#byron's memoirs

[houppellande]

Read till end for Byron's memoirs 👀​👀​👀​

Wedding attire of Lady Annabella Byron (nee Milbanke) aka Lord Byron's wife. Yes. THAT Byron. From this simple but tasteful ensemble one can somewhat understand her character (and the fate of the marriage) a bit better.

J. C. Hobhouse, Byron's best man, describes her as such on that day:

[...] Miss Milbanke came in attended by her governess, the respectable Miss Clermont. She was dressed in a muslin gown trimmed with lace at the bottom, with a white muslin curricle jacket, very plain indeed, with nothing on her head. [...]

Miss Milbanke was as firm as a rock, and during the whole ceremony looked steadily at Byron – she repeated the words audibly and well. Byron hitched at first when he said “I, George Gordon”, and when he came to “with all my worldly goods I thee endow”, looked at me with a half-smile – they were married at eleven.

And this Lord Byron's wedding waistcoat, who is said to have belonged to King George the 2nd of England (it was re-taylored for regency fashion), and which Byron wore often.

And now for something completely different! An excerpt from the lost Memoirs of Lord Byron. While the manuscript itself was destroyed, many people read (and copied!) some parts. The editor of The John Bull Magazine (1824, on which the following excerpt was published) has of course made some "mutilations" (aka censorship), but the text seems genuine, and Byron's cheeky prose style manages to shine through. Some (including the Magazine's Author) say that THIS EXACT CHAPTER was the main reason for the burning of the Memoirs.

TW: dubious consent . . .

It was now near two o’clock in the morning, and I was jaded to the soul by the delay. I had left the company, and retired to a private apartment. Will those, who think that a bridegroom on his bridal night should be so thoroughly saturated with love, as to render it impossible for him to yield to any other feeling, pardon me when I say, that I had almost fallen asleep on a sofa, when a giggling, tittering, half-blushing face popped itself into the door, and popped as fast back again, after having whispered as audibly as a suivante whispers upon the stage, that Anne was in bed? It was one of her bridemaids. Yet such is the case. I was actually dozing. Matrimony begins very soon to operate narcotically—had it been a mistress—had it been an assignation with any animal, covered with a petticoat—any thing but a wife—why, perhaps, the case would have been different.

I found my way, however, at once into the bed-room, and tore off my garments. Your pious zeal will, I am sure, be quite shocked, when I tell you I did not say my prayers that evening—morning I mean. It was, I own, wrong in me, who had been educated in the pious and praying kingdom of Scotland, and must confess myself—you need not smile—at least half a Presbyterian. Miss N—l—should I yet say Lady Byron?—had turned herself away to the most remote verge, and tightly enwrapped herself in the bed-clothes. I called her by her name—her Christian name—her pet name—every name of endearment—I spoke in the softest under tones—in the most melodious upper tones of which my voice is master. She made no answer, but lay still, and I stole my arm under her neck, which exerted all the rigidity of all its muscles to prevent the (till then undreamt of) invasion. I turned up her head—but still not a word. With gentle force I removed the close-pressed folds of the sheet from her fine form—you must let me say that of her, unfashionable as it is, and unused as I have been to paying her compliments—she resisting all the while. After all, there is nothing like a coup de main in love or war. I conquered by means of one, with the other arm, for I had got it round her waist, and using all my strength, (and what is that of a woman, particularly a woman acting the modeste, to that of a vigorous fellow, who had cleft the Hellespont,) drew her to my arms, which now clasped her to my bosom with all the warmth of glowing, boiling passion, and all the pride of victory. I pressed my lips warmly to hers. There was no return of the pressure. I pressed them again and again—slightly at last was I answered, but still that slightly was sufficient. Ce n’est que la premiere pas qui coute. She had not, however, opened her lips. I put my hand upon her heart, and it palpitated with a strong and audible beating under my touch. Heaven help it! it little knew how much more reason it would, ere long, have for more serious and more lasting throbbings.As yet she had not uttered a word, and I was becoming tired of her obstinancy. I made, therefore, a last appeal. ‘Are you afraid of me, dearest?’—I uttered, in a half-fond, half-querulous, tone. It broke the ice. She answered in a low, timid, and subdued voice—‘I am not,’—and turned to me, for the first time, with that coy and gentle pressure which is, perhaps, the dearest and most delightful of all sensations ever to be enjoyed by man. I knew by it that I had conquered. 

(Please keep in mind that, while I consider myself a Byron enthusiast, I almost never agree with his choiches/courses of action. If you want my personal opinion, i'll be happy to exchange insights!)

[burningvelvet]

on cancel culture, tumblr, lit crit shit, paranoid reading, and some observations on blogging about byron & the shelleys —

every day someone comments on one of my posts about old dead writers with the most insufferable and reactionary takes disguised under a veil of liberalism. go read eve sedgwick's essay on paranoid reading & reparative reading, and learn how to enjoy things!!! why are you trying to cancel people who died 200 years ago? stop!!!

9/10 times they've never read the writer in question, they just hear that these writers were problematic and without using their own critical thinking skills, and having done zero research, they readily condemn them. no real appreciation for literature, no real appreciation for history or culture. and if they do have these, or if they have done research, it's entirely biased, already marked with judgement (aka exemplary paranoid reading).

i think it's very interesting that percy shelley and lord byron were getting cancelled in their own time period left and right, and now they still face cancellation attempts for some of the same reasons, only now more often at the hands of self-described progressives who feel they do so for the "right reasons."

a major problem in discourse (both in and outside of academia) is that most people do not understand the difference between "criticism" in the academic sense (which is synonymous with "discussion," "analysis," "engagement") and "criticism" in the colloquial sense (synonymous with "condemnation" or "harsh judgement" or even sometimes "attacking").

so when we start talking about literary criticism, some misinformed people automatically seek to cancel every dead writer, burn every book, and disregard all of history, even the progressive bits, because they simply don't care, and think that they are being "critical" and that this is a good thing, when they are using the wrong definition of the term to begin with. if i taught a class on literature the first thing i would do is make the distinction between these two definitions.

a lot of people approach dead writers or old writing in bad faith (paranoid reading). they automatically denounce The Olds for being problematic, and then proceed to believe they are morally superior for their own lack of depth.

percy shelley is one of the most progressive and forward-thinking figures of his generation and it's honestly a miracle that we still have access to some of his works which were literally burned in his own lifetime, but that his friends and most importantly his best friend, his wife mary shelley, carefully preserved during his life and long after his death even in the face of social ruin and censure, because they recognized his immense merit and they desperately loved him and his work. this is a beautiful thing!!!

this isn't the narrative a lot of people prefer, though. a lot of people would have mary shelley, instead of being the publisher and defender of his works as she was, be forced into the role which she herself openly derided, of being percy's unwilling bride, victim, who merely tolerated him, who was herself either repressed or oppressed by him. nor is nuance allowed in this narrative.

this narrative is based on a reactionary stance disguised as progressive. that all women writers are mere victims to the men around them. nevermind the fact that mary shelley's husband was one of her biggest encouragers (as well as her trusted proofreader and editor; and all this also goes for her father godwin, but to a lesser extent, as one could more easily make the argument that godwin did emotionally neglect mary).

paint all male writers as abusive control freaks, and all female writers associated with them as their weak-willed puppets, all based on their biological sex and a surface-level analysis of their biographies. these people are arguably just as bad as the sexist pseudo-scholars who have claimed that percy actually penned the entirety of frankenstein and used mary as his puppeteered pseudonym. as if mary never sought agency of her own and never possessed a modicum of it!

for a fair analysis on percy and mary's connection, i highly recommend Anna Mercer's "The Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley" and her interview by Mathelinda Nabugodi for a TLDR version.

i find it interesting that my posts about percy shelley's personal life are not only much more popular than my similar posts about byron (probably due to percy's surname; the mary/frankenstein connection) -- but also that i see way more criticism against percy than against byron.

i think this is partly due to their portrayals in the ahistorical 2018 mary shelley biopic film (see: graham henderson's blog posts on this topic) wherein byron was somehow portrayed as less of an asshole than shelley (which i never would have thought possible had i not seen it). & maybe it has to do with interest in & misconceptions about mary in general. but this is surprising because in many regards, percy really is much more likeable and progressive than byron.

i once had a person hating on byron and trying to argue with me entirely under a post about percy shelley which had nothing to do with byron. whenever i try to critically engage with this sort of backlash on my posts, it is utterly pointless. none of them are interested in or respectful of the opinions of others, nor are they receptive to facts or nuance or engaging with any material in any mature or serious way.

it's especially difficult that they mostly comment on my more popular joking posts/memes, bc that sets up a false pretense for me or my blog to be taken unseriously, when i do take academic figures & topics seriously. my blog is a place for me to unwind and joke about literature, yes, but it's not like i'm just mindlessly joking about writers i've never studied. a lot of people assume that i'm genuinely ridiculing writers when i playfully make fun of them, so they take it as an invitation to do the same, when that's not my case at all.

— back to the percy/byron comparison: in the history of my blog posts, i've seen probably 30+ percy haters and maybe 5 byron haters. as i said, this is honestly bewildering. there are way more justifiable reasons for hating byron than there are for hating shelley.

if we're speaking solely in terms of political, creative, & ideological stances between the two, (and there are hundreds of books/essays comparing their lives/works/philosophies,) i agree and disagree with both of them on various topics. they're both extremely complex writers/thinkers/figures and very different people, despite having been friends.

but if i'm comparing them biographically speaking, if i had to let one of them babysit my children, i would choose percy 10/10 times. if i had to live with one of them, i would choose percy most of the time, although either of them would be tough as a roommate for different reasons.

but overall, percy was a bit more decent biographically speaking, though that doesn't make him a superior writer (percy himself wrote numerous times that he felt byron was creatively superior to him, but morally inferior). and i think most people who've researched the two would agree that percy is the more moral poet by most standards.

for these and many other reasons, it seems apparent to me that the majority of people who hate percy are often parroting the rhetoric of others & not actually thinking for themselves -- which mary endlessly wrote that she despised, as she devoted so much of her time and energy to defending her husband's moral character from critics, so it's especially disappointing that most of the anti-percy sentiment comes from mary shelley fans, who don't even realize how much effort she put into publishing his work and transcribing it as his pre- and posthumous amanuensis.

[frevstoreon]

Its that time where everything makes me sad. And right now I'm really sad about all the lost/destroyed paintings, items and buildings of all my favourite historical figures, too sad, abnormal levels of sad. I'm sad about the information I'll never get to learn about them too.

[aguacerotropical]

“For at least fifty years after Planché’s Vampire, the moon was the central ingredient of vampire iconography; vampires’ solitary and repetitive lives consisted of incessant deaths and—when the moon shone down on them—quivering rebirths. Planché’s Ruthven, Rymer’s Varney, and Boucicault’s Alan Raby need marriage and blood to replenish their vitality, but they turn for renewed life to the moon. Like the moon, they live cyclically, dying and renewing themselves with ritual, predictable regularity. A corpse quivering to life under the moon’s rays is the central image of midcentury vampire literature; fangs, penetration, sucking, and staking are peripheral to its lunar obsession.”

From Our Vampires, Ourselves by Nina Auerbach

[werewolfetone]

I know that these pictures are a bit difficult to read but please you HAVE to read The Two-Penny Post Bag and Trifles by Thomas Moore they're really funny and SO hilariously mean

[sir-klauz]

A friend compared me to Lord Byron and upon heavier research I’m sketched out because it’s not even untrue. Goddamnit. I’ve always been a poet, that was my first writing interest, I must be possessed. All I need now is to turn to incest and drink from real skulls this time. Damn, I’m a loser if I only drink from plastic ones. Accidentally had a brief love affair with a Byron once, the massive shameless egoist I am cannot be contained. The cross dressing freedom space I created with all my clothes was brilliant and the gayness was immense lmao. As expected.

[boycasanova]

Hey, let’s talk about Riddle! It’s time to think about Riddle post NRC!!!

🥀 Riddle calls his mom mama pre overblot and mother, or Dr. Rosehearts after. He doesn’t hate her, nor does he do it to hurt her, but rather to distance himself. He resolved then that he likely wasn’t going to stay in contact with her once he was an adult, and this made it easier. She didn’t notice, which hurt in it’s own way.

🥀 His favorite books are romance novels with Byronic heroes and damsels. He likes ditzy women who need a leader, my little misogynist. 🫶🏾 He believes that until he starts actually being interested in dating and realizes how draining it would be to be the “adult” at all times. He wants to be the Byronic love interest to a strong willed person who wants to save him from himself and his mysterious brooding, even if it doesn’t always work out like that.

🥀 He’s imbued with romance, but wouldn’t know how to initiate one. He’s read all of the books, listened to the music about yearning, but that’s not how you learn it. He especially likes Victorian novels, with Lords and Ladies. Where others hid a playboy, he hid his mother’s “bodice rippers” novels he stole from her personal library. They were the highlight of his personal reading.

🥀 Growing up, he considered his father the safe parent. He was less strict and less volatile and allowed Riddle some freedoms, like more than a cup of oat, unprocessed cereal for breakfast, or music that wasn’t classical. He never defended him from Dr. Rosehearts however, which he didn’t understand, but never got around to asking about.

🥀 He’s going to write a tell all memoir, a la Mother Dearest, where he explores his turbulent relationship with his mother in a series of vignettes. Some of them would be happy memories, but the rest of the world wouldn’t know that. Trey would feel bad about leaving Riddle alone in that world, but force himself to read it to atone. It’s a tear jerker when he describes the relationship he wanted with her, and the later onset realization that he didn’t have a “safe parent,” just an active antagonizer and her passive partner. He eventually stops calling him too, embarrassed that it took him so long to figure it out.

🥀 Dr. Rosehearts would find out about the memoir and send him angry letters about how he’s dead to her, owes her some type of compensation, will sue him for depicting her so poorly and is genuinely saddened that he only remembers the bad. He would correspond with her occasionally before he stops all together. Someone like Trey wouldn’t stop him, but would express his displeasure in it, leading riddle to prioritize him and stop talking to her. It never did him any good anyway.

🥀 Now this is a man who can be alone although he doesn’t want to be. He fantasizes about romance and has big ideas on what it needs to be like and isn’t willing to accept anything else. He likes poetry, big weddings, musical scores to punctuate an unrehearsed, completely vulnerable confession. But as a young man in a modern world, he may have to settle for movie dates and hand holding.

…

[the-dashing-mx-ollandre]

On Mechanisation, Identity, And (Origin) Stories

My central point is this:

With the possible exceptions of Ashes (seemingly consented to mechanisation knowing what would happen) and Raphaella (there is so little knowledge about her in general), none of the mechanisms are in any way the people they were pre-mechanisation.

Gunpowder Tim is not Tim the soldier, Bertie’s friend.

‘Baron’ ‘Doctor’ Marius von Raum is not Byron von Raum.

Nastya Rasputina is not Princess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova of Cyberia.

DrumBot Brian is not Brian the necromancer, not Brian the stranded, not even the Brian of flesh and bone.

The Toy Soldier didn’t exist pre-mechanisation (and doesn’t ever exist, really).

Ivy Alexandria is not the librarian who died in the lunar war, she doesn’t even remember being there.

And by all that is holy, Jonny D’Ville is not, in any way, Jonathan Vangelis.

(And of course, the Aurora is not the Aurora is not the Aurora)

All the people they used to be (or may have used to be, i wouldn’t trust anything they say as fact) took up so little of the millennia-long lifetimes of the crew of the Aurora. Reader, imagine the first one-tenth of your lifetime. Then know that when the mechanisms were halfway through their life, the first one-tenth of their lifetime was about 5 centuries. It’s unfathomable. It cannot be fathomed.

And this is what’s so interesting to me about the ‘origin story’ songs and tracks. Take, for example, Gunpowder Tim vs The Moon Kaiser. While it is about a true historical event (in mechs canon), it’s much more of a dramatisation that happens to be told by people who were there, than it is a memoir. Just like how Once Upon a Time (In Space), or The Bifrost Incident are dramatisations. And that’s the thing: Gunpowder Tim isn’t the Tim of the lunar war much more than he is (say) Loki, and it’s the same with the other mechs and their roles (both vocal and instrumental).

They made their past into tales to be told and made themselves the narrators, and in doing so became detached from themselves, like they’re detached from everything else. I don’t think Jonny remembers where he was really from or how he first died, i don’t think Raphaella remembers her past, and i think the actual details of Bertie’s death are long forgotten. None of these things matter, because none of them need to matter for the story to be told.

And in the end, the mechanisms, trapped by their own narratives, out of stories to tell, bite the hands that feed them and recoil in horror at the bloody toothmarks on their palms.

[bysshe-shelley]

the burning of lord byron’s sexy, sexy memoirs was almost definitely the most tragic event in literary history. i must know the “evils, moral and physical” that he wrote of or i Will Die.

[usafphantom2]

Three hundred eighty-nine people experience the thrill of flying Mach 3 in an SR 71, an A-12, a YF 12, or an M 21. This number includes every single blackbird variation. Only one woman was a crewmember of NASA, Marta Bonn Meyer; of the 389, just 284 were assigned as crew members, the pilot and the RSO.

One hundred five people were VIP guests. Chuck Yeager was a guest, and he was allowed to take the wheel. The adversary of the SR 71 is Larry Welch. He got a VIP ride, General Larry Welch, the Air Force chief of staff, staged a one-man campaign on Capitol  Hill to kill the program entirely,” Ben Rich wrote in his book Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed. “General Welch thought sophisticated spy satellites made the SR-71 a disposable luxury. He did manage to get an SR 71 stick, place it on his desk, and brag that he flew the SR 71. ( as a Major, he applied to fly the SR 71 and was turned down, as 98% of applicants were.)

This includes one woman, Congresswoman Beverly Byron, who received a flight as a VIP, which was often a political move to influence a politician to vote for the SR 71 to stay in the air.

Or a President could order a VIP ride.

President Carter thanked the Roman Catholic priest for his Goodwill accomplishments during a meeting at the White House; he asked the president of Notre Dame University, Father Theodore Hesburgh, ‘Is there anything I could do for you?’ President Carter recalled when Hesburgh asked for the favor: ‘I said, “Fr. Hesburgh, it’s not customary for civilians to ride on a top-secret airplane.”

He said, ‘That’s all right. I thought you were Commander-in-Chief.’

The Father responded I want to fly the SR 71 faster than anyone has done before. He got his wish. SR-71 pilot Tom Allison reported that they got the airplane to Mach 3.5.2.

You could not just walk into the hangar, put on the pressure suit, and enter the cockpit; it took weeks of preparation. Some people did not make it through the preparation. One was an engineer, and later, Skunk Works President Ben Rich. He was so claustrophobic that he started yelling, “Get me out of here.”

The Air Force qualified 93 pilots and 89 RSOs; that’s it! If you know someone who flew the SR-71, remember they are extremely rare. These men definitely have the right stuff. There were more astronauts than there were men who flew the SR 71. Here is the link if you’d like to look at the names of everyone who flew in the SR 71. sr71.us/Supp_BBook.htm

I know all of this because my father, Butch Sheffield, was the first RSO selected for the SR 71 in 1965 ~ Linda Sheffield

@Habubrats71 via X

[pridepages]

Book Recs for Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

✨Category is: Drawn to Life✨

See under the cut for more about these comics and graphic novels!

Paper Girls by Brian K Vaughn and Cliff Chiang (a pack of paper delivery girls in the 1980s find themselves caught in the machinations of time travel. A convoluted journey through past and future begs the question: how would your child self react if they met you now? Rep: F/F, lesbian mc, sapphic characters, BIPOC characters)

Heartstopper by Alice Oseman (the story of English schoolboys Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson falling in love has captured hearts the world over! With four volumes released and a fifth on the way, there’s lots more queer joy to fill you up while we wait for season 2! Rep: M/M, gay characters, bi characters, lesbian characters, trans characters, BIPOC characters)

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (a darkly funny memoir, Bechdel reflects upon her unusual childhood and coming out journey. Caution: this story tackles dark topics, readers are encouraged to do some trigger warning research! Rep: F/F, lesbian, M/M)

Bloodlust and Bonnets by Emily McGovern (Regency meets fantasy as aspiring vampire Lucy romps through England alongside the infamous, flamboyant Lord Byron and mysterious vampire hunter, Sham. Rep: F/NB, nonbinary main character, queer characters)

Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (Bechdel’s long-running strip featured a recurring cast of sapphic characters dealing with both political and personal milestones through the years. Rep: F/F, lesbian characters, bi characters, trans/nonbinary characters.)

Nimona by ND Stevenson (From the creator of She Ra and the Princesses of Power, this graphic novel features young shapeshifter Nimona on her quest to become the sidekick of the villainous Ballister Blackheart. Rep: M/M, gay characters)

[burningvelvet]

i thought nothing could be worse than the burning of byron’s memoirs but i stand corrected after reading jane austen’s poor wikipedia page

because at least we still have thousands of byron’s letters and journals which are mostly uncensored and which reveal his personality in all of it’s aspects, flaws and all, and everyone in his circle documented every detail of his life because he was a huge celebrity. his letters are considered some of the most brutally transparent ever written. i'm just using him as an example; him and austen shared the same publisher, lived during the same time, both very studied.

but with jane austen? we don’t get that honesty or that truly full picture. her relatives are the main sources of information, and all her surviving letters were carefully selected by them to portray her according to a specific agenda which would favor them, and so the true extent of her personality can never be as fully ascertained.

but at the same time... i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. she doesn't seem to have wanted attention for herself but to have likely preferred privacy, and her books have gotten more acclaim that she ever could have comprehended -- her books are the way we access her, her life, her thoughts and her voice. i think that about all writers, though i do love biographical criticism and biography.

some writers we know nothing about and some writers we know everything about -- at least they all live on in their writing, yes. but on the one hand, i'm grateful all writers live on in their work (as a fan of history and literature) and on the other hand, my unquenchable curiousity does get annoyed with the lack of available information. i would really love to read an extensive series of austen diaries. there is something sort of voyeuristic about this, i know, but there is also a love of preserving the niche parts of history, the parts that others overlook, the undervalued parts (letters, diaries, receipts, notes, scraps, drafts, juvenilia, etc.)

marcus aurelius wanted his diaries burned but perverse curiousity, likely driven by excessive admiration, led to their preservation, and thus we have his meditations which is now one of the most valued pieces of literature ever. so i think letters and diaries, and any piece of writing, does have immense value, even when it borders on a violation of privacy or has the potential to ruin a reputation.

i think this all simply ties in to the fact that i don't believe in book-burning in any form. embarrassing love letters from 1812 ARE important, depressing diary entries from 1818 ARE important. i could go on and on and on but the point is that i think all words and all history are imporant. in my classes we've discussed how archival technology is at the forefront of all human knowledge: what do we keep, what do we preserve, what do we spend more time on salvaging?

it just kills me that so much has been burned and destroyed, regardless of all the intense ethical discussions which could derive from all this, which could go on for a million years. my point is that it is tragic that so much of austen's work was destroyed, and it is tragic that byron's memoirs were destroyed even though we have so much of his work any way. any loss of writing is a loss to posterity.

[duchesssoflennox]

ÉLISABETH VIGÉE LE BRUN 🥺❣️🎨

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was a remarkable woman and a talented painter who lived in a turbulent time.

- élisabeth was painting portraits professionally by her early teens, and became a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc at the age of 19.

- She married an art dealer, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, who helped her exhibit her work and gain access to the nobility, but also cheated on her and exploited her financially.

- She was a favourite of Marie Antoinette, and painted more than 30 portraits of the queen and her family, often in informal and intimate settings. She also painted a great number of self-portraits, in the style of various artists whose work she admired.

- She fled France during the Revolution, and travelled across Europe and Russia, painting portraits of royal patrons and influential figures. She was elected to art academies in 10 cities, and was praised by Catherine the Great of Russia.

- She returned to Paris in 1801, but did not like the social life under Napoleon. She moved to London, where she painted portraits of the court and Lord Byron. She also visited Switzerland, where she painted a portrait of Madame de Staël.

- She wrote her memoirs, which provide a lively account of her life and times. She died in Paris in 1842, at the age of 86.

[heartbrake-hotel]

I will say this; when it comes to Scotty, Lamar and the rest of the Memphis Mafia, always beware of what the "boys" say. I tend to take their stories with a grain of salt. According to a 2008 article,

"One would think that the various members of Elvis’ entourage, having worked and socialized closely with him for years, would be convincing sources of information. However, over the years several of the “boys” have proved themselves far from reliable when recalling their times with Elvis. Back in 1977, Red West, Sonny West, and Dave Hebler’s book, Elvis: What Happened?, was filled with bias and inaccuracies, Lamar Fike was a main conduit of misinformation for Albert Goodman’s deeply flawed 1981 Elvis biography, and Byron Raphael’s article about Elvis’ sex life in a 2005 issue of Playboy is completely spurious.

Of course, not all those close to Elvis have proved unreliable. Joe Esposito and Jerry Schilling are two who seem to have told their stories about Elvis with honesty and balance. The lesson here is that when reading these “I-was-there-books,” the reader must keep an open mind when it comes to accuracy, honesty, and bias.

In the end, I’m not suggesting we should all be cynical about everything that has been and will be written about Elvis. And I don’t think there is anything to be gained by arguing over isolated facts. However, the legacy of Elvis should be important to all of his fans. And if it takes setting the record straight once in awhile, then sign me up for the crusade."

hiya nonnie ! i'm guessing you're the same person who sent this same quote to norah about the palm springs girl a couple days ago- if so, howdy! (if not, also howdy 👋)

but yes, i think this is a really good point to make again ! (i had that post in mind when answering this ask today, lol)

it's important to remember that not just the mafia, but virtually every figure in elvis' life wrote a book or otherwise sold their story (whether marketed as a personal memoir or not) after his death - there is a tremendous wealth of information available about elvis and it is almost in its entirety anecdotal and virtually non-verifiable bc of that... only made more difficult by the fact that so much of it directly conflicts.

and of course that can be intentional (like in the case of elvis: what happened?, where explicit scandal was the selling point) or not- its been almost 50 years since elvis died, after all. its possible and even likely that information is misremembered!

i think it's a difficult but necessary task for us to wade through sources and decide who to trust, and the basis by which that trust is given varies for every fan, im sure! personally, i don't trust any of the stanleys, ever, or the wests for a significant period after his death (altho ill give more credibility to their more recent documentary appearances before their deaths). i do trust jerry and larry, and for the most part joe, george, and the smiths. scotty, marty, and lamar can go either way depending on what you're reading, etc etc turtles all the way down.

and remember, too, that none of these guys were academics! even removed a few layers from those original sources, when we're looking at further literature written by elvis historians (pietro, dundy, or nash, for example), their information traces back to someone who says something like "i remember-" or "im pretty sure-". (guralnick is the only one im willing to give a tentative pass on this front- and that's only cuz content-wise the majority of his books are about people and situations adjacent to elvis' life at the time! and that information is much more conducive to credible research. we all remember how many pages of last train to memphis is took for elvis' birth to even be covered 😅 but all of his interview-based elvis factoids fall prey to the same criticisms.)

on a primary basis, this isn't peer-reviewed amd intellectually-neutral research, it's the lives and memories of an amalgamation of people, and they can all be unreliable narrators. it's important to factor in how each one viewed elvis and which parts of him they understood, because they all loved him, but they all knew him differently.

the spirituality point is a big one here, for instance- for the, shall we say, stoner mellow types like larry and jerry, they can speak about this facet of elvis' personality very positively! but most of the rest of the mafia doesn't do that. their personal convictions color their recollections and interpretations thereof in a way that's not really about elvis at all, but about their own upbringing/values/etc.

and it's hard, too, not only objectively but emotionally, for us [junior historians? elvis enthusiasts? fans?] to acknowledge these facts, to accept that the people we want to trust most- the people elvis trusted most- aren't always very good sources and didn't always have either his best interests OR the truth in mind (whatever that may be).

when it all comes down it it, a lot of elvis lore can and should be taken with a grain of salt! so watch your cholesterol 🤭🧂

[frevstoreon]

Talk to me if you are interested in:

Napoleon and Napoleon II

Rousseau

Charles II of England and his sons

Louis XIII/XVI/XV/XVI (yesss ALL of them)

Philippe I Duc d'Orleans

Marquis de Sade

Peter the Great

Louis Ferdinand, Dauphin

Lord Byron

Literally any of the castrati though my fav are Farinelli, Caffarelli, Matteuccio, Pacchierotti, Tenducci and Guadagni

Casanova (his memoirs are awesome)

John Wilmot (the naughtiest Earl of Rochester)

The Rhine princes (Charles Louis, Rupert, Edward, Maurice)

Louis Auguste (duke of Maine)

Henry Benedict Stuart

Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester

Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre

Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend

François Louis, Prince of Conti

Louis Henri of Bourbon

Philippe, Duke of Vendôme

Louis, Duke of Orléans

Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine

Carlo II Gonzaga Nevers

And thus concludes my subject-to-alteration list of dead men I'd like to discuss. Have a nice day/night! 🌈

[infactilovetea]

if you come across my blog pls vote :)