The Truth Behind Jane Austen’s Fight Club: Female Prize Fights Were a Thing During the 18th Century

in Gender, History, Literature, Sports | February 23rd, 2018

The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. 

The sec­ond rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! 

- Chuck Palah­niuk, Fight Club

Could it be a case of autho­r­i­al over­sight that all sub­se­quent rules are exclu­sive­ly con­cerned with such prac­ti­cal mat­ters as dress and fight dura­tion?

Giv­en the macho rep­u­ta­tion of both the book and the film adap­ta­tion, it seems like the third rule of Fight Club should be: you DO NOT talk about the fact that a fair num­ber of Edwar­dian ladies were badass bare knuck­le fight­ers.

Because doing so might dimin­ish Fight Club’s street cred just a bit­sy…

Film­mak­er (and pop­u­lar audio­book nar­ra­tor) Emi­ly Jan­ice Card has a good deal of fun in Jane Austen’s Fight Club, above, mar­ry­ing Palahniuk’s tropes to the social mores of England’s Regency peri­od.

“No corsets, no hat pins and no cry­ing,” Tyler Dur­den stand-in Lizzie instructs the eager young ladies in her cir­cle. Soon, they’re proud­ly sport­ing bruis­es beneath their bon­nets and stray blood spots on their tea dress­es.

While young women of the fic­tion­al Ben­net sis­ters’ social class refrained from bru­tal fisticuffs, there’s ample evi­dence of female com­bat­ants from the pro­le­tar­i­an ranks. They fought for mon­ey, and occa­sion­al­ly to set­tle a dis­agree­ment, train­ing hard for weeks in advance.

Their bouts drew spec­ta­tors to the amphithe­ater owned by box­ing pro­mot­er James Figg, and the mar­velous­ly named Hock­ley in the Hole, a seedy estab­lish­ment whose oth­er attrac­tions includ­ed bear­bait­ing, bull­bait­ing, and fight­ing with broadswords and cud­gels.

The female fist fight­ers chal­lenged each oth­er with paid notices in local papers, like this one from “cham­pi­oness and ass-dri­ver” Ann Field of Stoke New­ing­ton:

Where­as I, Ann Field, of Stoke New­ing­ton, ass-dri­ver, well known for my abil­i­ties, in box­ing in my own defense wher­ev­er it hap­pened in my way, hav­ing been affront­ed by Mrs. Stokes, styled the Euro­pean Cham­pi­oness, do fair­ly invite her to a tri­al of her best skill in Box­ing for 10 pounds, fair rise and fall; and ques­tion not but to give her such proofs of my judg­ment that shall oblige her to acknowl­edge me Cham­pi­oness of the Stage, to the sat­is­fac­tion of all my friends.

Mrs. Stokes prompt­ly announced her readi­ness to come out of retire­ment:

I, Eliz­a­beth Stokes, of the City of Lon­don, have not  fought in this way since I fought the famous box­ing- woman of Billings­gate 29 min­utes, and gained a com­plete vic­to­ry (which is six years ago); but as the famous Stoke New­ing­ton ass-woman dares me to fight her for the 10 pounds, I do assure her I will not fail meet­ing her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows which I shall present her with will be more dif­fi­cult for her to digest than any she ever gave her ass­es.

Rather than keep­ing mum on Fight Club, these female pugilists shared Muham­mad Ali’s flare for drum­ming up inter­est with irre­sistibly cocky word­play.

Ref­er­ences to adver­saries fight­ing in “close jack­et, short pet­ti­coats, and hol­land draw­ers … with white stock­ings and pumps” sug­gest that the adver­saries played to the spec­ta­tors’ pruri­ence, though not always. Unlike the 20th-cen­tu­ry stunt of biki­ni clad jel­lo wrestling, sex appeal was not oblig­a­tory.

In a chap­ter devot­ed to pub­lic enter­tain­ments, sports and amuse­ments, Alexan­der Andrews, author of The Eigh­teenth Cen­tu­ry or Illus­tra­tions of the Man­ners and Cus­toms of Our Grand­fa­thers, doc­u­ments how the Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor, a crew com­prised of “six old women belong­ing to Wind­sor town” took out an ad seek­ing “any six old women in the uni­verse to outscold them.”

On June 22nd, 1768, a woman called Bruis­ing Peg “beat her antag­o­nist in a ter­ri­ble man­ner” to win a new chemise, val­ued at half a guinea.

In 1722, Han­nah Hyfield of New­gate Mar­ket, resolved to give her chal­lenger, Eliz­a­beth Wilkin­son, “more blows than words,” promis­ing to deliv­er “a good thump­ing.” Both par­ties agreed to hold a half-crown in their fists for the dura­tion of the fight. William B. Boul­ton, author of 1901’s Amuse­ments of Old Lon­don, spec­u­lates that this was a prac­ti­cal mea­sure to min­i­mize scratch­ing and hair-pulling.

Time trav­el to an 18th-cen­tu­ry female bare knuck­les fight via Female Sin­gle Com­bat Club’s exhaus­tive cov­er­age,  Sarah Murden’s excel­lent analy­sis of John Collet’s paint­ing, The Female Bruis­ers, above, or Jere­my Freeston’s short doc­u­men­tary avail­able on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Author Chuck Palah­niuk Read Fight Club 4 Kids

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

Ernest Hemingway’s Delu­sion­al Adven­tures in Box­ing: “My Writ­ing is Noth­ing, My Box­ing is Every­thing.”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Manuscripts: Before the Word Processor & White-Out

in Literature | February 20th, 2018

Before the word proces­sor, before White-Out, before Post It Notes, there were straight pins. Or, at least that’s what Jane Austen used to make edits in one of her rare man­u­scripts. In 2011, Oxford’s Bodleian Library acquired the man­u­script of Austen’s aban­doned nov­el, The Wat­sons. In announc­ing the acqui­si­tion, the Bodleian wrote:

The Wat­sons is Jane Austen’s first extant draft of a nov­el in process of devel­op­ment and one of the ear­li­est exam­ples of an Eng­lish nov­el to sur­vive in its for­ma­tive state. Only sev­en man­u­scripts of fic­tion by Austen are known to survive.The Wat­sons man­u­script is exten­sive­ly revised and cor­rect­ed through­out, with cross­ings out and inter­lin­ear addi­tions.

Janeausten.ac.uk (the web site where Austen’s man­u­scripts have been dig­i­tized) takes a deep­er dive into the curi­ous qual­i­ty of The Wat­sons man­u­script, not­ing:

The man­u­script is writ­ten and cor­rect­ed through­out in brown iron-gall ink. The pages are filled in a neat, even hand with signs of con­cur­rent writ­ing, era­sure, and revi­sion, inter­rupt­ed by occa­sion­al pas­sages of heavy inter­lin­ear cor­rec­tion.… The man­u­script is with­out chap­ter divi­sions, though not with­out infor­mal divi­sion by wider spac­ing and ruled lines. The full pages sug­gest that Jane Austen did not antic­i­pate a pro­tract­ed process of redraft­ing. With no cal­cu­lat­ed blank spaces and no obvi­ous way of incor­po­rat­ing large revi­sion or expan­sion she had to find oth­er strate­gies – the three patch­es, small pieces of paper, each of which was filled close­ly and neat­ly with the new mate­r­i­al, attached with straight pins to the pre­cise spot where erased mate­r­i­al was to be cov­ered or where an inser­tion was required to expand the text.

Accord­ing to Christo­pher Fletch­er, Keep­er of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions at the Bodleian Library, this prick­ly method of edit­ing was­n’t exact­ly new. Archivists at the library can trace pins being used as edit­ing tools back to 1617.

You can find The Wat­sons online here:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in August, 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s Music Col­lec­tion, Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

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Is Charles Bukowski a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Brutally Honest, Yet Oddly Inspiring, Poems and Decide for Yourself

in Literature, Writing | February 19th, 2018

I don’t know if he’s been replaced as a major influ­ence on young, rest­less (and almost exclu­sive­ly male) aspir­ing writ­ers, but once upon a time—if you weren’t into the roman­tic wan­der­lust of Ker­ouac but still con­sid­ered your­self a fringe character—it might be to the hard-boiled shit-talk­ing of wise old man Charles Bukows­ki that you turned. Upon first learn­ing this, and being a busy col­lege stu­dent, I decid­ed to take a crash course and checked out a doc­u­men­tary.

I did not find myself charmed all at once. But one can fall in love with an author’s per­sona yet loathe them on the page. Bukowski’s crude­ness and bad humor on film could not hide the deep wells of sad­ness in which he seemed to swim, as if—like some ancient cyn­ic philosopher—he knew some­thing pro­found and ter­ri­ble and spared us the telling of it by pos­ing as a drunk­en, half-mad street-cor­ner racon­teur. I had to go and read him.

In his idiom—that of an elo­quent street­wise barfly—Bukowski can be every bit as pas­sion­ate and pro­found as his hero Dos­to­evsky. His unfor­get­table mix­ing of com­ic seed­i­ness and casu­al abuse with a deeply trag­ic mourn­ing over the human con­di­tion, while not to everyone’s taste, make his decades-long strug­gle out of penury and obscu­ri­ty a feat wor­thy of the telling in his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal prose and poet­ry.

But does it make him a role mod­el? For any­one but cer­tain young, most­ly male, aspir­ing writ­ers maybe spend­ing more time drink­ing than writ­ing, that is?

A fair num­ber of peo­ple seem to think so, and I leave it to you to decide, first by lis­ten­ing to the Bukows­ki poems read here, post­ed on YouTube with heavy, inspi­ra­tional back­ground music. Some are giv­en new titles to sound more like self-help seminars—such as “Rein­vent Your Life” at the top (orig­i­nal­ly “No Lead­ers, Please”). The video read­ing called “Go all the way,” sec­ond from top, changes the title of “Roll the Dice,” a clas­sic pic­ture of Bukowski’s uncom­pro­mis­ing com­mit­ment to “going all the way,” even if it means “freez­ing on a park bench” and “los­ing girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe your mind.”

Solid­ly mid­dle-class par­ents might approve of the first poem’s sen­ti­ments, which could be wedged into a suit­ably vague, yet bold-sound­ing com­mence­ment speech or a job recruiter’s pep talk. But “Roll the Dice” sim­ply goes too far. “It could mean jail, it could mean deri­sion, mock­ery, iso­la­tion”? This won’t do at all. Hear anoth­er read­ing of “Roll the Dice” by inspi­ra­tional rock star Bono fur­ther up, just after the more Bukows­ki-like Tom Waits reads “The Laugh­ing Heart,” fre­quent­ly ref­er­enced for its inten­si­ty of feel­ing. Like Thomas Hardy or Leonard Cohen, the bard of the barstools could look life straight in the eye, see all of its bleak­ness and vio­lence, and still man­age at times to catch a divine glim­mer.

And for the many aspi­rants to whom Bukows­ki has appealed, we have, fur­ther up, “So, You Want to Be a Writer?” Before you hear, or read, this poem, be advised: these are not warm words of encour­age­ment or help­ful life-coach­ing in verse. It is the kind of raw talk no respectable writ­ing teacher will give you, and maybe they’re right not to, who’s to say? Except a man who went all the way, froze on park bench­es, went to jail, lost girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe his mind? Read an excerpt of Bukowski’s writ­ing advice below, and just above, hear the author him­self read “Friend­ly Advice to a Lot of Young Men,” which urges them to do vir­tu­al­ly any­thing they like, “But don’t write poet­ry.”

don’t be like so many writ­ers,
don’t be like so many thou­sands of
peo­ple who call them­selves writ­ers,
don’t be dull and bor­ing and
pre­ten­tious, don’t be con­sumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned them­selves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rock­et,
unless being still would
dri­ve you to mad­ness or
sui­cide or mur­der,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burn­ing your gut,
don’t do it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton (RIP) Reads Poems by Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance” 

Inspi­ra­tion from Charles Bukows­ki: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crap­py,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Amanda Palmer Sings a Heartfelt Musical Tribute to YA Author Judy Blume on Her 80th Birthday

in Books, Life, Literature, Music | February 16th, 2018

Art saves lives, and so does author Judy Blume. While some of her nov­els are intend­ed for adult read­ers, and oth­ers for the ele­men­tary school set, her best known books are the ones that speak to the expe­ri­ence of being a teenage girl.

For many of us com­ing of age in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Blume was our best—sometimes only—source when it came to sex, men­stru­a­tion, mas­tur­ba­tion, and oth­er top­ics too taboo to dis­cuss. She answered the ques­tions we were too shy to ask. Her char­ac­ters’ inte­ri­or mono­logues mir­rored our own.

The hon­esty of her writ­ing earned her mil­lions of grate­ful young fans, and plen­ty of atten­tion from those who still seek to keep her titles out of libraries and schools.

While her sto­ries are not auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, her com­pas­sion is born of expe­ri­ence.

Here she is on Are You There, God? It’s Me, Mar­garet, a tat­tered paper­back copy of which made the rounds of my 6th grade class, like the pre­cious con­tra­band it was:

When I was in sixth grade, I longed to devel­op phys­i­cal­ly like my class­mates. I tried doing exer­cis­es, resort­ed to stuff­ing my bra, and lied about get­ting my peri­od. And like Mar­garet, I had a very per­son­al rela­tion­ship with God that had lit­tle to do with orga­nized reli­gion. God was my friend and con­fi­dant. But Mar­garet’s fam­i­ly is very dif­fer­ent from mine, and her sto­ry grew from my imag­i­na­tion.

On It’s Not the End of the World:

…in the ear­ly sev­en­ties I lived in sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey with my hus­band and two chil­dren, who were both in ele­men­tary school. I could see their con­cern and fear each time a fam­i­ly in our neigh­bor­hood divorced. What do you say to your friends when you find out their par­ents are split­ting up? If it could hap­pen to them, could it hap­pen to us?

At the time, my own mar­riage was in trou­ble but I was­n’t ready or able to admit it to myself, let alone any­one else. In the hope that it would get bet­ter I ded­i­cat­ed this book to my hus­band. But a few years lat­er, we, too, divorced. It was hard on all of us, more painful than I could have imag­ined, but some­how we mud­dled through and it was­n’t the end of any of our worlds, though on some days it might have felt like it.

And on For­ev­er, which won an A.L.A. Mar­garet A. Edwards Award for Out­stand­ing Lit­er­a­ture for Young Adults, 20 years after its orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion:

My daugh­ter Randy asked for a sto­ry about two nice kids who have sex with­out either of them hav­ing to die. She had read sev­er­al nov­els about teenagers in love. If they had sex the girl was always punished—an unplanned preg­nan­cy, a hasty trip to a rel­a­tive in anoth­er state, a gris­ly abor­tion (ille­gal in the U.S. until the 1970’s), some­times even death. Lies. Secrets. At least one life ruined. Girls in these books had no sex­u­al feel­ings and boys had no feel­ings oth­er than sex­u­al. Nei­ther took respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions. I want­ed to present anoth­er kind of story—one in which two seniors in high school fall in love, decide togeth­er to have sex, and act respon­si­bly.

The heart­felt lyrics of Aman­da Palmer’s recent paean to Blume, who turned 80 this week, con­firm that the singer-song­writer was among the legions of young girls for whom this author made a dif­fer­ence.

In her essay, “Why Judy Blume Mat­ters,” Palmer recalls com­ing up with a list of influ­ences to sat­is­fy the sort of ques­tion a ris­ing indie musi­cian is fre­quent­ly asked in inter­views. It was a “care­ful­ly curat­ed” assort­ment of rock and roll pedi­gree and obscu­ri­ties, and she lat­er real­ized, almost exclu­sive­ly male.

This song, which name checks so many beloved char­ac­ters, is a pas­sion­ate attempt to cor­rect this over­sight:

Per­haps the biggest com­pli­ment you could give a writer ― or a writer of youth fic­tion ― is that they’re so indeli­ble they van­ish into mem­o­ry, the way a dream slips away upon wak­ing because it’s so deeply knit­ted into the fab­ric of your sub­con­scious. The expe­ri­ences of her teenage char­ac­ters ― Dee­nie, Dav­ey, Tony, Jill, Mar­garet ― are so thor­ough­ly enmeshed with my own mem­o­ries that the line between fact and fic­tion is deli­cious­ly thin. My mem­o­ries of these char­ac­ters, though I’d pre­fer to call them “peo­ple” ― of Dee­nie get­ting felt up in the dark lock­er room dur­ing the school dance; of Dav­ey list­less­ly mak­ing and stir­ring a cup of tea that she has no inten­tion of drink­ing; of Jill watch­ing Lin­da, the fat girl in her class, being tor­ment­ed by gig­gling bul­lies ― are all as vivid, if not more so, as my own mem­o­ries…

Palmer’s hus­band, Neil Gaiman, puts in a cameo in the video’s final moments as one of many read­ers immersed in Blume’s oeu­vre.

Read­ers, did a spe­cial book cov­er from your ado­les­cence put in an appear­ance?

For more on Judy Blume’s approach to char­ac­ter and sto­ry, con­sid­er sign­ing up for her $90 online Mas­ter Class.

Name your own price to down­load Judy Blume by Aman­da Palmer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Judy Blume Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Writ­ing

Hear Aman­da Palmer’s Cov­er of “Pur­ple Rain,” a Gor­geous Stringfelt Send-Off to Prince

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Joan Didion Creates a Handwritten List of the 19 Books That Changed Her Life

in Books, Literature | February 16th, 2018

If you’ve read much Joan Did­ion, you’ve almost sure­ly come across an obser­va­tion or phrase that has changed the way you look at Cal­i­for­nia, the media, or the cul­ture of the late 20th cen­tu­ry — or indeed, changed your life. But if life-chang­ing writ­ers have all had their own lives changed by the writ­ers before them, which writ­ers made Joan Did­ion the Joan Did­ion whose writ­ing still exerts an influ­ence today? Con­ve­nient­ly enough, the author of Play It as It Lays, Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem, and The White Album once drew up a list of the books that changed her life, and it sur­faced on Insta­gram a few years ago:

  1. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hem­ing­way
  2. Vic­to­ry by Joseph Con­rad
  3. Guer­ril­las by V.S. Naipaul
  4. Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don by George Orwell
  5. Won­der­land by Joyce Car­ol Oates
  6. Wuther­ing Heights by Emi­ly Bron­të
  7. The Good Sol­dier by Ford Madox Ford
  8. One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude by Gabriel Gar­cia Márquez
  9. Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
  10. Appoint­ment in Samar­ra by John O’Hara
  11. The Exe­cu­tion­er’s Song by Nor­man Mail­er
  12. The Nov­els of Hen­ry James: Wash­ing­ton Square, Por­trait of a Lady, The Bosto­ni­ans, Wings of the Dove, The Ambas­sadors, The Gold­en Bowl, Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers, The Turn of the Screw
  13. Speed­boat by Rena­ta Adler
  14. Go Tell It on the Moun­tain by James Bald­win
  15. Notes of a Native Son by James Bald­win
  16. The Berlin Sto­ries by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
  17. Col­lect­ed Poems by Robert Low­ell
  18. Col­lect­ed Poems by W.H. Auden
  19. The Col­lect­ed Poems by Wal­lace Stevens

In 1978, when Did­ion had already become a new-jour­nal­ism icon, The Paris Review’s Lin­da Kuehl asked her whether any writer influ­enced her more than oth­ers. “I always say Hem­ing­way,” she replied, “because he taught me how sen­tences worked. When I was fif­teen or six­teen I would type out his sto­ries to learn how the sen­tences worked. I taught myself to type at the same time.” Teach­ing A Farewell to Arms, her num­ber-one most influ­en­tial book, she “fell right back into those sen­tences. I mean they’re per­fect sen­tences. Very direct sen­tences, smooth rivers, clear water over gran­ite, no sink­holes.”

Did­ion’s list also includes oth­er mas­ters of the sen­tence, albeit most of them pos­sessed of sen­si­bil­i­ties quite dis­tinct from Hem­ing­way’s. Hen­ry James, for instance: “He wrote per­fect sen­tences, too, but very indi­rect, very com­pli­cat­ed. Sen­tences with sink­holes. You could drown in them.” Con­sid­er them along­side the oth­er writ­ers among her favored nine­teen, from nov­el­ists like Emi­ly Bron­të and Joyce Car­ol Oates to poets like Wal­lace Stevens and W.H. Auden to fig­ures with one foot in lit­er­a­ture and the oth­er in jour­nal­ism like George Orwell and Nor­man Mail­er, and you’ve got a mix that no two aspir­ing writ­ers could read and come out sound­ing exact­ly alike. No sur­prise that such a set of influ­ences would pro­duce a writer like Did­ion, so often imi­tat­ed but, in her niche, nev­er equaled.

via Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 12 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion for Free Online, Span­ning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

Joan Did­ion Reads From New Mem­oir, Blue Nights, in Short Film Direct­ed by Grif­fin Dunne

New Doc­u­men­tary Joan Did­ion: The Cen­ter Will Not Hold Now Stream­ing on Net­flix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What’s the Origin of Time Travel Fiction?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Travel Writing Got Its Start with Charles Darwin & His Literary Peers

in Literature, Sci Fi | February 15th, 2018

The idea of time trav­el is prob­a­bly as old as the feel­ing of regret, but the desire to go back in time is not the same as the the­o­ret­i­cal notion that it might actu­al­ly be pos­si­ble to do so. Where, the Nerd­writer won­ders above, did this idea orig­i­nate? And where did time trav­el nar­ra­tives come from in gen­er­al? Time trav­el, he argues, “as a device to tell sto­ries, is a rel­a­tive­ly recent phe­nom­e­non.” And time trav­el as a spe­cif­ic genre of lit­er­a­ture is just a lit­tle over a hun­dred years old.

An impor­tant point of clar­i­fi­ca­tion: We find instances of time travel—or at least a kind of parallax—in many ancient texts, where some char­ac­ters expe­ri­ence time dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent realms and dimen­sions and can thus see the past or future in our world. In the Ramayana, a fig­ure named Kakb­hushub­di lives like the Watch­ers in the Mar­vel Comics’ universe—outside of time, observ­ing mil­len­nia pass­ing. (It is said he sees the same events hap­pen over and over, with dif­fer­ent out­comes each time.)

This is not strict­ly what we mean by time trav­el. Yet many ancient sto­ries do show humans going back in time, or going to sleep and wak­ing up in the future, through divine agency. In the Bud­dhist Pali texts, we learn that the Devas expe­ri­ence one hun­dred human years as a sin­gle day (an idea echoed in the Bible). In the Japan­ese leg­end of Urashima Taro, a man vis­its the palace of the Drag­on God, and when he comes back 300 years have passed. But the Nerd­writer is talk­ing about some­thing dif­fer­ent than these many nar­ra­tive instances of time dila­tion (hun­dreds of years before Ein­stein elab­o­rat­ed the con­cept), though the same devices appear in mod­ern time trav­el sto­ries.

A sig­nif­i­cant dis­tinc­tion, the video sug­gests, lies in the very con­cept of time. Many ancient peo­ple believed that time was cyclical—hence the many vari­a­tions on the same themes in Kakbhushubdi’s experience—or that time was mal­leable, sub­ject to divine inter­rup­tion and dis­rup­tion. After Darwin’s Ori­gin of Species and the rapid accep­tance of evo­lu­tion (if not nat­ur­al selec­tion), pop­u­lar notions of time changed. The mod­ern time trav­el genre begins with broad­ly Dar­win­ian ideas as a cen­tral premise. In the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, evo­lu­tion meant inevitable, lin­ear progress, and thus was born a form of lit­er­a­ture called the Utopi­an Romance.

One such nov­el, Edward Bellamy’s 1888 Look­ing Back­ward, has the dis­tinc­tion of being the third-largest best­seller of its time, after Uncle Tom’s Cab­in and Ben Hur, with over one mil­lion copies sold. Why haven’t you heard of it before? Prob­a­bly because the book envi­sions a char­ac­ter who falls asleep and wakes up in a social­ist utopia 113 years in the future (the year 2000). It exert­ed sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on the many social­ist move­ments of the time, and “Bel­lamy clubs” sprang up around the coun­try, advo­cat­ing for the nation­al­iza­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty. Few Amer­i­cans, at least, have learned about the wide­spread pop­u­lar­i­ty of social­ism in the U.S. dur­ing the late 19th cen­tu­ry because… well, you tell me.

But Bellamy’s ideas are embed­ded in the genre, in work after work we are famil­iar with (take the par­o­dy ver­sion in Futu­ra­ma). In the mod­ern time trav­el nov­el, utopias “are no longer on a lost island or a dif­fer­ent world, they were in the future.” This obser­va­tion applies most read­i­ly to a more famous foun­da­tion­al text from 1895, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, which bor­rows from Swift’s Gulliver’s Trav­els, but sets the action not in a dis­tant land but in the very dis­tant future, the year 802701. Wells’ “sub­ter­ranean work­ers, the Mor­locks, and the deca­dent Eloi” who prof­it from their labor, notes the British Library, do not dif­fer that much from humans of the past or the present—they have evolved tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, but are still sub­ject to exploita­tion and vio­lence.

Where Gulliver’s Trav­els can be read as a mis­an­throp­ic under­min­ing of notions of cul­tur­al supe­ri­or­i­ty, Wells’ nov­el sat­i­rizes the idea that human evo­lu­tion implies an improve­ment in human benef­i­cence. The book set a pat­tern “for sci­ence-fic­tion to cri­tique extreme devel­op­ments of class.” In both Bel­lamy and Wells, time travel—whether achieved by sci­ence or a Rip Van Win­kle sleep—presents an occa­sion for utopi­an or dystopi­an alle­go­ry. The time trav­el genre took on a new dimen­sion after Ein­stein, when the sci­ence of rel­a­tiv­i­ty replaced Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion as the cen­tral pre­oc­cu­pa­tion, and para­dox­es and rules became cen­tral con­cerns. This shift high­lights anoth­er impor­tant fea­ture of the mod­ern time trav­el genre—its obses­sion with cause and effect, and there­fore with the very nature and pos­si­bil­i­ty of sto­ry itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.G. Wells’ 1930s Radio Broad­casts

George Orwell Reviews We, the Russ­ian Dystopi­an Nov­el That Noam Chom­sky Con­sid­ers “More Per­cep­tive” Than Brave New World & 1984

How to Rec­og­nize a Dystopia: Watch an Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Dystopi­an Fic­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on Its 200th Anniversary: An Animated Primer to the Great Monster Story & Technology Cautionary Tale

in Literature | February 13th, 2018

200 years ago, 18-year-old Mary Shel­ley did an extra­or­di­nary thing. After a drea­ry win­ter evening spent indoors telling ghost sto­ries dur­ing the sto­ried “year with­out a sum­mer,” she took her idea and turned it into a nov­el. In Jan­u­ary of 1818, Franken­stein; or, The Mod­ern Prometheus appeared, first pub­lished anony­mous­ly in an edi­tion of 500 copies, with a pref­ace by her hus­band, poet Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley. Grant­ed, Mary Shel­ley wasn’t an ordi­nary 18-year-old. In addi­tion to her romance with Shel­ley and friend­ship with Lord Byron, she was also the daugh­ter of philoso­phers William God­win and Mary Woll­stonecraft. Which is to say that she was steeped in Roman­tic poet­ry and Vic­to­ri­an thought from a very ear­ly age, and con­ver­sant with the intel­lec­tu­al con­tro­ver­sies of the day.

Nonethe­less, the young novelist’s achievement—her syn­the­sis of so many 19th-cen­tu­ry anx­i­eties into a mon­ster sto­ry rivaled only, per­haps, by Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la—remains as impres­sive now as it was then. Shel­ley tells the leg­endary tale of the novel’s com­po­si­tion her­self in an intro­duc­tion to the heav­i­ly revised 1831 edi­tion. In the ani­mat­ed video above, schol­ar Iseult Gille­spie sketch­es out the book’s basics (as we know, Franken­stein is the name of the monster’s cre­ator; the mon­ster him­self remains name­less), then briefly explains some of its “mul­ti­ple mean­ings.”

We may be con­di­tioned by the genius of James Whale and Mel Brooks to think of the novel’s cen­ter as the doctor’s elec­tri­fied lab­o­ra­to­ry, but “the plot turns on a chill­ing chase” between mon­ster and doc­tor, and what a chase it is. The book’s grip­ping action scenes get bad­ly under­sold in con­cep­tions of Franken­stein (or the mon­ster, rather) as a sad, stu­pid, lum­ber­ing beast. In fact, Franken­stein, says Gille­spie, “is one of the first cau­tion­ary tales about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” The novel’s Roman­tic inter­est in mythol­o­gy (spelled out more direct­ly by Per­cy two years lat­er in his Prometheus Unbound) and its use of Goth­ic devices to evoke dread mark it as a com­pli­cat­ed work, and its crea­ture as a very com­pli­cat­ed monster—a per­pet­u­al­ly rel­e­vant sym­bol of the hor­rors unchecked sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion might unleash.

Shel­ley also inscribed her per­son­al trau­ma in the text; though well-known as the daugh­ter of the famed Wollstonecraft—author of the “key fem­i­nist text” A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Women—Shel­ley nev­er actu­al­ly got to know her moth­er. Woll­stonecraft died of com­pli­ca­tions in child­birth, and Shel­ley, haunt­ed by guilt, and her grief over sev­er­al mis­car­riages she suf­fered, the first at age 16, uses what seems like a sto­ry sole­ly about male cre­ative agency to intro­duce themes of child­birth “as both cre­ative and destruc­tive.”

But most­ly Franken­stein comes to us as a nov­el about the “pow­er of rad­i­cal ideas to expose dark­er areas of life.” Though it may do the nov­el a crit­i­cal injus­tice to call it the Black Mir­ror (or Prometheus) of its time, the anx­ious con­tem­po­rary anthol­o­gy show is insep­a­ra­ble from a lin­eage of cre­ative texts in hor­ror and sci­ence fic­tion that owe a tremen­dous debt to the bril­liance of the young Mary Shel­ley. For more info on the ori­gins of this famous book, read Jill Lep­ore’s 200th-anniver­sary essay at The New York­er, and see all of the known man­u­scripts dig­i­tized at the Shel­ley-God­win archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts of Franken­stein Now Online for the First Time

The Very First Film Adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, a Thomas Edi­son Pro­duc­tion (1910)

Franken­wee­nie: Tim Bur­ton Turns Franken­stein Tale into Dis­ney Kids Film (1984)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Artist Re-Envisions National Parks in the Style of Tolkien’s Middle Earth Maps

in Literature, Maps | February 12th, 2018

J.R.R. Tolkien imag­ined Mid­dle-Earth by draw­ing not just from far-flung lands and old myths but the Eng­lish land­scape all around him. Of course, every­one who reads The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, let alone the relat­ed books writ­ten by Tolkien as well as his fol­low­ers, has their own way of envi­sion­ing the place, and those who go espe­cial­ly deep may even start see­ing their own, real envi­ron­ments as ver­sions of Mid­dle-Earth. That seems to have hap­pened in the case of Dan Bell, an Eng­lish artist who maps his home­land’s nation­al parks in an artis­tic style sim­i­lar to the one in which Tolkien ren­dered Mid­dle-Earth.

Bell “began read­ing Tolkien’s books when he was 11 or 12 years old, and fell in love with them,” writes The Verge’s Andrew Lip­tak. “In par­tic­u­lar, he was struck by Tolkien’s maps.” To start, he “works from an open source Ord­nance Sur­vey map, and begins draw­ing by hand,” adding in such addi­tion­al details, not always found in most nation­al parks, as “forests, Hob­bit holes, tow­ers, and cas­tles.” Hav­ing so adapt­ed the nation­al parks of the Unit­ed Kind­gom “as well as places like Oxford, Lon­don, Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park, and George R.R. Martin’s Wes­t­eros,” he’s made them avail­able for pur­chase on his site.

Most of us who first encounter The Lord of the Rings at the age Bell did have sure­ly wished, if only for a moment or two, that we could live in Mid­dle-Earth our­selves. Bel­l’s maps remind us that places like Mid­dle-Earth always come in some way from, and res­onate on some lev­el with, the real Earth on which we have no choice but to live. Much like how the set­tings of sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries, no mat­ter how tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ampli­fied or cul­tur­al­ly twist­ed and turned, always reflect the time of the sto­ry’s com­po­si­tion, thor­ough­ly real­ized fan­ta­sy realms, no mat­ter how fan­tas­ti­cal — how many hob­bit-holes, cas­tles, or Eyes of Sauron with which they may be dot­ted — are nev­er 100 per­cent made up. Just ask the tourist indus­try of New Zealand.

Enter Bel­l’s map col­lec­tion here.

via The Verge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

226 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Nation­al Parks Are Now Online

Down­load 100,000 Pho­tos of 20 Great U.S. Nation­al Parks, Cour­tesy of the U.S. Nation­al Park Ser­vice

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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