#eliza and david SERVED | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

allfortheslay25 · 5 months ago

Text

Some family tree stuff I did a while ago but finished today (changed Dan and Katelyn a bit tho after finding out more about their families)

Also to those ppl telling me identical twins aren’t genetic. I never said they were, andreil and Kateaaron have twins cuz twins run in the Hemmicks and Hatfords🫵

Hatford/Wesninski headcanons

Also forgot to write it but Nathan’s dads first name isn’t Natan, it’s his middle name but he discards it when he gets into mob business

HC: Mary doesn’t get along with her older brothers other than Stuart. She’s years younger than them so they forget about her often but also spoil her whenever they have to since she’s the only girl.

David is the heir to the Hatford Crime syndicate but his son dies young and he and his wife spend years grieving before trying again. They arent so lucky. The other boys are pressured to try too but Jacob is shooting blanks and Thomas isn’t keen on even acknowledging his betrothed

When Mary had Nathaniel, her older brothers shunned her for good since she named him Abram. In their eyes, that name belonged to the heir and David had to name his son Isaac instead (Isaac was about a year or two younger than Neil)

Alistair Hatford created the honor and pride of the Hatford name so David wanted to give Abram to his own son in hopes of bringing good luck to their future. To him, Mary had practically killed his son for taking the name for herself

Amrita was Alistair’s fourth wife and being that he killed his last, she made him fall so head over heels for her he’d never so much as lay a hand on her. Amrita knew saying no to a crime boss like him would be suicide so she gave in and manipulated her position to ensure her survival.

Fun fact, Neil (ignoring his fathers color palette) is Amrita’s carbon male copy👀

Each of the contacts Stuart gave them was just the wives/husband families syndicates of their brothers and aunt (Alissa is Turkish, Rochelle is from a smaller French syndicate, Carli is a niece from a Mexican cartel, Maks is Russian, Margarita is Romanian)

Thomas and Charlie are fraternal twins but Thomas and Jacob are the trouble makers of the family

Elizas children cannot inherit the Hatford responsibility because they’re heirs to the Popovs and upon marriage, served her ties to the Hatfords as per agreement

Stuart is acting as head of the family as of current since David has been a mess since Isaac’s death and the other brothers don’t care for challenging him for the position. He would’ve liked Nathaniel to take over but he wouldn’t push him into it after Mary’s death

Minyard/Hemmick/Mckenzie HC

Katelyn’s mom is someone I write differently depending on the au. She’s either divorced/separated from Bruce or she’s dead. Katelyn’s mom is polish but her father is Scottish

Maria has three older siblings and one younger. I hc that even tho she willingly went with Luther, she sort of misses her father and so named her son after him

Tilda used to be known as Tillie by her family, a nickname she loathed

When Tilda got pregnant, Luther demanded she get married or she’d have to get an abortion. However, marriage was too soon and twins were too much so Mr Minyard left

Maude and Evelyn were fraternal twins but weren’t close

Angelica is a good handful of years older than Katelyn but they’re close enough that Katelyn babysits Marcin often

Because I like hiding little tidbits for myself, the Hemmicks have a habit of having two kids max and giving them names with five letters then six. (Ex, Maude, Aaron, Tilda, Nicky are 5, Evelyn, Andrew, and Luther are 6)

Toxic use of religion and neglect pushed Tilda into the life she led but Luther wouldn’t quit on his sister

Just like the Hatfords, the Hemmicks are all short

Boyd/Wilds oc Facts and HC

David is named after Wymack

Miranda is named after Randy

Luca is named after Matt’s nanny, Lucca

Dan’s father was never in the picture before her mother died but Cathy knew what he looked and sounded like (hispanic, tall, and handsome)

Randy and Donald are both tall ppl (6’0 and 6’4) so Matt outgrew them both (6’6)

Miranda goes by Randy too but her parents call her Miranda as to not mix her up. Miranda plays exy her entire life (playing for the Trojans starting line throughout college) and going pro before making Court. She’s the first exy player on the very top to have a clean record on and off court. Miranda has two girlfriends

David aka Dave used to play exy in college but he had a passion for medicine (thanks to uncle Aaron) so he put down his racquet and became a ortho surgeon before settling as a physical therapist for exy players after the stress got to him.

Luca also played exy but dropped it before college since he was never as passionate about it. Randy got him into boxing and he went pro before an injury temporarily had him out of the ring. Dave recommended his best friend to be Luca’s physical therapist. Luca ended up marrying that man

Dan and Matt both make time for their children, whether they’re staying home with Dan or traveling with Matt around the state for his matches

#aftg hc #aftg #aftg oc #all for the game #Hatford family #nathan wesninski #the Hemmicks #neil josten #andrew minyard #aaron minyard #Tilda Minyard #matt boyd #dan wilds #katelyn mckenzie #aftg headcanon

127 notes · View notes

sunnydaleherald · 9 months ago

Text

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Sunday, October 6th

CORDELIA: Why is it every time I go somewhere with you, it always ends in violence and terror? BUFFY: Welcome to my life. CORDELIA: I don't wanna be in your life. I wanna be in my life. BUFFY: Well, there's the door. Please feel free to walk out at any time and live your life.

~~Homecoming~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Dream Walk by violettathepiratequeen (Buffy/Spike, G)

Magic in the Moonlight by Skyson (Buffy/Giles, Explicit)

The Urgent Encounter by JammySmut (Buffy/Spike, Explicit)

gravestone by skargasm (Spike/Oz, M)

Final Stop -- Beacon Hills by ElsieHopea (Teen Wolf crossover, Buffy/Stiles, T)

Made with love by Liana_Medea (Angel & Connor, Connor & Colleen Reilly, Buffy/Angel, G)

Why Wasn't I Your Rebound? by ClowniestLivEver (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

[Chaptered Fiction]

Drawing A Blank - Chapter 1 by EverythingElse (CherryGlowSticks) (Buffy/Spike, not rated [rated R on other sites])

Veni, vidi, vici - Chapter 1 by LadyInBlackandWhite (Harry Potter crossover, Angel, Connor, Angel/Cordelia, Buffy/Spike, Buffy/OC, T)

Make It Stop, Ch. 1 by Sigyn (Buffy/Spike, R)

Breaking Point, Ch. 1 by though_you_try (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Something True, Ch. 1 by BewitchedXx (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

Sold Out, Ch. 1 by Melme1325 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Be Back Before Dawn, Ch. 4 by Blissymbolics (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Degradation of Duality [Series Part 2] Ch. 55 by Ragini (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Unholy Matrimony, Ch. 11 by CheekyKitten (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Great Escape from Oz, Ch. 6 by Melme1325 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Fury of the Fallen, Ch. 2 by CheekyKitten (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

I Live To Serve, Ch. 8 by BlueStories (Warcraft crossover, Buffy, FR21)

The Watcher, Ch. 31 by In Mortal (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Viral, Ch. 6 by Harlow Turner (Buffy/Spike, R)

Oh My Goddess, Ch. 6 by Maxine Eden (Buffy/Spike, R)

These Endless Days, Ch. 13 by violettathepiratequeen (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

[Images, Audio & Video]

Drawing: A baby. by mrsmess (Buffy, worksafe)

A set of Buffy vs. Spike manips about their rivalry by spyder-baby (worksafe)

Buffy/Spike drawings inspired by LadyxB's story «Distraction» by flyora (worksafe)

Shitpost: the tension between 2 men and a bowl of cheerios by slurping-up-grass (The Vampire Diaries crossover, Spike/cheerios, worksafe)

Drawing: Joyce by the-bed-bugs-bit (worksafe)

Four Buffy/Cordelia gifsets by theveryunlikelywonderland (worksafe)

Buffy/Spike manips inspired by Geliot99’s stories, made by Claire (G)

Meme: Check your kids Halloween candy carefully. by whatkindofnameisbuffy (worksafe)

A Buffy/Spike fanvid by everythingselses ()

[Reviews & Recaps]

I just watched the unaired pilot! Honestly not knocking Riff Reagan but Alyson Hannigan is amazing! by OOKAPUCA1993

FRAY appreciation thread by Reddevil8884

Just saw Into the Woods (s5) and I am devastated 😔 by KENZOKHAOS

Phases by Important_Builder317

The Killer In Me S7 E13 (Buffy and the Art of Story Podcast) - Lisa Lilly

[Recs & In Search Of]

BtVS Recs [Buffy/Spike fic, Spike art and and an Eliza Dushku article] by apachefirecat

[Community Announcements]

THE MOUTH OF HELL, an 18+ semi-appless discord-based roleplay inspired by Buffyverse, is looking for players

[Fandom Discussions]

What I want to know is why the Scoobies never gave Spike a soul... by thequeenofsastiel

I wish they had made Spike softer in season 5 [AtS] by thequeenofsastiel

Dawn's kleptomania by Ok_Area9367

Most unlikely couple? by Obiwankimi

Guess what’s on this Spuffy mix I made my friend in high school 😂 by jaduhlynr

Does anyone feel like we never got Giles' mysterious backstory? by -andromeda

Creature of the week by ProfChaos85

Faith fighting against the Circle of the Black Thorn by horriblyfamiliar1

[Articles, Interviews, and Other News]

David Boreanaz and Charisma Carpenter Celebrate Angel's 25th Anniversary [bleedingcool.com reports Instagram posts]

There's going to be a Little Golden Book "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Power of Friendship", publication date: July 1, 2025

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #angel the series

6 notes · View notes

chillingcinemachronicles · 2 years ago

Text

Top 5 Sci-Fi Movies on Netflix

5. Predestination (2014)

Genre: Science Fiction, Thriller

Actor: Alicia Pavlis, Annabelle Norman, Arielle O’Neill, Ben Prendergast, Carolyn Shakespeare-Allen, Cate Wolfe, Christopher Bunworth, Christopher Kirby, Christopher Sommers, Christopher Stollery, Dennis Coard, Dick York, Elise Jansen, Eliza D’Souza, Eliza Matengu, Ethan Hawke, Felicity Steel, Finegan Sampson, Freya Stafford, Giordano Gangl, Grant Piro, Hayley Butcher, Jim Knobeloch, Katie Avram, Kristie Jandric, Kuni Hashimoto, Lucinda Armstrong Hall, Madeleine West, Maja Sarosiek, Marky Lee Campbell, Milla Simmonds, Monique Heath, Noah Taylor, Noel Herriman, Olivia Sprague, Paul Moder, Raj Sidhu, Rob Jenkins, Sara El-Yafi, Sarah Snook, Sophie Cusworth, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Tyler Coppin, Vanessa Crouch

Director: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig, The Spierig Brothers

Rating: R

One of the most original time-travel thrillers since 12 Monkeys. A brilliant subversion of the Time Paradox trope, with enough plot twists to keep you entertained until well after the movie is finished. Predestination is an amazing movie with great performances from Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook. It’s a movie that will feel like Inception, when it comes to messing with your mind and barely anyone has heard of it. It is highly underrated and unknown, sadly.

4. Train to Busan (2016)

Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller

Actor: Ahn So-hee, An So-hee, Baek Seung-hwan, Cha Chung-hwa, Chang-hwan Kim, Choi Gwi-hwa, Choi Woo-shik, Choi Woo-sung, Dong-seok Ma, Eui-sung Kim, Gong Yoo, Han Ji-eun, Han Sung-soo, Jang Hyuk-jin, Jeong Seok-yong, Jung Seok-yong, Jung Young-ki, Jung Yu-mi, Kim Chang-hwan, Kim Eui-sung, Kim Jae-rok, Kim Joo-heon, Kim Ju-hun, Kim Keum-soon, Kim Soo-ahn, Kim Soo-an, Kim Su-an, Kim Won-Jin, Lee Joo-sil, Lee Joong-ok, Ma Dong-seok, Park Myung-shin, Sang-ho Yeon, Seok-yong Jeong, Shim Eun-kyung, Sohee, Soo-an Kim, Soo-jung Ye, Terri Doty, Woo Do-im, Woo-sik Choi, Ye Soo-jung, Yeon Sang-ho, Yoo Gong, Yu-mi Jeong, Yu-mi Jung

Director: Sang-ho Yeon, Yeon Sang-ho

Lights, camera, VPNaction! Elevate your movie nights with NordVPN. 🎥🔒secure your connection and Download NordVPN . Click now to unlock global cinematic thrills!

A zombie virus breaks out and catches up with a father as he is taking his daughter from Seoul to Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city. Watch them trying to survive to reach their destination, a purported safe zone.

The acting is spot-on; the set pieces are particularly well choreographed. You’ll care about the characters. You’ll feel for the father as he struggles to keep his humanity in the bleakest of scenarios.

It’s a refreshingly thrilling disaster movie, a perfect specimen of the genre.

3. Serenity (2005)

Genre: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction, Thriller

Actor: Adam Baldwin, Alan Tudyk, Carrie ‘CeCe’ Cline, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Colin Patrick Lynch, David Krumholtz, Demetra Raven, Dennis Keiffer, Elaine Mani Lee, Erik Weiner, Gina Torres, Glenn Howerton, Hunter Ansley Wryn, Jessica Huang, Jewel Staite, Linda Wang, Logan O’Brien, Marcus Young, Mark Winn, Marley McClean, Matt McColm, Michael Hitchcock, Morena Baccarin, Nathan Fillion, Nectar Rose, Neil Patrick Harris, Peter James Smith, Rafael Feldman, Rick Williamson, Ron Glass, Ryan Tasz, Sarah Paulson, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, Tamara Taylor, Terrell Tilford, Terrence Hardy Jr., Tristan Jarred, Weston Nathanson, Yan Feldman

Director: Joss Whedon

Rating: PG-13

Lights, camera, VPNaction! Elevate your movie nights with NordVPN. 🎥🔒secure your connection and Download NordVPN . Click now to unlock global cinematic thrills!

Serenity is a futuristic sci-fi film that serves as a feature-length continuation of the story-line from the TV program Firefly (2002–2003). The story revolves around the captain (Nathan Fillion) and crew of the titular space vessel that operate as space outlaws, running cargo and smuggling missions throughout the galaxy. They take on a mysterious young psychic girl and her brother, the girl carrying secrets detrimental to the intergalactic government, and soon find themselves being hunted by a nefarious assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor). The first feature-length film from Joss Whedon (The Avengers), Serenity is a lively and enjoyable adventure, replete with large-scale action sequences, strong characterizations and just the right touch of wry humor. An enjoyable viewing experience that stands alone without demanding that you have familiarity with the original program beforehand.

2. Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Science Fiction

Actor: Armie Hammer, Danny Glover, David Cross, Ed Moy, Forest Whitaker, James D. Weston II, Jermaine Fowler, John Ozuna, Kate Berlant, Lakeith Stanfield, Lily James, Marcella Bragio, Michael X. Sommers, Molly Brady, Omari Hardwick, Patton Oswalt, Robert Longstreet, Rosario Dawson, Steven Yeun, Teresa Navarro, Terry Crews, Tessa Thompson, Tom Woodruff Jr., Tony Toste, W. Kamau Bell

Director: Boots Riley

In the year of the Netflix TV Show Maniac, another absurdist title stole critics’ hearts. Sorry to Bother You is a movie set in an alternate reality, where capitalism and greed are accentuated. Lakeith Stanfield (Atlanta) is a guy called Cassius who struggles to pay his bills. However, when at a tele-marketing job an old-timer tells him to use a “white voice”, he starts moving up the ranks of his bizarre society. A really smart movie that will be mostly enjoyed by those who watch it for its entertaining value, and not so much for its commentary. It is like a Black Mirror episode stretched into a movie.

1. Ex Machina (2015)

Genre: Drama, Science Fiction

Actor: Alex Garland, Alicia Vikander, Chelsea Li, Claire Selby, Corey Johnson, Domhnall Gleeson, Elina Alminas, Gana Bayarsaikhan, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno, Symara A. Templeman, Symara Templeman, Tiffany Pisani

Director: Alex Garland

Rating: R

Lights, camera, VPNaction! Elevate your movie nights with NordVPN. 🎥🔒secure your connection and Download NordVPN . Click now to unlock global cinematic thrills!

Ex Machina is the directorial debut of Alex Garland, the writer of 28 Days Later (and 28 Weeks Later). It tells the story of Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson from About Time), an IT developer who is invited by a billionaire CEO to participate in a groundbreaking experiment — administering a Turing test to a humanoid robot called Ava (Alicia Vikander). Meeting the robot with feelings of superiority at first, questions of trust and ethics soon collide with the protagonist’s personal views. While this dazzling film does not rely on them, the visual effects and the overall look-feel of Ex Machina are absolutely stunning and were rightly picked for an Academy Award. They make Ex Machina feel just as casually futuristic as the equally stylish Her and, like Joaquin Phoenix, Gleeson aka Caleb must confront the feelings he develops towards a machine, despite his full awareness that ‘she’ is just that. This is possibly as close to Kubrick as anyone got in the 21st century. Ex Machina is clever, thrilling, and packed with engaging ideas.

#netflix #movies #film #top 5 #sci fi #science fiction

10 notes · View notes

detective-luca-montoya · 1 year ago

Text

The following log is evidence of crimes committed by David Alicant (deceased). Text transcribed from audio.

TAPE 2- Found in Fiona Weatherby's childhood home.

[TRANSCRIPT START]

DAVID: Eliza and Thomas Weatherby. Two of the most gifted magicians the world had ever seen. We were inseparable, you see. We served on the side of the people, tracking down the most violent and dangerous magical criminals. It was... pleasant. But it wouldn't last.

They started a family, and so did I. We still kept in touch, but our dueling days had passed. Your father retired and became a doctor, quite a good one, in fact. Me and my wife retired to our mansion and raised our child. Fiona. You and she were born within a week of each other. You, named Thea. You two were best friends.

But Fiona was a very sickly child. She had a rare disease, perhaps a curse, perhaps not. We never found out. But she was dying. And I...

[The following six seconds are inaudible]

DAVID: ...That was unacceptable. Your next destination is St. Benedict's Hospital, where you both were born. It's been abandoned since then. You'll find the next tape where they keep the living dead.

[TRANSCRIPT END]

#whump #whump writing #my writing #case file: tapes #david oc #fiona oc #creepy whumper

2 notes · View notes

percontaion-points · 2 months ago

Text

19th Wife chapter 15

Click here for the rest of the series!

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions

XV THE PROPHET’S WIFE THE 19TH WIFE CHAPTER SIXTEEN My Wedding Day

Again, kind of feel like the author didn’t have to format his book to the point where we’re in chapter 15 of the dual story of Ann Eliza/Jordan and BeckyLyn… And then chapter 16 of Ann Eliza’s book.

“What number am I?” Brigham reached for my hand to warm it between his. “Number?” “Which wife?” “It’s distasteful to me to put a number next to you, or any woman.” “I appreciate that. But I’d like to know.” “In that case, you are number nineteen.” “Nineteen? What about the others?” “Others?” “At the Lion House?” “They’re friends, but not wives.” “But I’ve heard—” “Ann Eliza, you’ll hear many things now that you’re my wife.” “Nineteen, really? That’s all?” “Nineteen. Really. That’s all.”

Such a charmer. I have to wonder how many of his other wives that he offered the same/similar line to.

I speak the truth when I tell you it was at this moment my bodice tore, exposing my sacred undergarments. According to Brigham himself, a woman must never reveal them to a man, even her husband. Eliza Snow had penned a letter to the women of Zion on the subject: “At the time of connubiality, the wife must open a slot in her sacred garments no bigger than necessary to permit the husband his entry. At no time should she preen before him in anything less than what she might wear on the street, nor reveal to neither his eyes nor hands what lay beneath.”

Going to drop this off here and be on my way. And you were wondering if the entire “Mormon soaking” thing had any grain of truth to it… They’ve always been like this, apparently.

“You don’t like me?” said Brigham. “It’s not that.” “Then what?” He shifted toward me, his great bulk tilting the carriage on its groaning springs. The horseman slowed his team, adjusting for the shifting cargo. I suspect he was used to this sort of situation. Lurching closer, Brigham attempted to kiss me. Soon he was on me, crying, “Tell me you’ve always wanted me as I’ve wanted you!” He pressed me into the corner of the carriage. “Brigham, please—” But his animal had been set free from its cage. […] “Shut the door.” He obeyed my command and settled into the seat with an obvious shame. “What has gotten into you?” I demanded. “I’m sorry, I was overcome. I didn’t mean to alarm you, but you can’t know how beautiful you are.” “Thank you, but you’re not fifteen.”

Why do I get the feeling that if Brigham was around today, he’d be the kind of man who would be constantly divorcing his latest wife the second she hit 25, and finding some naive, barely 18 year old girl to marry next?

When first planning this memoir, I had no intention of dipping into the histories of my fellow wives.

Oh dear Zeus, here we go… Every single time it says “I don’t want to write about this”, this book immediately serves into that huge BUT…

I also know that she intended to be Brigham’s final wife. It was a condition of their marriage. We must give Brigham some credit. He kept his word for two years.

Wow, two whole years! What a saint! Honestly, it’s difficult to fault Amelia for demanding French silk and diamond necklaces. You know he has the money for it, and you know he’s a louse who’ll quickly tire of her. And then where will they be? Amelia will run off with the money from having pawned her silk dresses and diamond necklaces. She’s the smart one, here.

Everything is for them. The voice was Brigham’s. Everything you do now is for your boys.

I love how in the previous chapter, Gilbert had indicated that Ann had given in to Brigham’s demands in order to save her brother. But in Ann’s own words, she doesn’t even MENTION her brother. Everything she’s doing is for her children. What happened to Gilbert and his inability to care for his ~15 children? Who fucking know. Not David Ebershoff, that’s for sure.

On our first anniversary Brigham transferred me, along with my mother and my boys, to Forest Farm, his agricultural compound south of the city. […] What I did not know, nor did Brigham inform me until my arrival, was that most of the farm’s operations were now my responsibility. Forest Farm served as Brigham’s larder. Each day it delivered fresh milk, eggs, butter, vegetables, and meats to his scores of wives and children throughout Salt Lake. Every day in the black of morning I rose to begin my chores in the barn, finishing long after the sun had set. My mother did the same, looking after the house and cooking for the thirty farm hands who tended Brigham’s field of beets and alfalfa, his cocoonery, and his thousand heads of registered cattle. When one chore was complete, five others waited. The end of each day simply brought the beginning of the next. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life,” I said to my mother.

That sounds suspiciously like slavery to me.

Yet in truth, I had never felt more afraid.

Chapter 15 summary: Not even an hour after secretly marrying Brigham did he drag her off to go tend to some church business of two boys killed in a river flood. He drove her back to her mother’s house, where he tried to have his way with her… And then became butthurt after she refused him. After that, they started to have… relations in Brigham’s carriage, which made Ann feel like a common whore. After a few months, he eventually moved her and Elizabeth into a new house, and announced Ann as his wife. He instructed her to dine at the Lion’s House. At this point, Ann pauses to explain about one of the other wives, Amelia, who is nothing but a gold-digger who hates everything and everyone. Although Amelia’s role is limited in the story, it’s easy to see why Ann was quick to stop dining at the Lion’s House. For their one year anniversary, Brigham rewarded her by turning her into an indentured servant on his farm. On sure, Ann and Elizabeth were running the thing, but I doubt that they were allowed to LEAVE. They remained there for three years, upon which Brigham installed them back in a house, but told her that he had no more money. At this point, Ann was forced to take in borders, who were quick to become her friends. They weren’t of the Mormon church, and were quick to slam everything about it. Especially polygamy, when they saw how much Ann was suffering. Despite taking in the boarders, Ann was living hand-to-mouth, and barely getting by. Things came to a head between her and Brigham when she went to him, demanding the money for a new stove in order to better serve her boarders. He almost refused, but Ann put her foot down because he was supposed to be her husband. After leaving his office, she went to the Lion House, where she saw Brigham with Amelia… still wearing diamond necklaces. While Brigham claims to be too broke to let Ann get a new stove. After this, Ann got really, really sick again, but she had her boarder friends to take care of her. As she recovered, one of her boarders, a judge, pointed out that she had a good case for spousal abandonment. Her other friends were quick to point out that it would be a nice test case about plural wives getting away from their shitty husbands. After she got better, two “religious judges” came to basically mock that she’d lost her faith. Ann pointedly looked them in the eye, told them that she no longer believed, who were they to judge what was in her heart, and that Brigham was an absolute louse. Finally, Ann sold off all of her belongings, sent Eddy to live with her father for a while, took Lorenzo, and fled with the help of her friends. She spent the night in a non-Mormon hotel, but in the morning, the news of her flight had already gone through the Mormon community, and a nasty article printed about her in the Mormon paper. However, thanks to the fact that she’d made new friends outside of the cult, she also had an article praising her in the non-Mormon paper. And supporters outside the hotel there to support her in any way they could. However, the final straw for Ann came by way of a letter from Elizabeth, basically saying “You’re no daughter of mine!” Gee thanks, mum! Appreciate the support.

Hire me to fix your book! Copyediting, proofreading, developmental editing, sarcastic editing, and more! 16 years of book-editing experience. Message me anywhere for pricing and further details.

#The 19th Wife #bookblr #book review #religious novel #historical fiction

0 notes

kimberly40 · 4 months ago

Text

“Granny Guy” served 31 years as a midwife in Avery County, North Carolina

Eliza Millsaps Guy was born October 1, 1869. She was the oldest girl born to Marion and Jane Millsasps near Rush Branch in Watauga County, North Carolina. They then moved to a small farm near the mouth of Beech Creek where Eliza attended public school and lived on a farm.

Eliza married John Guy and to them twelve children were born. She raised her family on a small farm near the mouth of Beech Creek at Beech Mountain. Eliza was considered smart in business affairs and she worked hard on her farm.

In her early life, Eliza became interested in the birth and care of children. She served for many years as a licensed midwife assisting in the birth, care and growth of young children.

"Granny Guy", as she was called, had a smile and a pleasant word for everybody. During her long service as a midwife, she had to travel either foot or horseback, day or night, in rain or a snowstorm. She would be accompanied by a lone guide to a home in the mountainous country where a baby was being born. Eliza served 31 years as a midwife and it was said that she never lost a baby.

Eliza passed away at the age of 87 on May 11, 1958. At the time of her death, she lived on Beech Creek Road at Beech Mountain, NC. Her gravestone reads: “Eliza, or Granny Guy as she was known, served 31 years as a midwife and never lost a baby.”

Eliza is buried at Beech Creek Cemetery in Avery County, NC

(Information from her obituary. Photo from David Harmon via https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70258614/eliza-guy)

#avery county nc #averycounty #appalachian #appalachian mountains #midwifery #midwife life #north carolina #appalachian culture #western north carolina #appalachia #the south #nc mountains #appalachian history #old history

5 notes · View notes

lindsayrps · 1 year ago

Text

indigo armstrong, twenty nine, fighter pilot

born three months before the start of the great war, indigo spends childhood nestled in a quiet suburb in seattle with his family. he's the oldest of three, the only boy and brother to juniper and, eventually, willow. joseph and adelaide are self proclaimed free spirits and vehement objectors to war in all forms, opposing wilson's call to join the war in 1917. joseph chooses farm labour in another state over enlisting in an attempt to avoid imprisonment for failure to serve.

adelaide takes on parenting indigo and his sister on her own in the absence of joseph but two young children take their toll and things are hard all around. joseph returns a few months after the signing of the armistice, in early 1919, and the family attempts to settle back into the life they'd known. they welcome a third child, another daughter, and decide their family is complete.

the twenties roll by with relatively little fanfare, a move is contemplated in the midst of it in an attempt to stave off using whatever savings they've got to their name but the 30s present a new obstacle and times get even toughter than they had been. indigo turns 16 by the spring of 1930 and starts working wherever they'll let him to start contributing to the household where his father, or mother, cannot. they struggle, pinch pennies and move into smaller and smaller places.

by 1939, indigo is 25 and somewhat transient. much of his time between '32-'39 is spent travelling and working wherever anyone will have him and sending the money back to his family so they can survive. he picks up a steady, long term job as a mechanic on planes and eventually learns to fly them when he's got some downtime.

his parents are furious when he joins the air foce and even moreso when he tells them he's being sent overseas to join the war effort. he knows they'll come around, eventually, and maybe only when the war is over but it sucks, in the moment, for them to decide to stop talking to him, almost pretending like he doesn't exist. he doesn't enjoy the war or think it's right but it feels like the only option and he realizes that flies in the face of everything they'd taught him so he supposes he doesn't blame them but, still.

it's a stable, steady job and, for a time, he doesn't regret it. he flies a single seater, lockheed p38 lightning for a simple fact that he trains on it, he knows it like the back of his hand, and he doesn't want to be responsible for getting anyone but himself back home when all is said and done. he spends the early days of the war flying missions over italy in the mediterranean theater before being transferring to western europe in september '43 where he's been flying escort missions with flying fortresses from the 8th.

indigo is the exact person you want on your side. he's unshakeable, for the most par, always having a level head and the ability to think logically where that might fail with others. he prides himself on being the kind of person everyone can rely on for some perspective.

he does tend to let loose and have fun when he's not flying missions and is stuck on base for whatever reason but he's also a very chill person. he'll go for a drink or a night off at the club but he knows his limits and generally doesn't push them.

(unless david is involved.)

he's a restless sort on the worst days and leans impulsive when he's bored or Very Sure of something (see: his marriage to eliza after 2 months of knowing her) but doesn't see that as a shortcoming.

despite however kept together he may appear on the outside and how little seems to shake him, he's not at all at ease with the war. he compartmentalizes and turns off his guilt by saying it's a job. it's a job and when he's done, he gets to go home to his wife and he never wants to get involved in anything like this again.

certified Wife Guy™

#ch: indigo armstrong #verse: at the end of the world

1 note · View note

kamreadsandrecs · 2 years ago

Text

by Adam Kirsch

In Elif Batuman’s 2022 novel Either/Or, the narrator, Selin, goes to her college library to look for Prozac Nation, the 1994 memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Both of Harvard’s copies are checked out, so instead she reads reviews of the book, including Michiko Kakutani’s in the New York Times, which Batuman quotes:

“Ms. Wurtzel’s self-important whining” made Ms. Kakutani “want to shake the author, and remind her that there are far worse fates than growing up during the 70’s in New York and going to Harvard.”

It’s a typically canny moment in a novel that strives to seem artless. Batuman clearly recognizes that every criticism of Wurtzel’s bestseller—narcissism, privilege, triviality—could be applied to Either/Or and its predecessor, The Idiot, right down to the authors’ shared Harvard pedigree. Yet her protagonist resists the identification, in large part because she doesn’t see herself as Wurtzel’s contemporary. Wurtzel was born in 1967 and Batuman in 1977. This makes both of them members of Generation X, which includes those born between 1965 and 1980. But Selin insists that the ten-year gap matters: “Generation X: that was the people who were going around being alternative when I was in middle school.”

I was born in 1976, and the closer we products of the Seventies get to fifty, the clearer it becomes to me that Batuman is right about the divide—especially when it comes to literature. In pop culture, the Gen X canon had been firmly established by the mid-Nineties: Nirvana’s Nevermind appeared in 1991, the movie Reality Bites in 1994, Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill in 1995. Douglas Coupland’s book Generation X, which popularized the term, was published in 1991. And the novel that defined the literary generation, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996, when David Foster Wallace was about to turn thirty-four—technically making him a baby boomer.

Batuman was a college sophomore in 1996, presumably experiencing many of the things that happen to Selin in Either/Or. But by the time she began to fictionalize those events twenty years later, she joined a group of writers who defined themselves, ethically and aesthetically, in opposition to the older representatives of Generation X. For all their literary and biographical differences, writers like Nicole Krauss, Teju Cole, Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, and Tao Lin share some basic assumptions and aversions—including a deep skepticism toward anyone who claims to speak for a generation, or for any entity larger than the self.

That skepticism is apparent in the title of Zadie Smith’s new novel, The Fraud. Smith’s precocious success—her first book, White Teeth, was published in 2000, when she was twenty-four—can make it easy to think of her as a contemporary of Wallace and Wurtzel. In fact she was born in 1975, two years before Batuman, and her sensibility as a writer is connected to her generational predicament.

Smith’s latest book is, most obviously, a response to the paradoxical populism of the late 2010s, in which the grievances of “ordinary people” found champions in elite figures such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Rather than write about current events, however, Smith has elected to refract them into a story about the Tichborne case, a now-forgotten episode that convulsed Victorian England in the 1870s.

In particular, Smith is interested in how the case challenges the views of her protagonist, Eliza Touchet. Eliza is a woman with the sharp judgment and keen perceptions of a novelist, though her era has deprived her of the opportunity to exercise those gifts. Her surname—pronounced in the French style, touché—evokes her taste for intellectual combat. But she has spent her life in a supportive role, serving variously as housekeeper and bedmate to her cousin William Harrison Ainsworth, a man of letters who churns out mediocre historical romances by the yard. (Like most of the novel’s characters, Ainsworth and Touchet are based on real-life historical figures.)

Now middle-aged, Eliza finds herself drawn into public life by the Tichborne saga, which has divided the nation and her household as bitterly as any of today’s political controversies. Like all good celebrity trials, the case had many supporting players and intricate subplots, but at heart it was a question of identity: Was the man known as “the Claimant” really Roger Tichborne, an aristocrat believed to have died in a shipwreck some fifteen years earlier? Or was he Arthur Orton, a cockney butcher who had emigrated to Australia, caught wind of the reward on offer from Roger’s grief-stricken mother, and seized the chance of a lifetime? In the end, a jury decided that he was Orton, and instead of inheriting a country estate he wound up in a jail cell. What fascinates Smith, though, is the way the Tichborne case became a political cause, energizing a movement that took justice for “Sir Roger” to be in some way related to justice for the common man.

Eliza is a right-minded progressive who was active in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s. Proud of her judgment, she sees many problems with the Claimant’s story and finds it incredible that anyone could believe him. To her dismay, however, she lives with someone who does. William’s new wife, Sarah, formerly his servant, sees the Claimant as a victim of the same establishment that lorded over her own working-class family. The more she is informed of the problems with the Claimant’s argument, the more obdurate she becomes: “HE AIN’T CALLED ARTHUR ORTON IS HE,” she yells, “THEM WHO SAY HE’S ORTON ARE LYING.”

What Smith is dramatizing, of course, is the experience of so many liberal intellectuals over the past decade who had believed themselves to be on the side of “the people” only to find that, whether the issue was Brexit or Trump or COVID-19 protocols, the people were unwilling to heed their guidance, and in fact loathed them for it. It is in order to get to the bottom of this phenomenon that Eliza keeps attending the Tichborne trial, in much the same spirit that many liberal journalists reported from Trump rallies. Things get even more complicated when she befriends a witness for the defense, Mr. Bogle, who is among the Claimant’s main supporters even though he began his life as a slave on a Jamaica plantation managed by Edward Tichborne, the Claimant’s supposed father.

Though much of the novel deals with the case and the history of slavery in Britain’s Caribbean colonies, it is first and foremost the story of Eliza Touchet, and how her exposure to the trial alters her sense of the world and of herself. “The purpose of life was to keep one’s mind open,” she reflects, and it is this ability to see things from another perspective that makes her a novelist manqué.

Open-mindedness, even to the point of moral ambiguity, is one of the chief values Smith shares with her literary contemporaries. These writers grew up during a period of heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, then took their first steps toward adult consciousness just as the Cold War concluded. They came of age in the brief period that Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history.”

Fukuyama’s description, famously premature though it was, still captures something crucial about the context in which the children of the Seventies began to think and write. While the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe is sometimes remembered as the “Revolutions of 1989,” the mood it created in the West was hardly revolutionary. After 1989, there was little of the “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive” sentiment that had animated Wordsworth during the French Revolution. Instead, the ambient sense that history was moving steadily in the right direction encouraged writers to see politics as less urgent, and less morally serious, than inward experience.

In the fiction that defined the pre-9/11 era, political phenomena tended to assume cartoon form. Wallace’s Infinite Jest features an organization of Quebecois separatists called Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents—that is, the Wheelchair Assassins. In Smith’s White Teeth, one of the main characters joins a militant group named KEVIN, for Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation. The attacks on the Twin Towers and the war on terror would put an end to jokes like these, but for a decade or so it was possible to see ideological extremism as a relic fit for spoofing—as with KGB Bar, a popular New York literary venue that opened in 1993.

For the young writers of that era, the most important battles were not being fought abroad but at home, and within themselves. Their enemies were the forces of cynicism and indifference that Wallace depicted in Infinite Jest, set in a near-future America stupefied by consumerism, mass entertainment, and addictive substances. The great balancing act of Wallace’s fiction was to truthfully represent this stupor while holding open the possibility that one could recover from it, the way the residents of the novel’s Ennet House manage to recover from their addictions. This dialectical mission is responsible for the spiraling self-consciousness that is the most distinctive (and, to some readers, the most annoying) aspect of his writing.

Dave Eggers set himself an analogous challenge in his 2000 memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Writing about a childhood tragedy—the nearly simultaneous deaths from cancer of his mother and father, which left the young Eggers with custody of his eight-year-old brother—he aimed to do full justice to his despair while still insisting on the validity of hope. “This did not happen to us for naught, I can assure you,” he writes,

there is no logic to that, there is logic only in assuming that we suffered for a reason. Just give us our due. I am bursting with the hopes of a generation, their hopes surge through me, threaten to burst my hardened heart!

By the end of the millennium, this was the familiar voice of Generation X. Loquacious and self-involved, its ironic grandiosity barely concealed a sincere grandiosity about its moral mission, which was to defeat despair and foster genuine human connection. Jonathan Franzen, Wallace’s realist rival, titled a book of essays How to Be Alone, and for these writers, loneliness was the great problem that literature was created to solve. “If writing was the medium of communication within the community of childhood, it makes sense that when writers grow up they continue to find writing vital to their sense of connectedness,” Franzen wrote in his much-discussed essay “Perchance to Dream,” published in these pages in 1996. Eggers seems to have taken this idea literally, creating a nonprofit, 826 Valencia, that advertises writing mentorship for underserved students as a way of “building community” and rectifying inequality.

If sincerity and connection were the greatest virtues for these writers, the greatest sin was “snark.” That word gained literary currency thanks to a manifesto by Heidi Julavits in the first issue of The Believer, the magazine she co-founded in 2003 with the novelist Vendela Vida (Eggers’s wife) and the writer Ed Park. The title of the essay—“Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!”—like the title of the magazine, insisted that literature was an essentially moral enterprise, a matter of goodness, courage, and love. To demur from this vision was to reveal a smallness of soul that Julavits called snark: “wit for wit’s sake—or, hostility for hostility’s sake,” a “hostile, knowing, bitter tone of contempt.” For Kafka, a book was an axe for the frozen sea within; for the older cohort of Gen X writers, it was more like a hacksaw to cut through the barred cell of cynicism.

This was the environment—quiescent in politics, self-consciously sincere in literature—in which Smith and her contemporaries came of age. Just as they started to publish their first books, however, the stopped clock of history resumed with a vengeance. It is unnecessary to list the series of political and geopolitical shocks that have occurred since 2000. For the millennial generation, adulthood has been defined by apocalyptic fears, political frenzy, and glimpses of utopia, whether in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night 2008 or in New York’s Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

The children of the Seventies tend to feel out of place in this new world. It’s not that they naïvely looked forward to a future of peace and harmony and are offended to find that it has not materialized. It is rather that their literary gaze was fixed within at an early age, and they continue to believe that the most authentic way to write about history is as the deteriorating climate through which the self moves.

The self, meanwhile, they approach with mistrust—a reaction against the heart-on-sleeve sincerity of their elders. Many of them have turned to autofiction, a genre which is often criticized as narcissistic—a way of shrinking the world to fit into the four walls of the writer’s room. In fact, it has served these writers as an antidote to the grandiosity of memoir, which tends to falsify in the direction of self-flattery—as this generation learned from the spectacular implosion of James Frey’s 2003 bestseller, A Million Little Pieces. By admitting from the outset that it is not telling the truth about the author’s life, autofiction makes it possible to emphasize the moral ambiguities that memoir has to apologize for or hide. That makes it useful for writers who are not in search of goodness, neither within themselves nor in political movements.

For Sheila Heti, this resistance to goodness takes the form of artistic introspection, which busier people tend to judge as selfish and idle. In How Should a Person Be?, from 2010, a character named Sheila has dinner with a young theater director named Ben, who has just returned with a friend from South Africa. “It was just such a crushing awakening of the colossal injustice of the way our world works economically,” he says of their trip, that he now wonders whether his work as a theater director—“a very narcissistic activity”—is morally justifiable. Yet nothing could be more narcissistic, in Heti’s telling, than such moral preening, and Sheila instinctively resists it. “They are so serious. They lectured me about my lack of morality,” she complains. She loathes the idea of having “to wear on the outside one’s curiosity, one’s pity, one’s guilt,” when art is concerned with what happens inside, which can only be observed with effort and in private. “It’s time to stop asking questions of other people,” she tells herself. “It is time to just go into a cocoon and spin your soul.”

Teju Cole’s 2011 novel Open City offers a more ambivalent version of the same idea. Julius, the narrator, can’t justify his aesthetic self-absorption on the grounds that he is an artist, as Sheila does, since he is a psychiatrist. It’s an ironic choice of profession for a man we come to know as guarded and aloof. Cole builds a portrait of Julius through his daily interactions with other people, like the taxi driver whose cab he enters gruffly. “The way you came into my car without saying hello, that was bad,” the driver rebukes him. “Hey, I’m African just like you, why you do this?” Julius apologizes for this small breach of solidarity, but insincerely: “I wasn’t sorry at all. I was in no mood for people who tried to lay claims on me.”

Indeed, for most of the novel he is alone, meditating in Sebaldian fashion on the atrocities of history as he takes long walks through Manhattan. When, during a trip to Brussels, he meets a man who wants to intervene in history—Farouq, a young Moroccan intellectual who declares that “America is a version of Al-Qaeda”—Julius is decidedly unimpressed:

There was something powerful about him, a seething intelligence, something that wanted to believe itself indomitable. But he was one of the thwarted ones. His script would stay in proportion.

Open City can’t be said to endorse Julius’s aesthetic solipsism. On the contrary, the last chapter finds him trapped on a fire escape outside Carnegie Hall in the rain, a striking symbol of a man isolated by culture. Just moments before, he had been united with the rest of the audience in Mahlerian rapture; now, he reflects, “my fellow concertgoers went about their lives oblivious to my plight,” as he tries to avoid slipping and falling to his death. The scene is Cole’s acknowledgment that aesthetic consciousness remains passive and solipsistic even when experienced in common, and that danger demands a different kind of solidarity—one that is active, ethical, even political. Yet Cole conjures Julius’s aristocratic fatalism in such intimate detail that the “Rejoice! Believe!” approach—to literature, and to life—can only appear childish.

Writers of this cohort do sometimes try to imagine a better world, but they tend to do so in terms that are metaphysical rather than political, moving at one bound from the fallen present to some kind of messianic future. In her 2022 novel Pure Colour, Heti tells the story of a woman named Mira whose grief over her father’s death prompts her to speculate about what Judaism calls the world to come. In Heti’s vision, this is not a place to which the soul repairs after death, nor is it some kind of revolutionary political arrangement; rather, it is an entirely new world that God will one day create to replace the one we live in, which she calls “the first draft of existence.”

The hardest thing to accept, for Heti’s protagonist, is that the end of our world will mean the disappearance of art. “Art would never leave us like a father dying,” Mira says. “In a way, it would always remain.” But over the course of Pure Colour, she comes to accept that even art is transitory. In a profoundly self-accusing passage, she concludes that a better world might even require the disappearance of art, since

art is preserved on hearts of ice. It is only those with icebox hearts and icebox hands who have the coldness of soul equal to the task of keeping art fresh for the centuries, preserved in the freezer of their hearts and minds.

Tao Lin’s unnerving, affectless autofiction leaves a rather different impression than Heti’s, and he has sometimes been identified as a voice from the next generation, the millennials. But his 2021 novel Leave Society shows him thinking along similar lines as the children of the Seventies. In Taipei, from 2013, Lin’s alter ego is named Paul, and he spends most of the novel joylessly eating in restaurants and taking mood-altering drugs. In Leave Society he is named Li, but he is recognizably the same person, perched on a knife-edge between extreme sensitivity and neurotic withdrawal. In the interim, he has decided that the cure for his troubles, and the world’s, lies in purging the body of the toxins that infiltrate it from every direction.

Like Heti, Lin anticipates a great erasure. All of recorded history, he writes, has been merely a “brief, fallible transition . . . from matter into the imagination.” Sometime soon we will emerge into a universe that bears no resemblance to the one we know. Writers, Lin concludes, participate in this process not by working for social change but by reforming the self. “Li disliked trying to change others,” Lin writes, and believed that “people who are concerned about evil and injustice in the world should begin the campaign against those things at their nearest source—themselves.”

One way or another, writers in this cohort all acknowledge the same injunction—even the ones who struggle against it. In his new book of poems, The Lights, Ben Lerner strives to elaborate an idea of redemption that is both private and social:

I don’t know any songs, but won’t withdraw. I am dreaming the pathetic dream of a pathos capable of redescription, so that corporate personhood becomes more than legal fiction. A dream in prose of poetry, a long dream of waking.

The dream of uniting the sophistication of art with the straightforwardness of justice also animates Lerner’s fiction, where it often takes the form of rueful comedy. In 10:04, the narrator cooks dinner for an Occupy Wall Street protester, but when asked how often he has been to Zuccotti Park, he dodges the question. His activism is limited to cooking, which he pompously describes as a way of being “a producer and not a consumer alone of those substances necessary for sustenance and growth within my immediate community.” That the dream never becomes more than a dream betrays Lerner’s similarity to Lin, Heti, and Cole, who frankly acknowledge the hiatus between art and justice, though without celebrating it.

Zadie Smith has always been too deeply rooted in the social comedy of the English novel to embrace autofiction, yet she also registers this disconnect, as can be seen in the way her influences have shifted over time. When it was first published, White Teeth was compared to Infinite Jest and Don DeLillo’s Underworld as a work of what James Wood called “hysterical realism.” The book’s arch humor, proliferating plot, and penchant for exaggeration owe much to the author Wood identified as the “parent” of that genre: Charles Dickens.

When Smith says that a woman “needed no bra—she was independent, even of gravity,” she is borrowing Dickens’s technique of making characters so intensely themselves that their essence saturates everything around them—as when he writes of the nouveau riche Veneerings, in Our Mutual Friend, that “their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new.” Dickens is a guest star in The Fraud, appearing at several of William Ainsworth’s dinner parties, and the news of his death prompts Eliza Touchet to offer an apt tribute: “She knew she lived in an age of things . . . and Charles had been the poet of things.”

But Dickens, who at another point in the novel is gently disparaged for his moralizing “sermons,” is no longer the presiding genius of Smith’s fiction. (Smith wrote in a recent essay that her first principle in taking up the historical novel was “no Dickens,” and she expressed a wry disappointment that he had forced his way into the proceedings.) Her 2005 novel, On Beauty, was a reimagining of E. M. Forster’s Howards End, and while her style has continued to evolve from book to book, Forster’s influence has been clear ever since, in everything from her preference for short chapters to her belief in “keep[ing] one’s mind open.”

Smith’s affinity for Forster owes something to their analogous historical situations. An Edwardian liberal who lived into the age of fascism and communism, Forster defended his values—“tolerance, good temper and sympathy,” as he put it in the 1939 essay “What I Believe”—with something of a guilty conscience, recognizing that the militant younger generation regarded them as “bourgeois luxuries.”

At the end of The Fraud, Eliza encounters Mr. Bogle’s son Henry, who has grown disgusted with his father’s quietism and become a political radical. He reproaches her for being more interested in understanding injustice than in doing something about it, proclaiming:

By God, don’t you see that what young men hunger for today is not “improvement” or “charity” or any of the watchwords of your Ladies’ Societies. They hunger for truth! For truth itself! For justice!

This certainty and urgency is the opposite of keeping one’s mind open, and while Mrs. Touchet—and Smith—aren’t prepared to say that it is wrong, they are certain that it’s not for them: “This essential and daily battle of life he had described was one she could no more envisage living herself than she could imagine crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a hot air balloon.”

Whether they style themselves as humanists or aesthetes, realists or visionaries, the most powerful writers who were born in the Seventies share this basic aloofness. To the next generation, the millennials, their disengagement from the collective struggle may seem reprehensible. For me, as I suspect is the case for many readers my age, it is part of what makes them such reliable guides to understanding, if not the times we live in, then at least the disjunction between the times and the self that must try to negotiate them.

#zadie smith #writing #books

0 notes

kammartinez · 2 years ago

Text

by Adam Kirsch

There was something powerful about him, a seething intelligence, something that wanted to believe itself indomitable. But he was one of the thwarted ones. His script would stay in proportion.

#zadie smith #books #writing

0 notes

pub-lius · 3 years ago

Text

all of the hamilton children for @thereallvrb0y

this post is my personal FUCK YOU to alexander hamilton for having so many kids. fucking whore. not eliza though, she's a miracle.

also apparently these historical figures are too obscure for my regular secondary sources, so i had to use peoplepill.com for like all of these, besides like. two. also @yr-obedt-cicero 's posts have helped so much i cannot thank you enough bestie

okay here we go

Philip Sr.

Philip Hamilton (the First) was born January 22, 1782 in Albany, New York. He was sent to Trenton Boarding School at nine, and later joined Colombia College. He went on to study law. Robert Troup described Philip as "a sad rake and I have serious doubts whether he would ever be an honour to his family or his country," which is tough talk for a guy who was gay for his dad. Other than this, people described him as having a lot of potential.

Apparently, he was one of Hamilton's favorites, if not the favorite. As the eldest, he was responsible for carrying on the family name, and was therefore the most "valuable". Hamilton was heavily strict on him, possibly because Philip had rebellious tendencies, but he was nevertheless a good student. I also wanted to include these two letters, this one from Alexander to Philip and this one from their dad to both Philip and Alexander Jr.

In 1797, Philip became deathly ill, but was cured by David Hosack.

After the whole political clusterfuck that was the year 1800, George Eacker decided that Alexander Hamilton was a piece of shit, and he was right, but Philip got pissed and called him a bitch, basically. Eacker insulted Philip and his friend in return and Philip challenged him to a duel because men never learn. Philip was fatally wounded in the duel, an Lin-Manuel Miranda decided to take this personally.

Alexander was so distraught by Philip's death that he had to be held up by two men at his funeral. He became much more religious after his death, and it's really the only part of his life that I think he genuinely believed in god.

Philip was buried in Trinity Church Cemetery with his parents.

Angelica <3

@yr-obedt-cicero made an amazing post on Angelica, which goes much more in detail than I will, as to not be redundant. thank you again <333

Angelica was born on September 25, 1784 in New York City. She was described as sensitive, lively, and fond of music and dance.

She studied French and practiced the harpsichord, which she was gifted by her aunt, Angelica Church. Her and her father would sing together as she played the harpsichord. They were very close and ow.

After her older brother's death, she entered a very poor mental state, described as "eternal childhood" and she couldn't recognize family members (this symptom could have just been after Hamilton's death, but sources vary), also speaking of Philip as if he was still alive. Her family dedicated a lot of time to her health, but her condition worsened, and she spent the rest of her life under the care of Dr. MacDonald.

She died on February 6, 1857 at the age of 72. She was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Tarrytown, New York.

Alexander Jr.

Alexander Jr. (who I am going to call AJ bc it's easier and I think it's cute) was born on May 16, 1786. He attended a boarding school in Trenton at 8, then joined Philip studying with William Frazer.

Like his brother, he later attended Columbia College, and graduated in 1804, several weeks after his father's fatal duel. Sources also vary on this, with the St. Andrew's Society of New York (which AJ belonged to) he "did not graduate on account of an accident" so idk. Either way, he started to study law not long after.

He was invited to be an apprentice attorney in Stephen Higginson's Boston law firm, then was admitted to practice law.

He sailed to Spain in 1811 or 1812. He joined the Duke of Wellington's forces fighting Napoleon in Portugal. He returned to America to serve in the War of 1812. He was commissioned as Captain of the 41st Regiment of Infantry in the United States Army in August 1813, though doesn't appear to have seen active service. He went on to serve as an aide-de-camp to General Morgan Lewis in 1812 until June 15, 1815.

He resumed his law practice after his military career ended, and married Eliza P. Knox in 1817. He took office in July 1818 as a member of the 42nd New York State legislature for a one-year term.

In May 1822, James Monroe appointed AJ as United States Attorney for East Florida. As someone who lives in the East Florida parishes, I'm shitting my pants, we never get mentioned in history besides that one time. In 1823, he was appointed to be one of the three Land Commissioners for East Florida, and received the military rank of Colonel.

AJ ran unsuccessfully against Richard K. Call to be the Florida Territory's delegate in the House of Representatives. He returned to New York where he became successful in real estate, and was one of the leading names in Wall Street.

In the mid-1830s, Alexander Hamilton Jr. represented Eliza Jumel against Aaron Burr during their divorce proceedings, which were finalized in 1836 on the day of Burr's death. *copy and paste joke here*

In 1833, AJ used funds from his mother's sale of The Grange to buy the townhouse on St. Mark's Place, where he lived between 1833 and 1842 with his wife, mother, sister and brother-in-law.

He um. Met Abraham Lincoln???? in 1835 when he was on a trip to the west. Lincoln was an Illinois legislator and was apparently just in a grocery story "lying upon the counter in midday telling stories." ... GET HIM OFF THE COUNTER???? GET HIM OUT THE GROCERY STORE???????

Anyway... After the death of his wife, AJ moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey then to New York City. He died on August 2, 1875 at 83 Clinton Place, in Greenwich Village.

James Alexander (my detested)

Bitchbaby was born on April 14, 1788 and graduated from Colombia in 1805. He studied law with Nathaniel Pendleton (and the doctor that he knew).

Shithead was admitted to the bar in 1809 and practiced in Saratoga and Hudson. He married Mary Morris on October 17, 1810. And yes that is Morris as in Gouverneur Morris. They had five children, three of whom died before their father.

Apparently, he lived in extreme poverty in the early years of his legal practice.

"I now look back upon this event as not only the happiness, but the most fortunate occurrence of my long and eventful life. My poverty, with its burdens and responsibilities, nerved me to exertion, and necessity taught me the value of economy and self-denial." -James Alexander in his Reminisces.

He served in the War of 1812 as a brigade-major and inspector of the New York Militia, and relocated to New York City by June 1815.

He built a home in 1828 called Nevis because he's unoriginal. He also kept a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, which was originally painted for his father in 1798, in his home.

"The Hamilton mansion was famous in New-York society 40 years ago, and has been the scene of many a distinguished gathering" -New York Times obituary, 1878

Okay, now its time for his love affair (/nsrs) with Andrew Jackson.

Fuckhead joined Jackson's ~entourage~ in Nashville and traveled to New Orleans in December 1827. He served on Jackson's "Appointing Council" after the 1828 election. He agreed to serve as Acting Secretary of State until Martin Van Buren assumed the post (March 4-April 4, 1829). He helped Jackson draft his Inaugural Address.

Slimeball was nominated by Jackson on April 23, 1829 as District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Jackson told Shitpants he had wanted him "to always be at my command" and when Smartfeller returned to Washington, "I want you to be near me." This was, in historical terms, sussy.

He served as a confidante to Jackson while serving in this position, working on national and international matters, which wasn't in the job description. His 1869 (ha) memoirs is mostly his correspondence, including the discussions of the National Bank (._.) and the Nullification Crisis of 1832 (basically South Carolina disagreed with the government again and did too much).

As Pisspants was leaving for New York, Jackson told him to "Make as much money as you can" and he did by continuing his private practice AND serving as District Attorney, in true Hamilton fashion. He and his younger brother Philip were both involved in the trial of Charles Gibbs. Hamilton left in 1834 to return to his private practice, and now we don't need to talk about Shitty Diaper Andrew Jackson anymore.

He uh. Won the first America's Cup (previously the Royal Yacht Squadron Cup) in 1851. So that's. fun. Queen Victoria also congratulated him on winning so. I guess the Hamilton's just know everyone.

James and AJ served as vestrymen of the Zion Protestant Episcopal Church from 1843 to 1853, and got a little plaque in 1953 and all the years end in 3's. Both were members of the Board of Directors of the Association for the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations - the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1853 and that name gives me indigestion.

On March 6, 1862, James chaired and addressed a meeting at Cooper Union in favor of emancipation. And met fucking. Abraham. Lincoln. Lincoln also asked him to draft a proclamation, and when he returned, he had already issued the Emancipation Proclamation. So sux 2 suc.

James published his memoirs in 1868, which end in 1866, including his trips to Europe, the 1848 revolutions and the Civil War. He stated his intent to "do justice" to his father, and published several pamphlets defending him. (The Public Debt and the Public Credit of the United States and Martin Van Buren's Calumnies Repudiated: Hamilton's Conduct as Secretary of the Treasury Vindicated)

James Alexander died on September 24, 1878 at 90, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, New York. His home was remodeled in 1889 by Stanford White. In 1934, it was donated to Columbia University where it now serves as one of the largest arboretums in the country.

JOHN CHURCH

Johnny C was born on August 22, 1792. He wrote a lot about his dad, and here’s one thing he wrote about the duel which literally stabs my heart out of my chest and rips it apart.

“I recall a single incident about it with full clearness... The day before the duel I was sitting in a room, when, at a slight noise, I turned around and saw my father in the doorway, standing silently there and looking at me with a most sweet and beautiful expression of countenance. It was full of tenderness, and without any of the business pre-occupation he sometimes had. ‘John,’ he said, when I had discovered him. ‘won’t you come and sleep with me to-night?’ His voice was frank as if he had been my brother instead of my father. That night I went to his bed, and in the morning very early he awakened me, and taking my hands in his palms all four hand extended, he said and told me to repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Seventy-five years have since passed over my head, and I have forgotten many things, but not that tender expression when he stood looking at me in the door nor the prayer we made together the morning before the duel. I do not so well recollect seeing him lie upon his deathbed, though I was there.”

In 1809, JC graduated from Colombia University and then studied law. He began serving in the army during the War of 1812, eventually becoming second lieutenant. He served as an aide-de-camp to Major General William Henry Harrison. However, he retired without seeing battle in June 1814.

According to his obituary, “He did not apply himself to the practice of law... having strong literary tastes, [Johnny C.] devoted himself to the study of history, with a view to writing his father’s life.”

Between 1834 and 1840, he went through his father’s letters and papers, and wrote a two-volume biography called The Life of Alexander Hamilton which was published in 1840-1841. Unfortunately, nearly all the copies were destroyed in a fire during the process of binding.

He edited his father’s collected writings under the authority of the Joint Library Committee of the United States Congress and took out the gay porn, publishing The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Containing his Correspondence, and His Political and Official Writings, Exclusive of the Federalist, Civil and Military in 1850-1851. He also wrote a seven volume biography, published between 1857 and 1869 called Life of Alexander Hamilton: A History of the Republic of the United States of America. This combined a biography of Hamilton and a history of the US “as traced in his writings and in those of his contemporaries”. He worked closely with his mother in the preservation of this history, and she encouraged him to write the comprehensive biography.

Also in 1869, he published an edition of The Federalist with historical notes and commentary, and I want it.

JC was a member of the Whig Party, later Republican, but never held office. He lost a run for Congress to represent part of NYC. Also, both Ulysses S. Grant and Chester A. Arthur asked him for his opinions on economics so that’s pretty rad.

In 1880, he presented a statue of Alexander Hamilton to the city “though preferring it were the act of others”. On November 22, 1880, at the unveiling in Central Park near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he said that after a century of the nation’s existence, time had shown “the utility of [AH’s] public services and the lessons of polity” and that he trusted “that this memorial may aid in their being recalled and usefully appreciated.”

Throughout his life, John Church married Maria Eliza van den Heuvel, and together they had FOURTEEN CHILDREN. so here’s a list of their kids that I didn’t write lol.

General Alexander Hamilton (1815–1907), a major general in the Civil War, author of Dramas and Poems (1887).

Maria Williamson Hamilton (1817-1822), who died young

Charlotte Augusta Hamilton (1819–1896)

John Cornelius Adrian Hamilton (1820–1879)

Schuyler Hamilton (1822–1903), who served in the Mexican War

James Hamilton (1824-1825), who died young

Maria Eliza Hamilton (1825–1887), who married Judge Charles A. Peabody (1814–1901)

Charles Apthorp Hamilton (July 23, 1826 – November 29, 1901), was educated in New York, England, and Germany. After clerking for a New York law firm, he practiced law in Wisconsin. He enlisted in the Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry at the start of the Civil War in 1861, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. A severe battle injury to both legs compelled his resignation in March 1863, and he returned to practicing law. In 1881, he was elected judge of the circuit court for Milwaukee.

Robert P. Hamilton (1828–1891)

Adelaide Hamilton (1830–1915)

Elizabeth Hamilton (1831–1884), who first married Henry Wager Halleck in 1855 and after his death, married George Washington Cullum in 1875.

William Gaston Hamilton (1832–1913), a consulting engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company

Laurens Hamilton (1834 – July 6, 1858), an 1854 graduate of Columbia College, who died at the age of 23. He had served for one year as a private in the Seventh Regiment of New York, and drowned accidentally while serving as part of a military escort aboard a ship returning the remains of President James Monroe to Richmond, Virginia.

Alice Hamilton (September 11, 1838 – September 15, 1905)

Shout out to Laurens Hamilton for accidentally drowning, really taking after his grandfather.

John Church died on July 24, 1882 at 89 Stockton Cottage, on Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, New Jersey due to jaundice and catarrh. His funeral was held at Trinity Church.

William Stephen Hamilton

For the sake of my own entertainment, I will be calling this man Stinky bc he probably smells like my dad (shout out to my dad for having the worst genetics). So Stinky was born on August 4, 1797. He entered the United States Military Academy in 1814, then resigned in 1817.

He moved to Illinois, living in Sangamon, Springfield and Peoria, then in 1827, moved to the lead mining region around the Fever River.

He was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives from Sangamon County in 1824. He sponsored a bill that imposed a statewide tax intended to fund road repair and maintenance, proportional to property value, to be paid in labor or money. The bill passed, but was met with opposition, and was repealed in the next legislature.

Stinky served as an aide-de-camp to Governor Edward Coles, and worked for the General Land Office as Deputy Surveyor of Public Lands. He was also an incorporator of the original Illinois and Michigan Canal Company.

In 1827, he served during the Winnebago War in the Illinois Militia as a captain. He commanded the Galena Mounted Volunteers under the command of Henry Dodge.

After the Winnebago War, he moved to the Wisconsin Territory and established Hamilton’s Diggings, later Wiota in 1827. It was later turned into a fort during the Black Hawk War, entitled Fort Hamilton. Juliette Kinzie described the conditions in 1831 as “shabby” and “unpromising.” She also described the foul language used by the miners, the “roughest-looking set of men i ever beheld.” Theodore Rodolf contrasted the settlement’s rough exterior with small, finer details in 1834. He particularly liked the fact that Stinky had the writings of Voltaire at Hamilton’s Diggings.

Elizabeth Hamilton visited her son at Hamilton’s Diggings during the winter of 1837-38. During this time, Stinky also owned the Mineral Point Miner’s Free Press, before he sold it to a group from Galena, and it became the Galena Democrat.

Stinky volunteered in the militia again during the 1832 Black Hawk War. He was often in charge of the militia’s indigenous allies, including many Sioux and Menominee. He was sent to the Michigan Territory to recruit more indigenous allies, leaving successfully with several more parties.

In 1842 and 43, Stinky served as an elected member of the Wisconsin Territorial Assembly, from Iowa County. He lost an 1843 election for Wisconsin Territory delegate to the US Congress. In 1848, he lost another election for the Wisconsin Constitutional Convention. He was generally unable to achieve political fame.

Gold was discovered in California in 1848, and Stinky was there by 49. However, this would prove a disappointment and he later regretted the move. He told a friend he would “rather have been hung in the ‘Lead Mines’ than to have lived in this miserable hole.” This seems to be an accurate description of California.

Stinky never married and presented a rough, garish appearance. Which, good. Fuck beauty standards.

Stinky was ill with dysentery and “mountain fever”, which was likely cholera, for two weeks before he died from “malarial fever resulting in spinal exhaustion terminating in paralysis superinduced by great bodily and mental strain.” He died in Sacramento, California on October 9, 1850 at 53, and was buried in Sacramento Historic City Cemetery, in a section named Hamilton Square. RIP Stinky, the real MVP.

Eliza Holly!

Eliza was born on November 20, 1799. You can tell her apart from her mother because Eliza is her full name, and Elizabeth is her mother’s. She was a sick infant, and Alexander frequently worried about her. He was staying with the children without Elizabeth once, and he wrote, “Eliza pouts and plays, and displays more and more her ample stock of Caprice.” Eliza did not attend Hamilton’s funeral, but saw him with the rest of the kids on his deathbed.

She married Sidney Augustus Holly on July 19, 1825. He was a merchant from a prominent family in business and local government. They lived at The Grange (not James Alexander’s), and remained close with Elizabeth for her entire life, who described Eliza as being like her father.

“You don’t know how important you are to me. You step in the steps of your father’s kindness, and the more you are with me, the more I see that you are like him.” -Elizabeth Hamilton to Eliza Holly

She moved in with Elizabeth in East Village, Manhattan at 4 St. Mark’s Place along with AJ and his wife.

Her husband died on June 26, 1842 and moved in with her mother to 63 Prince Street in Lower Manhattan. This was previously the house of jAmES mONrOe and Samuel L. Gouverneur. She and her mother also moved together to Washington D.C. where they lived near the White House on H street and entertained many guests. Eliza continued to care for her mother until her death in 1854.

Eliza potentially influenced or expedited the creation of John Church’s biography of their father, and chastised him for his overdue writing.

Eliza died in Washington D.C. on October 17, 1859, and was buried in Westchester County, New York, at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery with Angelica and later James Alexander.

Philip Hamilton (the Second) “Little Phil”

Little Phil was born in New York on June 1 or 2 in 1802. According to his son, Phil “manifested much of his father’s sweetness and happy disposition, and was always notably considerate of the feelings of others, and was punctilious to a fault in his obligations.” He was also almost six feet tall. Idk how.

Because of the poverty that afflicted his family after his father’s death, Phil “was denied those advantages accorded to his elder brothers, and had, in every sense, to make his own way.”

Phil practiced law in New York, and served as an assistant United States Attorney during the 1830s under James Alexander. He achieved notable success as a prosecutor in the case of pirate Charles Gibbs.

Phil moved to San Francisco during the Gold Rush in 1851 to practice law as a partner of his brother-in-law Robert Milligan McLane. He returned to New York after one or two years.

He assisted the Underground Railroad in helping enslaved people escape at least once by concealing them in his cellar until they could resume their travel to Canada.

At the end of the Civil War, Hamilton served as Judge Advocate of the naval Retiring Board at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and “led a quiet life” after 1865. He characterized his career as a “hard, up-hill professional life” working with a “very great” number of the poor and most of his time was “given up to unselfish acts”.

He married Rebecca McLane, who died on April 1, 1893, and they had two sons together, Louis McLane Hamilton (1844-1868) and Allan McLane Hamilton FRSE (1848-1919).

Louis served in the US Army during the Civil War. He enlisted as a private in the 22nd New York Militia in June 1862, then the 3rd US Infantry as second lieutenant in September 1863. He served with the Army of the Potomac, and was brevetted twice fer gallantry, including the Battle of Gettysburg. In July 1866, he became a Captain in the 7th US Cavalry. On November 27, 1868, he was killed in the Battle of Washita River, being posthumously brevetted to the rank of Major.

Allan was a psychiatrist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His books included a biography of his grandfather, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton.

Little Phil died “comparatively poor” on July 9, 1884 in Poughkeepsie, New York.

@thereallvrb0y-deactivated42069

And that is all the Hamilton kids. This post put me through the five stages of grief. I’ll include my sources now, and sob my eyes out bc existence is pain. I hope you enjoyed, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!! i’m doing my best to get content out so I will try not to take multiple months to post again HSKSKFHLS love you all <333 (f in the chat for stinky)

https://peoplepill.com/people/alexander-hamilton-10

https://networthheightsalary.com/angelica-hamilton-bio-facts-about-elizabeth-schuyler-hamilton-s-daughter/

https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofj00lchami

https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/james-alexander-hamilton-1788-1878/

112 notes · View notes

utterrandomnesswithlulu · 3 years ago

Text

Poet, writer, editor, and critic, Edgar Allan Poe, was known for his poetry and short stories. His works mostly delved into the macabre. Poe’s writing influenced American literature as he helped shape detective fiction, romanticism, and gothic writing.

EARLY LIFE

Born to actors, Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe had an older brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister, Rosalie Poe. Unfortunately, his father, David Poe Jr., abandoned his family in 1810, and his mother, Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, died from consumption, known today as tuberculosis, a year later.

The Allan family, who resided in Richmond, Virginia, were prosperous merchants who took in Edgar Poe and gave him the name Edgar Allan Poe, even though they never formally adopted him.

The Allans sailed to the U.K. in 1815, where Poe attended school in Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scotland (his foster father, John Allan, was born there). In 1816, Poe returned to the Allans who were living in London. He continued his studies at a boarding school until 1817, when he entered the Manor House School at Stoke Newington.

The Poes and Allans wouldn’t return to Richmond until 1820. In ’24, Poe served as a lieutenant in the youth honor guard when the Marquis de Lafayette visited. Allan inherited several acres of land when William Gelt died (Poe’s foster Uncle and business benefactor).

It is well known that Poe suffered an addiction to gambling, and his debts began when he registered at the University of Virginia in February 1826. He lost touch with the Allans and Poe blamed his troubles on John Allan not supplying enough funds to expense his studies. Poe dropped out of college in 1827, discovering that his fiance, Sarah Elmira Royster, was engaged to Alexander Shelton. He traveled to Boston. He worked odd jobs as a clerk and newspaper writer, and before using Edgar Allan Poe to write, he wrote under the pseudonym Henri Le Rennet (1827).

Poe enlisted in the United States Army in May 1827 under the name Edgar A. Perry. He joined because he couldn't support himself with the odd jobs that he could get.

Claiming he was 22 (he was actually 18) he was stationed at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor for five dollars a month. This is the same year that his first book was published, a collection of poetry called Tamerlane and Other Poems under the byline, by a Bostonian. This publication received nearly zero attention and Poe’s regiment was posted to Fort Moultrie in South Carolina. Around this time Poe sought to end his five-year enlistment early by three years and explained to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Howard, his lies. Howard would only agree to end his enlistment early if he’d reconciled with his father. Poe’s pleas would fall on deaf ears until the passing of his foster mother, Frances Allan, on February 27, 1829. Poe wouldn’t be discharged until April 1829.

He moved back to Baltimore to live with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia Eliza Clemm, Poe’s brother Henry, and grandmother, Elizabeth Cairnes Poe.

After receiving words of encouragement from influential critic John Neal, Poe published his second book, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, in 1829.

It wasn’t until John Allan married his second wife, Louisa Patterson, that Poe was formally disowned by the Allans. Poe was court-marital purposefully from West Point (his current employment) and pleaded not guilty for a dismissal knowing that the courts would find him guilty.

He published his third book titled Poems, which was financed by his fellow cadets and was printed by Elam Bliss of New York. Poe returned to Baltimore in 1831, and his brother Henry passed shortly after his return in August.

CAREER

Poe wouldn’t start his writing career in earnest until his brother’s death in 1831. However, it was hard to be a writer because of international copyright laws and publishers often produced unauthorized copies of British works. The industry suffered terribly during the Panic of 1837, a financial crisis that caused unemployment and profits, prices, and wages to drop and westward expansion to stall.

Writers were often refused payment or paid much later than promised, and Poe suffered repeated humiliation just to receive any compensation. He found work by writing short stories with a Philadelphia publication (Politian). He was awarded in 1833 by Baltimore Saturday Visiter for his short story MS. Found in a Bottle. Thanks to this, it put him in touch with John P. Kennedy, who introduced him to Thomas W. White, editor of Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe became assistant editor but was later fired for being drunk on the job. He maintained that job for approximately 10 years. He returned to Baltimore and married his cousin, Virginia, in 1836. Many biographers and historians disagree on the nature of Virginia and Poe’s relationship, Virginia, was 12/13 years old and Poe was 26 years old when they married.

Poe supported himself (and his wife) by editing Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia. In 1838 Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was published (this was published before his position at the Gentleman’s Magazine). He published many articles, stories, and reviews, which helped his reputation as a critic and editor. He published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1839, and these works were published in two volumes.

In 1840, Poe announced that he was working on his own literary magazine called The Stylus (originally called The Penn). He left Burton’s around this time and attempted to secure a place at the Whig Party within the administration. The Whig Party was a political party in the U.S. next to the Democratic Party, which believed in protective tariffs, national banking, and federal aid for internal improvements. He had hopes to be appointed to the U.S. Custom House in Philadelphia. Poe failed to show up for meetings, citing he was ill (Frederick Thomas, Poe’s friend, believed that he was sick) and unfortunately missed out.

His wife, Virginia, began showing signs of tuberculosis in 1842. She only partially recovered and Poe began drinking more heavily and left his position at Graham’s and found work briefly at the Evening Mirror and Broadway Journal in New York City. Poe alienated himself from other writers after accusing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism.

On January 29, 1845, Poe would publish his most popular work, The Raven. It made him a household name, and even though he garnered attention for this short story, Poe would only get $9 (according to inflation, this would be approximately $300+) for its publication.

The Broadway Journal would shutter its doors in 1846 and Poe (out of a job) would move to a cottage in Fordham, New York with his wife. Virginia would die on January 30, 1847, at the age of 25.

Poe became increasingly unstable after his wife’s death and attempted to court Sarah Helen Whitman (poet), which amounted to nothing thanks to his drinking and Whitman's mother's constant intervention. He would resume a childhood relationship with Sarah Elmira Royster and become engaged with her for a short period.

“LORD HELP MY POOR SOUL”

On October 3rd, 1849, Poe was found semi-conscious in Baltimore. He wasn’t wearing his own clothing and mumbling about an unknown character called “Reynolds.” Poe was transported to Washington Medical College in dire condition and unfortunately succumbed to his ailment on October 7th, 1849.

Newspapers who reported his death said that he died of “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation.” Which were common causes of death caused by excessive drinking, or alcoholism. While his cause of death remains a mystery even today, thanks to Poe’s medical records and death certificate were lost. Speculations on his death include delirium tremens (DTs), heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera, carbon monoxide poisoning, and even rabies. One theory published in 1872 believed that Poe died from cooping, which is caused by forced voting of a specific candidate. This can lead to violence, including murder.

Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a literary rival, published a fake obituary under the pseudonym Ludwig and said that Poe was a lunatic, drug-addled, drunk, who will not be mourned because his death shouldn’t be a surprise. Most of the obituary contained falsehoods, lies, and distortions because Griswold was attempting to destroy Poe’s reputation after his death. Thankfully, this was denounced by friends of Poe, including John Neal.

LEGACY

Poe is credited with *initiating the modern detective story, developing the Gothic horror story, and being a significant early forerunner of the science fiction form (*Britannica). His works are still widely read today and authors, writers, and directors still take inspiration from his long list of material. Adaptations of his works have graced the silver screen since the 1960s, starting with House of Usher (starring Vincent Price). Poe’s insights into the human mind and his duality when writing have inspired artists around the world.

Tourist flock to Boston to visit a statue and plaque of his approximate place of birth. A museum in Richmond, Virginia, has the largest collection of memorabilia, and there is even a plaque dedicated to his mother at St. John’s Episcopal Church (Richmond, Virginia). Edgar Allan Poe had two graves as well. He was originally buried in an unmarked grave until almost 15 years later, when he was moved to Westminster Presbyterian Church. Before all this, Poe’s cousin ordered a gravestone, but it was destroyed in a train accident and never re-ordered (nothing would mark Poe’s grave until 1875-ish).

A new House of Usher mini-series is slated for a possible 2023 release on Netflix and is a part of Mike Flanagan’s universe (Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Club). The Fall of the House of Usher was published by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839 in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine.

CONCLUSION

Edgar Allan Poe is a must-read. My personal favorite is The Tale-Tell Heart.

Is his work scary? Not particularly (says someone who regularly reads Stephen King, Anne Rice, Dean Koontz, and Neil Gaiman), but his imagination and acumen into the darkness and duality of the human mind and heart are what’s interesting to me. His clear loss as well, which is documented in his works such as Annabel Lee, Ligeia, and Dream-Land. These works are known as Dark Romanticism, a form of gothic writing that Poe was well versed in.

The Raven is his most well-known story and probably the most quoted (Quoth the Raven “Nevermore”), and it is considered a poem. The Raven is about the never-ending torment in mourning and grief (specifically the narrator losing Lenore), and through this exchange, he is able to work through his bereavement and gain wisdom. Poe wrote The Raven when his wife was incredibly ill and struggling with TB and he was working as a relatively unknown writer.

Do you like Edgar Allan Poe?

#edgar allan poe #the raven #the fall of the house of usher #mike flannigan #annabel lee #nevermore #spotlight artist #writer #poet #critic #short stories #dark romanticism #gothic writing #lenore #the tell tale heart

13 notes · View notes

loveforbobandeliza · 3 years ago

Text

‘The 100’ Stars Eliza Taylor & Bob Morley Set For Sci-Fi Thriller ‘I’ll Be Watching’ — EFM

The 100 leads Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley have been set to star in sci-fi thriller I’ll Be Watching, which Iuvit Media Sales is launching for the virtual EFM.

Currently shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, Taylor will play a woman trapped in her isolated new home who becomes caught in a fight for survival. Morley will play her tech expert husband.

Supporting cast includes David Keith (An Officer And A Gentleman), Bryan Batt (12 Years A Slave) and Hannah Fierman (VHS).

Produced by Benacus Entertainment in association with RNF Productions, the project is being directed by Erik Bernard (Free Dead Or Alive).

Script was penned by Sara Sometti Michaels (St. Agatha) and Elisa Manzini (Angel Baby). Eliza Taylor and David Keith (An Officer And A Gentleman) serve as executive producers.

Seth Michaels, co-head of Atlanta-based Benacus Entertainment, commented: “We are thrilled to have such talented stars as Eliza and Bob leading the cast, and a great supporting cast. Filming has been an adventure so far and we can’t wait to bring this story to audiences around the world.”

Upcoming for Benacus is feature Southern Gothic, written and directed by Oscar winner Tom Schulman (Dead Poets Society).

Iuvit’s slate includes Unto The Son, starring Harvey Keitel and Abbie Cornish; Free Dead or Alive, featuring Patricia Velasquez, Edy Ganem, Seth Michaels and Robert LaSardo; and Chance, starring Matthew Modine, Tanner Buchanan and Amanda Leighton.

Eliza Taylor is represented by Verve Talent and Literary Agency, Active Artists Management and Fourward. Bob Morley is represented by Morrissey Management, The Gersh Agency and Brave Artists Management. Erik Bernard is represented by Espada PR.

#eliza taylor #bob morley #hera #i'll be watching #news #press #2022

22 notes · View notes

letterboxd · 4 years ago

Photo

Slovenly Creatures.

A Life in Film chat with Letterboxd fave Melanie Lynskey about fart jokes, comfort comedies, foundational film idols and her obsession with Kevin Hart.

“Not all the plot points have to tie together, it doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be perfectly sharp. It just has to be funny, that’s all.” —Melanie Lynskey

Search through Letterboxd and you’ll find that New Zealand-born Melanie Lynskey has a special place in the hearts of film lovers. Lists dedicated to “my favorite actress”, “the least-appreciated currently working character actress”, “lovely Melanie Lynskey films”. Reviews that consist mainly of Melanie Lynskey’s name, over and over again. And so it is with her latest film, Lady of the Manor. Reviews of the ghostly, farty buddy-comedy are united on one thing: Melanie Lynskey.

Her secret involves a smart straddling of the indie-mainstream fence, one foot in comedy, the other in drama, and a weathered eye on the politics of her industry. Follow her Twitter account, and you’ll see that Lynskey’s tastes and influences are wide-ranging. She is a hungry devourer of recaps, a staunch ally of the marginalized, and generous with her praise of great work (including those she works with).

But for Letterboxd fans, it is simply about what Lynskey herself brings to every role, whether that be character parts in cult camp like But I’m a Cheerleader and Coyote Ugly, or as a devoted participant in 21st-century indie fare, often involving the Duplass brothers, and often with long, existential titles, or as a rock-solid addition to A-list ensemble adventures such as Up in the Air, The Informant! and Mrs. America.

Melanie Lynskey sparks up in ‘Lady of the Manor’.

“I have said it before and I will keep saying it until I lose my figurative online voice,” writes Lynskey stan Fred, “Melanie Lynskey is one of the best working actors and Hollywood needs to catch up yesterday.” She has been serving lesbians since her 1994 break-out in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures. She is the Queen of Indie. She is a gift. She can do no wrong. She is our spirit animal.

For Lynsksessives, a new Melanie Lynskey season is upon us. A Showtime series, Yellowjackets, in November. In December, she will be seen in Adam McKay’s starry new astronomy caper, Don’t Look Up. And right now, those hunting for a charming indie comedy led by our favorite goofball need look no further than Lady of the Manor, from brothers Justin and Christian Long.

“I wanted ghost Judy Greer interacting with stoner Melanie Lynskey and I got ghost Judy Greer interacting with stoner Melanie Lynskey,” writes Owen, of the supernatural buddy comedy in which hot mess Hannah (Lynskey) is haunted by prim and proper (and probably murdered) Lady Wadsworth (Greer), while trying to hold down a job as a tour guide at Wadsworth Manor.

In order to help Greer’s uptight apparition find peace, Hannah must solve the mystery of the manor’s ownership. That, however, requires her to overcome an extreme lack of ambition, terrible personal hygiene, and sleazy advances from a toxic and horny Ryan Philippe. Angela Alise and Luis Guzmán pop up in somewhat underwritten supporting roles, but Lady of the Manor is, above all, a buffet of physical comedy delights for Lynskey lovers.

Letterboxd editor-in-chief Gemma Gracewood jumped on the line with Lynskey for a laugh and a cry about David Lynch movies, the late Katrin Cartlidge, teen obsessions, and being a responsible Academy voter.

Lady Wadsworth (Judy Greer) serves some manners to her re-enacting dopplegänger, Hannah (Melanie Lynskey).

Lady of the Manor feels like a Pygmalion situation, you know? My Fair Lady, but you are Eliza Doolittle and Judy Greer is Professor Henry Higgins, and the transformation is actually not that huge: Hannah goes from this complete stoner to still a complete stoner, but maybe with a few additional life goals. Melanie Lynskey: That was the thing that really sold me on the movie, honestly, was that she just didn’t really change that much. The moment that I was, like, ‘I’m going to do this movie’ was when she’s all inspired—“I’m going to return the house to its rightful owner”—and she marches off purposefully, and then it cuts to her at the bar and she’s just wasted again. It was so funny to me. ‘Oh wow, they’re really letting her be a mess. They’re not trying to redeem this person.’

You and Judy Greer have an insane chemistry. Can you share some insights into that working partnership? It was so much fun. We’ve never gotten to work together, because it’s always: she’s doing the role, or I’m doing the role, or Kathryn Hahn is doing the role. There’s usually one part that’s right for us in a movie, and so, to have two different roles that are right for both of us, it was such a dream.

A lot of it is on the page, because Justin and Christian worked so hard on the script, and it was at a point that they were really, really happy with it, and they were very fond of a lot of the jokes. We did get to add little things here and there. We got a lot of freedom and a lot of room to improv.

Who is the best movie ghost, apart from Judy Greer? All I can think of is Ghost. Oh, Beetlejuice. There you go. That’s an amazing ghost, that’s a great movie.

What else should we watch Judy Greer in? Who can name only one favorite Judy Greer performance?! She’s so incredible! The ones that come to mind are Adaptation, The TV Set, Jeff Who Lives At Home and Three Kings. She is a marvel—beautiful, funny, kind, smart, an amazing improviser and a great friend.

What is the film that first made you aware that filmmaking is something you could do, as opposed to watch? I don’t really know what film made me aware of what filmmaking was! I always knew I wanted to be an actor, since I was about six years old and did a school play. I didn’t really watch a ton of movies as a kid. My parents were not really movie-goers. When I was about thirteen I started watching Twin Peaks, and from there I saw Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart, and that was the beginning of me realizing what kind of work really excited and interested me. So for 30 years now, I’ve had a dream of working with David Lynch.

And I started to try to watch everything that certain actors did. I got very obsessed with Katrin Cartlidge, who became my favorite actor. I loved her in Mike Leigh’s Naked and Career Girls, in Lars Von Trier’s Breaking The Waves, Lodge Kerrigan’s Claire Dolan and Milcho Manchevski’s Before The Rain. Through following Katrin’s career I started to piece together what I wanted my own to look like. She made incredible choices and was just so different and so good in every performance.

I was lucky enough to work with her before she passed; we did a movie of The Cherry Orchard and worked together for three months. I will cherish those memories forever. She was maybe an even more amazing person than she was an actor, and that is really saying something.

A publicity still from ‘The Three Musketeers’ (1993) with Oliver Platt, rear left, as Porthos.

What was the first film that gave you teenage feelings? Well, I was a bit of a goth as a teenager. When I saw Alison Maclean’s short film Kitchen Sink, that was a big moment for me. I was like, wow. If I could make a movie that would express my soul at this moment, it would be this film. And I have loved all her movies since that one. The Rehearsal was so good! And Jesus’ Son. I keep hoping I’ll get to work with her.

As a teen I was very swoony over Oliver Platt. He was my number one crush. So any Oliver Platt film had me feeling some things—Flatliners and The Three Musketeers, especially. I’m still swoony over him today, to be honest.

What is the next hidden gem that you think Letterboxd members should watch? My two favorite movies in recent memory are Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth and Remi Weekes’ His House. Eliza Scanlen is absolutely glorious in the former. It’s a really deep and beautiful performance. Her parents are played by the incomparable Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis, both of whom destroyed me. The whole movie destroyed me. But my favorite performance in the movie comes from Toby Wallace, as the young-but-older love interest of Eliza Scanlen’s character. My god, this is an electric performance. He’s unbelievably good in it. Emily Barclay is great in it too. The movie is funny, heartbreaking and beautifully directed. The music is amazing.

And His House is just great. A really creepy, twisty thriller with a very tragic story at its center. It’s about a refugee couple who have escaped from South Sudan and are moved into housing in England, and the house is torturing them. It’s the most compelling movie I’ve seen in such a long time. The two leads, Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu, are flat out movie stars. You can’t take your eyes off either of them and the performances resonate on a thousand different levels. They’re astounding, and it’s incredibly accomplished filmmaking. Please please see these movies.

Because you’re from New Zealand, we’d be remiss not to ask what’s a must-see New Zealand film in your opinion? If we’re talking about silly, fun comedies, and also women being funny and silly, I really love The Breaker Upperers. That was very, very, very charming and hilarious to me. I hope that more people see that.

Katharine Towne, Clea DuVall, Melanie Lynskey and Natasha Lyonne in ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ (2000).

For anyone still sleeping on Letterboxd favorite But I’m a Cheerleader, in one sentence, why should they watch it? Oh, because it’s a campy romance with an amazing cast. It’s Clea DuVall and Natasha Lyonne falling in love with each other, it’s sexy, it’s sweet, it’s genuinely funny. It’s beautiful to look at. That’s not one sentence, that’s about twelve sentences, sorry. I’m so proud of that movie, I love that movie so much.

It’s an interesting one. It’s been growing in stature around here over the years, and I love to see it. Yeah, very much. The reviews were outright negative when it came out.

What was the last film that made you cry, either because it was so sad, or because you were cry-laughing, or any definition of tears being shed? Mm, gosh, the last film that made me cry… Oh, do you know what? I really cried at the end of Another Round, where he’s dancing.

That ending. I’m going to cry. Sorry, it really got me. And also knowing what Thomas Vinterberg had been through, just the joy that was in that moment, the idea that you can just go through all this, and still have these moments of joy, and return to this person that you were before all this life happened to you. Just the purity of that moment really, really got me.

And not to mention just the sheer joy of Mads Mikkelsen dancing. Yeah, god, just the beauty of that man in that moment and, ugh, god, what a great movie.

What mindfuck movie changed you for life? It would probably be La Cérémonie. I had kind of a one-two punch of being introduced to Isabelle Huppert with La Cérémonie and Amateur, and it’s been true love ever since. I was like, who is this and what else can I see her in immediately??

I don’t know if La Cérémonie is a mindfuck but it’s definitely very dark and it gets really crazy! Sandrine Bonnaire is amazing in it too. But the first time I got to see the incredible intensity and commitment of Isabelle Huppert is really a moment I’ll never forget. It feels like there is a before and after for me.

Finally, some Letterboxd members have described the joy Lady of the Manor has brought them in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. As Robert writes, “I’ll watch Melanie and Judy ham it up for an hour and a half, and be fine with that. Some of the lame jokes in this have made me laugh harder than most films I’ve seen this year.” When it comes to the role of comedy in a crisis, what are the cozy, comfort re-watches that have kept you going through the pandemic? Aw. I have a toddler, so we’re not watching too many movies. Around the time of the Academy Awards, I really buckled down, because I wanted to be a responsible voter, and I tried to watch everything. So, that was the most movies that I’ve done in a concentrated period of time, but none of that was really “comfort” feeling.

The movies that I do return to, when I feel like I have time to just chill out: Wet Hot American Summer is a big comedy movie for me. Justin did this really weird movie called Strange Wilderness with Steve Zahn and Jonah Hill years ago that is so weird and funny, I really love that one. All the Christopher Guests, like Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, those are my go to.

And then Kevin Hart. I’m a big, big, big Kevin Hart fan. There are times I’ll be on a plane and I’ll think, “Oh, I should really watch this movie that I’ve been meaning to watch.” But if there’s a Kevin Hart movie, no chance, that’s what I’m going to watch. I’ll go to the movie theater opening weekend to see a Kevin Hart movie. Kevin Hart right now is making a movie with Regina Hall. I’ve seen it on their Instagrams, and I’ve never been more excited for a film.

What is it about Kevin Hart for you? He is a comedic genius. He is absolutely brilliant, and he will do something in almost every scene that surprises me, and it’s crazy. He can be doing something that’s a real rote, by-the-numbers movie—they’re not all masterpieces—but he makes it new, and interesting, and surprising. Nobody reacts better than Kevin Hart, he is such a funny reactor. He’s always in the moment, I think he makes other people funnier and better. I’m obsessed, I love him.

It’s reassuring to hear you say “they’re not all masterpieces”, because I think comedy is so hard. It is so hard to reach for a five-star comedy, but the truth is that we’re all happy in a sort of three-star comedy world. Those are the films we return to again and again. Of course! Yeah, and that’s all you’re hoping for with, especially, a silly comedy. You just hope that there’s enough moments that people laugh, and feel like they’ve got a good laugh, and they’ve relaxed for a while. Not all the plot points have to tie together, it doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be perfectly sharp. It just has to be funny, that’s all.

Lynskey, as Hannah, with ‘Lady of the Manor’ director and co-writer Justin Long as Max, her academic love interest.

On that note, the Long brothers call this “a fartwarming comedy”, and several Letterboxd reviews comment on Lady of the Manor having “the single best fart joke in ages” or “just the right amount of fart jokes”. Why are farts so funny, Melanie Lynskey? Do you know what? I don’t find them funny at all, I really don’t. I’m a little bit prissy and there are things in this movie where I was like, “You’re just going to have to tell me exactly what to do.” Like the farting in the room, and burps and stuff like that, I’m not good at that stuff, but people think it’s funny. I don’t know. It’s kind of beyond me…

Wow, so you really exercised your acting muscles on this. Exactly, exactly, it’s the greatest performance of my life!