Posting news-clips in alt.horror
Kevin Moffat
Why the hell do certain individuals feel the need to post news stories
about murder, sacrifice & serial-killings in this group? Isn't the link
between real-life horror & genre movies already embarassing enough without
splattering it all over this ng?
It takes one paltry movie-connected crime to provoke the tabloids into
an anti-horror frenzy, no matter how preposterous the link & yet some of the
fuckers using this board think that because this is 'alt.horror', surely the
users of this ng will want to read about how fucked-up the world is.
Goth-Off, you sad bastards. Go & finish off that letter you were sending
to Dennis Nilson...
There....I said it....
WideScreenPig
<ke...@moffat70.freeserve.co.uk> writ thusly:
I'm all for it, myself. If anything, reading about real-life horror
only further justifies the need for the fictional material. Keep on
posting 'em, I say. It's on-topic as far as I'm concerned.
jwd...@bway.net
>I'm going to go out on a limb here...
> Why the hell do certain individuals feel the need to post news stories
>about murder, sacrifice & serial-killings in this group? Isn't the link
>between real-life horror & genre movies already embarassing enough without
>splattering it all over this ng?
As one of the guilty parties ... point well taken. However most horror &
genre films are based or inspired by real events. Where would the Slasher
film be without Jack, the Ripper (now there's a lovely example).
And it has been rather dull around here. (Other than the troll/antitroll
conversations which have now become rather pathetic)
Anyone else got an opinion?
> It takes one paltry movie-connected crime to provoke the tabloids into
>an anti-horror frenzy, no matter how preposterous the link & yet some of the
>fuckers using this board think that because this is 'alt.horror', surely the
>users of this ng will want to read about how fucked-up the world is.
The tabloids sell papers. On a slow news day even Tipper Gore or a Mary
Whitehouse can make the front page. What makes you think that horror movies
should be all-so-innocent? Sorry you blokes had to live through the
"video-nasties" but censorship and anti-horror hysteria has always been
around in film history. Such is the ebb & tide of popular beliefs and social
mores.
> Goth-Off, you sad bastards.
geesus, and I don't even own a black raincoat.
>Go & finish off that letter you were sending
>to Dennis Nilson...
Sorry, lost me there!
>
> There....I said it....
And a fine said it, it was
>
>
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Albert R. Conklin
could see it would not be appropriate to post such messages here. But, Horror is
horror.
Al
Kevin Moffat
<jwd...@bway.net> wrote in message news:adluq5$7ki$1...@news.netmar.com...
Good post, but I have to pick you up on the 'Horror movies being
all-so-innocent' bit. I am not arguing that they should 'tone down' genre
movies (fuck, no!) or deny all connections between the genre & real life.
I'm just tired of seeing news items comparing real-life crimes to movies,
horror or not & I cringe when I read some of the posts involving the stuff I
mentioned earlier.
Having said all that, each to their own & everybody's got the right to
their opinion. Alt.Horror is one of the most popular NG's going & I still
dig it in a big stylee! Variety is the spice of life & all that shite...
bod
"Kevin Moffat" <ke...@moffat70.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:adm32q$k8s$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Having said all that, each to their own & everybody's got the right to
> their opinion. Alt.Horror is one of the most popular NG's going & I still
> dig it in a big stylee! Variety is the spice of life & all that shite...
>
>
im all for anything that fucks my head up.... horror is what lets us know
right from wrong...if theres no horror, real or otherwise then the world
would be a bigger mess than it allready is....its if it doesnt worry you
that would cause concern!!
howeveras entertainment, ill take slapstick horror anytime!
--
regards from BOD! (as seen in viz magazine...and ill never let you forget
it!!)
"dont worry yoko, its only a friggin water pist...."
JOHN LENNON 1980
see bod pissing in the wind at...
www.bodland.co.uk the updated home of bod!
The Gore-met
> im all for anything that fucks my head up.... horror is what lets us know
> right from wrong...
Like being pissed up in some pub spanking a woman who is not your wife?
DAM
I just ignore them It's not what I come here for. I read a newspaper
everyday... Hell, I WORK for one!
--
Cheers,
DAM
^TooL^
Nope.
Kar
>I just ignore them It's not what I come here for.
< s n i p >
Which sums it up well [IMHO] For USENET in general.
If you don't want to read it, mark it as 'read' and move
on to the next post.
Kar,
reads and watches and collects both horror fiction
and true-crime ('horror-fact'?) equally.
SlimeyPete
Personally I think it's on-topic but frankly I skip over those sorts
of posts simply because they don't really interest me....
AsiaA'sIndenturedServant
"You must make friends of horror and moral terror. If you do not, then they
are true enemies to be feared."
(Horribly paraphrased quote from where, movie freaks?)
AsiaA'sIndenturedServant
"Don't expect it to Tango, It has a broken back"
bod
"The Gore-met" <gore...@home.com> wrote in message
news:3CFEAA3...@home.com...
for it!
hel-REYzah
>Why the hell do certain individuals feel the need to post news stories
News reports don't bother me. I almost never read them as they don't
particularly interest me. Don't read the replies either. If only everyone
adopted the same attitude over any post that didn't interest them and exercised
more tolerance <hint> then there wouldn't be so much aggravation around here.
I can quickly see whether I want to read something or not, if not I just
IGNORE. (The only way the news reports would bother me is if there was hardly
anything else posted except news stories.)
Though I do more or less share your views on them, I do realize that just becoz
I don't want to see them, there ARE other people here who might, and becoz of
that I exercise tolerance and put up with them. I don't start saying Oh look
here, anyone who posts one is a troll becoz they're doing is to annoy KNOWING
there are people here who don't like news stories. And MORE TO THE POINT, I
don't come screaming in saying that all those who REPLY to one are going to be
KILLFILED!!! Get my meaning???
_______________________________________________
http://www.modbooks.com/absinthe/
http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/mom/absinthe/absinthe.html
http://www.mgm.com/deceiver/stories/absinthe.html
hel-REYzah
> each to their own & everybody's got the right to
>their opinion.
Having too much of an "opinion" around here gets you labelled a ...you know!
>Variety is the spice of life & all that shite...
EXACTLY!!!
Kevin Moffat
"hel-REYzah" <reya...@aol.commonUSgov> wrote in message
news:20020606155656...@mb-cr.aol.com...
How patronising was that?!? Nonetheless, a surprisingly sedate post from
YOU, ya fucking weird cunt...:-)
hel-REYzah
>DAM wrote:
>
>>I just ignore them It's not what I come here for.
>< s n i p >
>Which sums it up well [IMHO] For USENET in general.
>If you don't want to read it, mark it as 'read' and move
>on to the next post.
Some here can't do that though. They prefer to threaten everyone with
killfiles and go on about this Eric Smith person.
Roman Bland
>EXACTLY!!!
HEIL HITLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maximum Weighstation
>
>
>>EXACTLY!!!
>
>
>HEIL HITLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>
HEIL MACARONI AND CHEESE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sara Merry
(Kevin Moffat) : << Goth-Off, you sad bastards.
Go & finish off that letter you were sending to Dennis Nilson... >>
(jwd593) : <<Sorry, lost me there! >>
I believe he refers to the serial killer Dennis Nilsen (currently
jailed) called the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" by some. He was into
necrophilia and stripped and bathed his victims, keeping them around his
flat several days for company.
He disposed of his victims by chopping them up and flushing the parts
down his toilet. He eventually clogged all the toilets in the apartment
building he lived in and when neighbors called a plumber that's how they
caught him.
In his apartment they found limbs, heads, bones and other assorted
parts.
How would you like to have been THAT plumber!
Sara Merry
----------------------------------------------
"There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only good argument
with the east wind is to put on your overcoat."
-James Russell Lowell
Kar
>>>I just ignore them It's not what I come here for.
>>< s n i p >
>
>>Which sums it up well [IMHO] For USENET in general.
>>If you don't want to read it, mark it as 'read' and move
>>on to the next post.
>
>Some here can't do that though. They prefer to threaten everyone with
>killfiles and go on about this Eric Smith person.
I see. Well in their case killfiling those who (in their eyes) make
repeated pointless posts is a good option if there's no
other way to eliminate the noise.
Who is Eric Smith?
Kar
Bombsquad
They do it so we can keep track of our own.
Bombsquad, still waiting to read the "Ray Pruit killed in failed Cow
rape atttempt" article.
John Donaldson
"Sara Merry" <Yic...@webtv.net> wrote in message
(Kevin Moffat) : << finish off that letter you were sending to Dennis
Nilson... >>
(jwd593) : <<Sorry, lost me there! >>
I believe he refers to the serial killer Dennis Nilsen (currently
jailed) called the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" by some<snip>
Thanks for the info
John
Kendall
"Bombsquad" <djangoth...@new.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3D004E3A...@new.rr.com...
> Kevin Moffat wrote:
> >
> > I'm going to go out on a limb here...
> > Why the hell do certain individuals feel the need to post news
stories
> > about murder, sacrifice & serial-killings in this group? Isn't the link
> > between real-life horror & genre movies already embarassing enough
without
> > splattering it all over this ng?
> > It takes one paltry movie-connected crime to provoke the tabloids
into
> > an anti-horror frenzy, no matter how preposterous the link & yet some of
the
> > fuckers using this board think that because this is 'alt.horror', surely
the
> > users of this ng will want to read about how fucked-up the world is.
> > Goth-Off, you sad bastards. Go & finish off that letter you were
sending
> > to Dennis Nilson...
> >
> > There....I said it....
>
>
I usually read them, but then, that's usually the first thing I go for in
the paper, too.
Kendall
jwd...@bway.net
jwd...@bway.net
>
>
>I usually read them, but then, that's usually the first thing I go for in
>the paper, too.
>Kendall
>
http://www.serialhomicide.com/cases.htm
hel-REYzah
I AM sedate. I'm very sedate.
>from
>YOU, ya fucking weird cunt...:-)
Nothing wrong with "weird", baby!
hel-REYzah
>HEIL HITLER!!!!
Heil Mary!
Full of disgrace.
For I am with you.
hel-REYzah
>HEIL MACARONI AND CHEESE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HEIL CHEERLEADERS OF NEPAL!!!!!!!!!
hel-REYzah
>Who is Eric Smith?
An idiot.
(Someone afraid of Ray Pruit!)
Ulrich Schreitmueller
> Maximum Weighstation wrote:
>
> >HEIL MACARONI AND CHEESE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> HEIL CHEERLEADERS OF NEPAL!!!!!!!!!
Would you stop baiting the snuhs, please?
hel-REYzah
I remember hearing something like that.
Apparently, he killed for company, becoz the guys always wanted to leave him,
but he's been ok in jail and got himself a few regular boyfriends. (So I
heard.)
hel-REYzah
I thought I was 'feeding' them!
(They were hungry.)
John Donaldson
"Coyote" <tomat...@lunch.com> wrote in message
> Woman 'keeps husband's body in fridge for over four years'
>
Coyote, cool story
Got my version off the Japan Times
Where do you get yours.
The Gore-met
In the rear?
loucyphre
news:ke8tfucb8deqgkqd0...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 16:48:51 +0100, "Kevin Moffat"
>
> >I'm going to go out on a limb here...
stories
> >between real-life horror & genre movies already embarassing enough
without
> >splattering it all over this ng?
> > It takes one paltry movie-connected crime to provoke the tabloids
into
> >an anti-horror frenzy, no matter how preposterous the link & yet some of
the
> >fuckers using this board think that because this is 'alt.horror', surely
the
> >users of this ng will want to read about how fucked-up the world is.
sending
> >to Dennis Nilson...
> >
> > There....I said it....
>
> I'm all for it, myself. If anything, reading about real-life horror
> only further justifies the need for the fictional material. Keep on
> posting 'em, I say. It's on-topic as far as I'm concerned.
>
>
Ditto, WS.
-----
loucyphre
----------
"I will personally hunt down, rape and kill the next person
who starts a Jason X thread."
- (Joachim Løvf, alt.horror, 4/28/02)
"It's all these booze-addled British boys with their Viz-style
rough-and-tumble pub-style blabbering and bullshitting about fucking
sheep and 'getting pissed' and 'tits' and 'arse'. It used to be such a
polite, congenial place, did alt.horror."
- (Dr. Phibes, alt.horror, 12/16/01)
jwd...@bway.net
>John Donaldson wrote:
>
>In the rear?
>
Oh! 16!!
or is it 14 (where's my f*ckin' list)
Dr Walpurgis
> I believe he refers to the serial killer Dennis Nilsen (currently
> jailed) called the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" by some.
Given that Nilsen's crimes predate Dahmer's by over a decade, I think it
would be more accurate to refer to Dahmer as "the American Denis
Nilsen". :-P
--
Random sigs on hiatus: watch this space
Dr Walpurgis
> > > > Woman 'keeps husband's body in fridge for over four years'
> > >
> > > Coyote, cool story Got my version off the Japan Times
> >
> > Where do you get yours.
>
> Oh! 16!! or is it 14 (where's my f*ckin' list)
11 ("I got mine at gigamax.com").
Roman Bland
Dr Walpurgis wrote:
>Given that Nilsen's crimes predate Dahmer's by over a decade, I think it
>would be more accurate to refer to Dahmer as "the American Denis
>Nilsen". :-P
Dahmer was more extreme. Nilsen never ate anyone for lunch.
James J. Dominguez
I thought that Nilsen was a notorious cannibal, but Crime Library's
account doesn't mention him eating any human flesh. Either way, as is
usual for Crime Library, it is an excellent article, and well worth the
read:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial4/nilsen/
--
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| James J. Dominguez (aka DexX) | mcd...@optushome.com.au |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| "George Bush was apparently warned about global warming, but |
| thought it affected the world, not America." - Backberner |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
bod
"Roman Bland" <rm...@att.net> wrote in message
news:bCqM8.27101$LC3.2...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> Dahmer was more extreme. Nilsen never ate anyone for lunch.
>
>
would you eat something you had wanked onto several times???
--
regards from BOD! (as seen in viz magazine...and ill never let you forget
it!!)
"dont worry yoko, its only a friggin water pist...."
JOHN LENNON 1980
see bod pissing in the wind at...
www.bodland.co.uk the updated home of bod!
gareth young
"bod" <b...@bodland.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:adti6u$23vt9$1...@ID-77616.news.dfncis.de...
>
> "Roman Bland" <rm...@att.net> wrote in message
> news:bCqM8.27101$LC3.2...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>
> > Dahmer was more extreme. Nilsen never ate anyone for lunch.
> >
> >
>
> would you eat something you had wanked onto several times???
>
a womans vagina?
--
gareth-quote of the day
'bring me my dinner wife'
Roman Bland
bod wrote:
>would you eat something you had wanked onto several times???
Speaking of Dahmer, someone actually posted his Polaroids of the bodies he
dismembered to alt.true-crime a few years ago (on Thanksgiving...) Truly
nasty shit.
Sara Merry
(currently jailed) called the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" by some. >>
(Dr Walpurgis) : << Given that Nilsen's crimes predate Dahmer's by
over a decade, I think it would be more accurate to refer to Dahmer as
"the American Denis Nilsen". :-P >>
Heh, well yes, you're right. I had forgotten the dates involved and
just pulled the BJD title from memory.
In the future I shall give credit where it is due.
Apologies to Mr. Nilsen. :)
Sara Merry
----------------------------------------------
Misery's the River of the World...
Misery's the River of the World...
Everybody Row!
Everybody Row!
-Tom Waits, Blood Money
Homer
<drwal...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>Sara Merry wrote:
>
>> I believe he refers to the serial killer Dennis Nilsen (currently
>> jailed) called the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" by some.
>Given that Nilsen's crimes predate Dahmer's by over a decade, I think it
>would be more accurate to refer to Dahmer as "the American Denis
>Nilsen". :-P
Geez, I know you have this "Britain First" thing going on, Doc, but do
you really want to brag about who has the most original serial
killers?
--
Homer "yeah, but my psycho can beat up your psycho" :-D
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bod
"Homer" <Home...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cgs4guc6k272q2ukf...@4ax.com...
> Geez, I know you have this "Britain First" thing going on, Doc, but do
> you really want to brag about who has the most original serial
> killers?
> --
> Homer "yeah, but my psycho can beat up your psycho" :-D
just wondering about that "yet another lorry driver" bloke that died 12
years ago and they dug him up, dna tested him and found that he murderd
people back in 73....do you think they will lock him uf for a life sentence?
Dr Walpurgis
> > > I believe he refers to the serial killer Dennis Nilsen (currently
> > > jailed) called the "British Jeffrey Dahmer" by some.
> >
> > Given that Nilsen's crimes predate Dahmer's by over a decade, I think it
> > would be more accurate to refer to Dahmer as "the American Denis
> > Nilsen". :-P
>
> Geez, I know you have this "Britain First" thing going on, Doc, but do
> you really want to brag about who has the most original serial
> killers?
As nice Mr Major used to say, "People have got to stop talking Britain
down!". :-P
jwd...@bway.net
fine English tradition
http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/penda.htm
Penda the Pagan
Royal sacrifice and a Mercian king
Alby Stone
Penda, a seventh-century king of Mercia(map at
http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/moremm.htm), was a noted regicide. Indeed,
his other achievements - his military campaigns and a crafty and unlikely
alliance with the British king Cadwallon were instrumental in carving out
Mercia as an independent kingdom and establishing it as a power to be
reckoned with - were almost completely overshadowed by his reputation as a
slayer of kings. As Penda was a pagan, and his alleged victims all Christian,
it comes as no surprise to find that medieval chroniclers, mostly monks or
Christian nobles, viewed his reign and deeds with horror and denigrated him
at every opportunity. The reputation of his ally Cadwallon, himself a
Christian, suffered by association: in his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis
Anglorum, written in the early eighth century, Bede of Jarrow describes him
as 'a barbarian more savage than any pagan' with 'no respect for the newly
established religion of Christ' [1]. Bede's invective was not tempered by the
fact that Cadwallon was a Celt.
<snip>
Bede tells how, at the battle of Maserfeld in 642, Oswald of Northumbria was
slain by Penda, who 'ordered that his head and hands with the forearms be
hacked off and fixed on stakes'. Oswald's successor Oswy removed them,
'placing the head in the church at Lindisfarne, and the hands and arms in his
own royal city of Bamburgh' [4]. According to Henry of Huntingdon [5],
Sigbert of East Anglia went into battle unarmed - Bede says he carried only a
stick, 'mindful of his monastic vows' - and was killed, along with his
kinsman Egric, when the heathen Mercians charged. Nennius asserts that Penda
'treacherously killed' Anna of East Anglia [6]. The Northumbrian king Edwin,
meanwhile, was beheaded after falling in battle against Penda at Haethfeld in
633.
<snip>
The basic Indo-European creation myth involves a set of twins, one of whom
kills and dismembers the other, and makes various parts of the cosmos from
appropriate parts of the corpse. The killer becomes the first priest, and the
killing is the original sacrifice; the deceased becomes the first king, lord
of the dead and ancestor of mortals. As the pair are twins, each incorporates
the essence of the other. In the Indo-European context, this is reflected in
the extraction of both kings and priests from the warrior aristocracy - the
two roles appear to have been combined in early Germanic society - and the
use of sacrificial dismemberment, in tradition and in actuality, to formalise
the foundation of settlements and to seal social reorganisation, by acting
out the primordial act of creation
jwd...@bway.net
>down!". :-P
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/10/books/10NOTE.html?pagewanted=1
Britons Chafe at Giving Americans a Shot at the Booker Prize
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
The brouhaha that erupted in Britain last month when it was learned that the
prestigious Booker Prize might be opened to American writers by 2004 is one
of those parochial flaps that reveal just how foolish the literary
establishment can be. It also underscored the remarkable persistence of
preconceptions that Britain and the United States hold about each other in
the face of sweeping changes that have begun to remake the global literary
landscape.
Lisa Jardine, the chairwoman of this year's Booker panel, whined that the move
would make the Booker Prize "as British an institution as English muffins in
American supermarkets," that it would make the award "more blandly generic as
opposed to specifically British." (The prize is now open to British, Irish
and Commonwealth authors.) American authors like Philip Roth, she asserted,
would inevitably overshadow their British counterparts: "With someone like
Roth at his best, I can't see how an Amis or a McEwan could touch him. The
American novelists paint on a much bigger canvas. If you look at Pulitzer
Prize winners, every book there is on a majestic scale."
Other Britons quickly joined in the chorus of self-deprecation. Terence
Blacker, writing in the London newspaper The Independent said of Ms.
Jardine's comments: "One has to admit, she is right," though he added that
readers should not look upon writing as "a competitive sport, in which
spectators cheer on their own national team."
Thomas Keneally, the Australian author of "Schindler's Ark," which won the
1982 Booker, complained: "This will make it harder for Australians to achieve
international eminence. There are so many brilliant Americans: who's going to
edge out Toni Morrison?"
The Guardian of London ran a tongue-in-cheek graphic showing a B-52 bomber
dropping American novels on a hapless Britain, and drew a comparison to
Wimbledon, in which a native son, Tim Henman, had been outmatched by Pete
Sampras.
Such displays of a British inferiority complex are all the more curious for
being thoroughly unmerited. The Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan's new
novel, "Gould's Book of Fish" — a huge, phantasmagorical work that combines
magical realism, Joycean language and Melvillian intonations to examine the
legacy of colonialism through the story of a 19th-century forger — recently
won the Commonwealth Prize, and turns out to be as inventive and visionary in
its reimagination of history as Ms. Morrison's masterwork, "Beloved." Ian
McEwan's new novel "Atonement" — a symphonic book that reprises all of that
author's perennial themes to create a deeply affecting story about love and
war and the destructive powers of the imagination — is as powerful a piece of
storytelling as anything by Mr. Roth or Saul Bellow. And Martin Amis's novel
"The Information" — a tale of middle-aged angst that opens out into a dark,
dyspeptic portrait of 1990's London, reeling from racial and class tensions —
stands as a trans-Atlantic bookend to the harrowing picture of 1990's America
created by Jonathan Franzen in "The Corrections."
Though a new generation of American writers led by the bravura talents of
David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers is asserting itself, though no British
author has written an equivalent of Don DeLillo's dazzling American epic
"Underworld," much of the most daring and inventive fiction in the 1980's and
90's was being produced by British writers. While many younger American
writers were still in thrall to Bobbie Ann Mason's brand of Kmart realism and
Raymond Carver's minimalism — retreating to small, personal canvases in the
face of the mind-boggling cultural and political confusions wrought by the
60's and 70's — British writers were experimenting with a hodgepodge of
styles and techniques to tackle large themes dealing with history and social
change and the meaning of art.
With dazzling, sleight-of-hand performances in novels like "Midnight's
Children" and "The Moor's Last Sigh," Salman Rushdie reinvented the history
of the Indian subcontinent, while limning the modern condition of
rootlessness and exile. Mr. Amis, meanwhile, was assimilating lessons from an
older generation of American writers — most notably Mr. Bellow and Thomas
Pynchon — filtering them through his darkly comic sensibility to create a
series of innovative fictions very much his own. Indeed, many British writers
were looking not to the small, well-made English novel of the past for
inspiration, but to models from abroad. There were echoes of Faulkner, Günter
Grass and Melville in such Graham Swift novels as "Last Orders" and
"Waterland," shades of Rabelais and the Grimm Brothers in Jeanette
Winterson's fiction, and of course the ghost of Gustave Flaubert in the
novels of Julian Barnes.
Given the last two decades of ambitious experimentation by British writers,
why do intimations of literary inferiority persist? In part, it's a
reflection of the European view of the United States as a bullying
superpower, acting unilaterally, be it in the political and military sphere
or in the world of cultural commerce. In part, it has to do with what the
British critic and novelist Malcolm Bradbury once called "trans-Atlantic
mythologies" — deep-seated attitudes that writers on either side of the ocean
have long held about one another. Through the end of the 19th century,
Britain and Europe represented history and tradition and the sort of society
of manners that Americans like Henry James felt that the United States still
lacked, whereas America represented a kind of primeval Arcadia, vigorous and
naïve, but lacking in sophistication. In the 20th century, the parent-child
relationship between the Old World and the new began to shift: Europe,
ravaged by two world wars, increasingly came to represent the past, while the
United States began to embody progress and the future.
The breakup of its empire heightened Britain's sense of eclipse, and in the
wake of World War II, a cultural retrenchment of sorts took place, with
writers as disparate as Alan Sillitoe, John Wain, Margaret Drabble and
Barbara Pym turning out small, gently ironic works that eschewed grand
ambitions. At the time, many subscribed to what the scholar Gilbert Phelps
called a "defiant little Englandism," the belief that "the English fictional
tradition provided all the nourishment that was needed to rejuvenate the
novel."
As late as the 70's and early 80's, many British writers continued to focus on
the private and domestic. In the early 1980's, Mr. McEwan, who at the time
seemed to have little sense of how his work and that of his contemporaries
would imminently reinvent British literature, observed: "People here are less
ambitious about what they can achieve in the novel. There're no great
expectations of writing the great English novel. You turn out a novel or
screenplay — that's the job."
The critic John Gross said in 1983, "While Americans think we're miniaturists,
English people tend to think Americans suffer from gigantism."
What has changed since then is that trans-Atlantic exchanges have accelerated
to the point where one of the chief avatars of what was once considered the
big American novel (complete with gritty urbanism, broad historical canvases
and roiling, street-smart prose) is the English writer Martin Amis. At the
same time, writers on both sides of the pond have become part of a new
internationalism. It's a global phenomenon that includes not only the
emergence of a host of talented writers with roots in Britain's former empire
and commonwealths (among them Mr. Rushdie, Mr. Flanagan, Michael Ondaatje,
Bharati Mukherjee, Timothy Mo, Hanif Kureishi, Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Amit
Chaudhuri, Rohinton Mistry and Thea Astley), but also the wholesale trading
of narrative styles and ideas across continents and national borders.
Postmodern pyrotechnics, invented by the French and American academics, have
been digested and retooled by writers as varied as David Foster Wallace, J.
M. Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro. Devices of magical realism, pioneered in Latin
America and Eastern Europe, have been embraced and assimilated by novelists
like Mr. Rushdie, Mr. Ondaatje and Tim O'Brien. Mr. Pynchon's darkly playful
inventions have been disseminated on either side of the Atlantic, through the
work of such younger novelists as Mr. Wallace and Mr. Amis. And through the
work of writers like Dave Eggers, Richard Flanagan and Stephen Fry, the
improvisatory digressions of Laurence Sterne have been turned into a hip
narrative technique.
In the brave new world of the 21st century, where DJ's and the Internet have
made sampling a daily part of life, where the fates of countries and
individuals are increasingly intertwined and the lines between the public and
the private are blurry at best, talk of what Ms. Jardine calls "specifically
British" — or for that matter, specifically American — awards seems absurd,
for nationalist literatures as such are rapidly becoming obsolete. For
instance, the British writer David Mitchell's new novel, "number9dream" (a
finalist for the 2001 Booker), is heavily indebted to the work of the
best-selling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, whose work in turn owes a
heavy debt to American writers from Raymond Chandler to Raymond Carver.
In the early part of the last century, Modernism — which, in Malcolm
Bradbury's words, sprang "from the cultures and contradictions of European
life" — became an international school largely through the influence of
Americans like T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude
Stein and Ernest Hemingway. Today, another aesthetic school — which could be
called the Post-Modernist Eclectic — is being born from the bazaar of
international exchange, and the result is not a "more blandly generic" art,
but a more vital and multifarious one.
This time, it's not about expatriates picking up and moving abroad to soak up
foreign vibes. It's about ideas and styles and even language being swapped
and appropriated across the globe. It's about artists picking from a
smorgasbord of techniques and influences to try to get a handle on an
increasingly fragmented and cacophonous reality, and in doing so creating a
new wave of writing that is richer for its multicultural mingling of styles
and voices, its voracious mixing of the high and low, the cerebral and
street-smart, the old and the new.
John W. Donaldson
> Homer wrote:
> > > Given that Nilsen's crimes predate Dahmer's by over a decade, I think it
> > > would be more accurate to refer to Dahmer as "the American Denis
> > > Nilsen". :-P
> >
> > Geez, I know you have this "Britain First" thing going on, Doc, but do
> > you really want to brag about who has the most original serial
> > killers?
>
> As nice Mr Major used to say, "People have got to stop talking Britain
> down!". :-P
Does Nilsen have a page of jokes like these