemic year. The earlier stuff felt like messages from a world unknowingly on the verge of destruction, while the COVID-era stuff […]
We must theorize horror. (We must horrify theory.) * …instead of arriving at a clear grip on what kind of entity is horrifying, we are confronted with the feeling that there is this something that must harm us according to its very essence. Horror retains this character of indefinite something […]
If you read a lot of horror literature because you like to be scared, then you’re probably a normal, healthy person. If you read horror literature to fulfill some deeply personal predisposition, be assured there is probably something odd and unwholesome about you. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s […]
The theme for this year’s International Open Access Week is “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, a question that ought to be nonsensical, but which is becoming ever more urgent. I cannot help but think about Open Access (OA) within the current context both of our world generally and also my own world […]
I delivered the following essay as a paper at the 2025 Modernist Studies Association conference in Boston. (There are actually a couple more paragraphs here than in the paper as delivered, since I cut it for the sake of time.) A paragraph or so is repeated from a chapter I […]
1. In September 1986, Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) put on high heels, painted a hammer & sickle over half his face, and walked into a meeting of communists and leftists in Santiago, Chile to speak one of his earliest pieces of writing, a manifesto of being and difference: I need no […]
Arthur Machen’s 20th century writings are simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. These days, if Machen is known by general readers, it is not for the relatively more recent works, but rather for his extraordinary writings of the 1890s (even if some of them were not published until later): “The Great God […]
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” … Same as it ever was, same as it ever was Same as it ever was, same as it ever was Same as it ever was, same as it ever was Same as it ever was, same as it […]
1. Director Justin Kurzel’s latest feature film, The Order, tells the true story of a group of white power terrorists in the Pacific Northwest who killed Jewish radio “shock jock” Alan Berg, bombed porn theatres and a synagogue, counterfeited money, robbed banks and armored cars, and planned other attacks and […]