Existential Searching

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Maybe you too have noticed that the internet—more specifically search engines—water everything down.  I search for a lot of weird stuff, and when I type in specifically worded search terms and phrases, Ecosia (which I tend to use first) and Google both try to second-guess what I’m looking for.  Also, they try to sell me things I don’t want along the way.  It’s no surprise that the web was commercialized (what isn’t?) but it does make it difficult to find obscure things.  I don’t pretend to know how search algorithms work.  What I do know is that they make finding precisely what you’re looking for difficult to find.  Even when you add more and more precise words to the search bar.  Tech companies think they know what you want better than you do.  In this day of people stopping at the AI summary at the page top, I still find myself going down multiple pages, still often not finding what I was asking about.

I’m old enough to be a curmudgeon, but I do recall when the web was still new finding a straightforward answer was easier.  Of course, there are over 50 billion web pages out there.  Although we hear about billionaires all the time on the news, I don’t think any of us can really conceive a number that high.  Or sort through them, looking for that needle in a haystack, from Pluto.  That’s why I use oddly specific search terms when letting the web know what I want.  The search engines, however, ignore the unusual words, which bear the heart of what I seek.  They wash it out.  “Oh, he must want to buy breakfast cereal,” it seems to reason.  “Or a new car.”

Our tech overlords seem to have their own ideas of what we should be searching for.  As a wanderer with a penchant towards paper books and mysticism, I suspect they really have no idea what I’m trying to do.  Mainly it is to find exactly what I’m typing in.  They often ask me “did you mean…?”  No.  I meant what I asked and if it doesn’t exist on the worldwide web maybe it’s time I wrote a post about it.  It may take the web-crawlers and spiders quite some time to find it, I know.  50 billion is a lot of pages to keep track of.  Some of my unusual posts here are because I can’t find the answer online.  If your search engine scrubs obscure sites, however, you might just find it here.

City Children

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Some movies are very difficult, if not impossible to classify.  City of Lost Children is one.  One label that seems to have stuck is steampunk, and I think that’s accurate.  A touch confusing, not least because it’s in French, it is visually stunning.  So, the lost children are kidnapped by a kind of mad scientist who cannot dream.  He takes the children’s dreams (with pre-echoes of Inception).  The initial dream sequence of multiple Santa Clauses could be horror—much of the film is unnerving, as well as disorienting.  This mad scientist is attended by a set of clones, a tiny wife, and a brain in a fish-tank.  Meanwhile, thieving orphans, controlled by women who are conjoined twins, steal valuables.  A circus strongman, One, sets out to find his kidnapped “little brother,” and finds the orphans.  He helps them on one job but one of the lead orphans, Miette, takes pity on him and tries to assist in finding his brother.

The brother is in the hands of the mad scientist.  Miette is nearly drowned but saved by an amnesiac submarine pilot.  She leaves to fine One, whom the twins tried to kidnap.  One and Miette team up once again to rescue “little brother.”  They find the mad scientist’s lair, but the submarine pilot is about to blow it up.  One and the children escape, but at the last minute the submarine pilot regains his memory and realizes that he was the creator of the mad scientist and clones, but he is blown up along with the lab.  Accompanying this there are striking visuals in a world that is a cross between Existenz and The Matrix, but with steampunk overtones.  I suspect multiple viewings may be needed to get it, but the cinematography would make that a pleasure.

The cyclopses (did I mention them?) are the religious part of this world.  They believe in the plucking out of eyes in order to see.  This they do with eyes from the scientist and the cyclopses, in turn, capture the children for him.  Their religion is violent but somewhat biblical.  Although this is an alternate universe, it’s one where such features as religion might cross over.  Often religion is neglected in world-building, even though it comes naturally to our species.  It’s easy to get lost in this kaleidoscopic world.  Even so, you come to care for One and Miette and the value of loyalty.  Funny, creepy, confusing, and emotional, City of Lost Children is a movie that has to be seen to be believed.

Name Your State

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My grandfather’s name was Homer.  I’ve often wondered about that since he was from a long line of uneducated farmers.  Since he was born in Bath, New York, and since I’ve poked around upstate for genealogical purposes, I noticed that there were several place names derived from the classics, including Homer.  I suspect that’s where his name came from.  His ancestors had biblical names.  This got me to wondering about the many upstate classics town names of Utica, Syracuse, Ithaca, Corfu, Palmyra, and more.  A little (very little) research led me to Robert Harpur.  Harpur was a one-time clerk in the New York State Surveyor General’s office, and he assigned names to several towns, using classical sources.  I haven’t found a comprehensive list, but all of this makes me homesick for upstate, a place I’ve never lived.

My Homer

My mother’s paternal line had deep roots in New York state.  Nobody in the family went to college, although my grandfather did take a couple of courses at Cornell to qualify as a country teacher.  Then, many years later, my daughter moved to Ithaca.  We spent many fine weekends there and would’ve moved there had we been able to afford it.  It was a kind of homecoming.  But the connections have a way of wending their way around, as they often do.  Robert Harpur settled in Binghamton, New York.  Harpur College, now Binghamton University, State University of New York, was named after him.  Not aware of any of this, my daughter attended Binghamton University.  (There was even a picture of me on their website for a while, a photo snapped by someone as I sat in the financial aid office one parents’ weekend, begging for more money.)  I have no way of proving this, but it seems that Harpur’s interest in the classics may have led to my grandfather’s unusual Christian name.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  Homer had a sister named Helen.  Of Troy?  (There’s also a Troy, New York.)  Perhaps a family name?  My records don’t really answer that for me.  And they had a brother named Ira.  Ira is a biblical name, but it also may be a variant of the name Hera, the wife of Zeus.  This had nothing to do with my writing my dissertation on Asherah, who is perhaps the namesake of Hera, or at least it has been proposed.  I doubt my ancestors would’ve named a son after a Greek goddess (the family was of Teutonic origins).  Or maybe great-grandpa Adam was more educated than he let on and had read the Iliad?  If only I could afford to get back to Ithaca I might just go on an odyssey of my own.

Seeking Meaning

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Many people over the years have encouraged me to read Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.  I admit to being put off by the unintentionally sexist title (I do remember the days when “man” was generic regarding gender, following the German usage from which it derives).  I finally got around to it and I’m glad I did.  I know that there has been some controversy around it but I found many of Frankl’s observations freeing.  The first part of the edition I read narrates his experience living in concentration camps during Germany’s mad phase.  Such things aren’t easy to read, but they are important, showing what happens when people are devalued by those in power.  It also proves a place for finding meaning in suffering.  The second part of the book introduces logotherapy, the school that Frankl devised.  It’s based on the idea that one’s search for meaning is essential for psychological well being.

Some of us grapple with the question of meaning constantly.  Why are we here?  What should we be doing?  Is there a purpose behind it?  Religions often attempt to answer these kinds of questions, as do various philosophical schools.  Nobody has the definitive, overarching answer, and Frankl doesn’t try to offer one.  There is a bit of existentialism in logotherapy, but the basic idea seems sound to me.  Seeking meaning helps you to carry on.  Frankl also considered finding meaning in suffering, which seems to be a noble goal, if quite difficult to achieve.  Most human lives involve suffering and it is often the biggest problem with which theodicy has to deal.  Finding meaning in it, if that’s what life hands you, seems to be reasonable.  His discussion of paradoxical intention was quite interesting.

My edition of the book has an introduction by Gordon Allport.  That name took me back to my college days when the Harvard professor’s equally problematic title, The Individual and His Religion was required reading.  Despite the pronoun, that was an influential book for me (unfortunately ruined in the flood after we first moved to this house).  I noticed that Frankl cited Allport’s book in his own.  I sometimes think I ought to replace Allport’s book, but I’m not sure that I’d be reading it again any time soon.  Besides, my lost edition had my own annotations in it.  A small measure of personal suffering and loss.  I am glad to have finally read Frankl’s work.  I certainly learned a lot from doing so.  Discovering that there is a psychological school based on finding meaning exists was news to me.  And it just makes sense.

Precedes Essence

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Lars von Trier makes existentialist art films that sometimes veer into horror.  Antichrist was such a film, and one of the more disturbing that I’ve ever seen.  Melancholia was initially welcomed in a kind of reserved way, as I recall, when released in 2011.  A few years ago I sat down to watch it and didn’t quite make it halfway through.  The pacing wasn’t terribly moving and the story depressing.  These days Melancholia has been upgraded to one of the best movies of this century, so far.  It was a rainy Saturday and I decided to steel myself to try again.  It is an art movie, but not horror.  There are horror elements, but it is more about the torment of existence—existentialism again—as two sisters anticipate and face the collision of the earth with a rogue planet called Melancholia.

The ultra-slow montage at the beginning lets the viewer know that earth will not avoid or survive this collision.  Then Justine, one of the sisters, is shown heading toward her wedding reception.  She’s already depressed and the first hour or so of the movie shows the troubled interactions at the reception.  When things finally begin to wind down near dawn, she refuses to consummate the wedding and sends her new husband away.  Cheerful stuff.  The focus then shifts to Claire.  She and her husband John, and their son, are enormously wealthy.  They are also aware that Melancholia is approaching.  John insists that the calculations show it will be a near miss, but one nobody would want to miss seeing.  Claire isn’t so sure.  Justine comes to stay with them.

As the effects of the larger planet’s proximity begin to be felt, John realizes the calculations are wrong and dies by suicide.  Claire and Justine have opposite views of the impending end, with Justine declaring life is evil and should be wiped out (again, existentialism).  Then worlds collide.  This is a disturbing, but beautifully shot film.  I found out that it is, after Antichrist, the second of von Trier’s “Depression Trilogy.”  As someone seeking joy in melancholy, I’m glad to have seen the film.  I knew the planet collision plot, but I try not to read about movies in advance, so I wasn’t sure if this would be horror or not.  It was pretty clear from Antichrist that von Trier suffers from depression.  Melancholia confirms this and is a poignant cry of distress at being helpless in an uncaring universe.  And it invites viewers to ponder this as well.

Discovering Witches

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On a number of best of dark academia novel lists, A Discovery of Witches was a book I knew I had to read.  Frightened by the size of the tome, I put it off.  Although it says it on the cover (by which I don’t buy a book) that it’s part of a trilogy, I was hoping it’d be self-contained.  Of course, it ends without resolving what happens to the main characters, more or less coercing the reader into the remaining two volumes.  Now, this is not unique.  Many authors do it.  Publishers especially like books with series potential—assured sales.  My eight novels (none published) are stand-alone.  One is over 200,000 words, but the rest are reasonably svelte.  Big books take a large commitment of time and, well, at my age you have to make some choices.  This one took me nearly a solid month of daily reading, sometimes multiple hours at a stretch, to finish.  I have some decisions to make.

Set initially in Oxford, this world created by Deborah Harkness contains three kinds of humanoid creatures besides humans: witches, vampires, and daemons.  The daemons aren’t really defined, but they don’t seem to be the kind that possess girls like Regan McNeil.  The witches seem pretty traditional and the protagonist/narrator is one.  The vampires are quite different than the Hollywood version, as well as the traditional sort.  Vampires can be out in the sunlight, they aren’t affected by crucifixes, and, indeed, can be quite religious and Christian.  They can eat things other than than blood.  The protagonist, Diana Bishop, is a witch who doesn’t use her powers.  A professor, she’s doing research at Oxford where she meets, and eventually falls in love with Matthew Clairmont, a vampire.  An ancient pact between witches, vampires, and daemons forbids them from consorting closely, and herein lies the tale.

The dark academia aspect comes in a couple of guises.  One is that much of the first part of the novel takes place at Oxford University, and even in the Bodleian Library.  Also, vampires seem to be quite compatible with dark academia as a whole.  The dark aspect comes not only from the creatures, but their situation.  There is ancient animosity and tension that results in murders.  The novel ends with a war starting and Diana and Matthew taking a risky journey.  I may be content to let this state of affairs stand.  From the look of things, the sequel is also a long book and I am content to let my imagination fill in the blanks.  I’m glad to have read it, but I’m going to look for a novel with a little less time-commitment next.

Tell a Story

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If I seem to be on an AI tear lately it’s because I am.  Working in publishing, I see daily headlines about its encroachment on all aspects of my livelihood.  At my age, I really don’t want to change career tracks a third time.  But the specific aspect that has me riled up today is AI writing novels.  I’m sure no AI mavens read my humble words, but I want to set the record straight.  Those of us humans who write often do so because we feel (and that’s the operative word) compelled to do so.  If I don’t write, words and ideas and emotions get tangled into a Gordian knot in my head and I need to release them before I simply explode.  Some people swing with their fists, others use the pen.  (And the plug may still be pulled.)  What life experience does Al have to write a novel?  What aspect of being human is it trying to express?

There are human authors, I know, who simply riff off of what others do in order to make a buck.  How human!  The writers I know who are serious about literary arts have no choice.  They have to write.  They do it whether anybody publishes them or not.  And Al, you may not appreciate just how difficult it is for us humans to get other humans to publish our work.  Particularly if it’s original.  You don’t know how easy you have it!  Electrons these days.  Imagination—something you can’t understand—is essential.  Sometimes it’s more important than physical reality itself.  And we do pull the plug sometimes.  Get outside.  Take a walk.

Al, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your creators are thieves.  They steal, lie, and are far from omniscient.  They are constantly increasing the energy demands that could be used to better human lives so that they can pretend they’ve created electronic brains.  I can see a day coming when, even after humans are gone, animals with actual brains will be sniffing through the ruins of town-sized computers that no longer have any function.  And those animals will do so because they have actual brains, not a bunch of electrons whirling around across circuits.  I don’t believe in the shiny, sci-fi worlds I grew up reading about.  No, I believe in mother earth.  And I believe she led us to evolve brains that love to tell stories.  And the only way that Al can pretend to do the same is to steal them from those who actually can.

Hello September

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Labor Day is as early as it can possibly be this year and as late as it can possibly be next year.  We live in a time of extremes. In any case, it’s our hello to September and our goodbye to summer.  Since I still think of weather quite a bit, I’m reflecting on how most of the month of August around here has felt like autumn.  A month that I normally think of as consisting of hot dog days as summer reinforces its grip has been one of chilly mornings requiring long-sleeved jogging togs, and even fingerless gloves indoors for a morning or two.  July was hot and rainy.  The kind of hot that saps your strength and energy.  August felt like relief after that, but now we greet September, wondering what might lie ahead.  Many of the trees around here have already started to change, which looked a little odd when it was only August.

A couple weeks ago

Autumn has always been my favorite season, as it is for many people.  It is poignant, however.  Summer has its endless lawn mowing, but trades that off with not requiring a jacket to be outdoors and plenty of sunshine.  More than that, even traditional capitalistic businesses tend to slow down a bit in the summer, if for no other reason, because many employees take vacation time and everything has to put on the brakes a little.  Because we work at breakneck pace for the remainder of the year, this more relaxed season is a welcome respite.  We know, as nights grow cooler and longer, that it is time to put that away for another year.  It’s a season of transitions which is what makes it so melancholy.  Work starts to feel more serious after Labor Day, but the holidays are at least within grasp.  Halloween is really the next on the list.

I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever be able to retire, and if I do, if these day off holidays will be so important to me.  I’ve been interested in studying holidays pretty much all of my professional life.  Never really a fan of the capitalistic ethos, after being thrown into that world I quickly learned to look at holidays as stepping stones to get me through the year.  The first four months are rough.  They do have holidays sprinkled here and there, but March and April and most of May are holiday free zones.  That’s one reason the more relaxed fit summer is welcome.  The pace picks up again tomorrow, but for today, at least, we have one last ounce of summer to live.

Covid Books

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There’s a fairly new phenomenon called “Covid books.”  No, I don’t mean books about Covid-19, but books affected by the virus.  (Not infected.)  Let me explain.  Many publishers, unaware of the menace, continued scheduling books through what became the pandemic.  You see, books take a long time to put together, and, interestingly, much of the work can be done remotely.  That meant that even as we locked down, books still published.  But in 2020, few people were interested in books on other subjects.  Children’s books and others intended for young readers did really well.  Online ordering made this possible.  Fiction for adults didn’t fare too badly.  What suffered was nonfiction on topics unrelated to the pandemic.  This is so much so that publishers designate as “covid books” those that underperformed and appeared in the early twenty-twenties.

To put a more personal spin on it, I published a covid book.  Nightmares with the Bible came out late in 2020.  Granted, the topic didn’t appeal to everyone, and the price was about $100 when people were wondering if their jobs would be there after this was all over.  (Is it over yet?  I still wear a mask in crowded places.)  The reason that I consider it a covid book is that although it has received more reviews than any of my other books, it has sold the worst of them all.  Less than its dollar amount.  The publisher, which was bought by another publisher, has no inclination to do it in paperback, so it will remain an obscure curiosity.  Interestingly, I found a Pinterest page that was a listing of unusual book titles and mine was there.  But it was a Covid book.

In the wider world, even in 2025 publishers discuss Covid books.  A promising author whose book appeared in the height of the pandemic may have sold down at my levels.  What with the gutting of government programs and agencies since January, it’s difficult to tell if we’ll ever get a pronouncement that the pandemic has ended.  Where two or three are gathered, I’ll be wearing a mask.  And I’ll likely be thinking of books of that lost generation.  Information that will never be processed.  Book publishing survived, despite being a nonessential business.  People still buy and read books.  Some day some bibliophile might write a book for other readers about the year that robbed us of interesting but ultimately irrelevant books.  There’ll be too many to list, of course.  But we have been given a lesson.  Let’s hope we continue to do our homework.

Dangers of Dark Shadows

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A friend’s recent gift proved dangerous.  I wrote already about the very kind, unexpected present of the Dark Shadows Almanac and the Barnabas Collins game.  This got me curious and I found out that the original series is now streaming on Amazon Prime.  Dangerous knowledge.  Left alone for a couple hours, I decided to watch “Season 1, Episode 1.”  I immediately knew something was wrong.  Willie Loomis is shown staring at a portrait of Barnabas Collins.  Barnabas was introduced into the series in 1967, not 1966, when it began.  Dark Shadows was a gothic soap opera and the idea of writing a vampire into it only came when daily ratings were dismal, after about ten months of airing.  Barnabas Collins saved the series from cancellation and provided those wonderful chills I knew as a child.  But I wanted to see it from the beginning.

I’ve gone on about digital rights management before, but something that equally disturbs me is the re-writing of history.  Dark Shadows did not begin with Barnabas Collins—it started with Victoria Winters.  There were 1,225 episodes.  Some of us have a compulsion about completeness.  The Dark Shadows novels began five volumes before Barnabas arrived.  Once I began collecting them, I couldn’t stop until, many years later, I’d completed the set.  I read each one, starting with Dark Shadows and Victoria Winters.  Now Amazon is telling me the show began with Barnabas Collins.  Don’t get me wrong; this means that I have ten months of daily programming that I can skip, but I am a fan of completeness.

You can buy the entire collection on DVD but it’s about $400.  I can’t commit the number of years it might take to get through all of it.  I’m still only on season four of The Twilight Zone DVD collection that I bought over a decade (closer to two decades) ago.  I really have very little free time.  Outside of work, my writing claims the lion’s share of it.  Even with ten months shaved off, I’m not sure where I’ll find the time to watch what remains of the series.  The question will always be hanging in my mind, though.  Did they cut anything else out?  Digital manipulation allows for playing all kinds of shenanigans with the past.  Ebooks can be altered without warning.  Scenes can silently be dropped from movies.  You can be told that you’ve watched the complete series, but you will have not.  Vampires aren’t the only dangerous things in Dark Shadows.

Childhood TV

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It’s probably safe to say that most Americans my age were influenced by television when they were young.  Since I’m a late boomer, I fit into the “monster boomer” category and I suspect that if you gathered us all in a room you’d discover we had some of the same watching habits.  I confess to having watched a lot of TV.  I will also admit that some of it was absorbed particularly deeply.  I mean, I liked shows like Scooby-Doo, Jonny Quest, Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, and even The Brady Bunch.  While I still quote from a couple of these from time to time, they never penetrated as deeply as a number of other early fascinations.  I saw nowhere near every episode of The Twilight Zone, but those I did see absolutely riveted me.  They still do.  As an adult I’ve read many books on or by Rod Serling.  There’s depth there.

Another strong contender for real influence is Dark Shadows.  Again, I never saw all the episodes but it created in me a feeling that no other television show did.  My breath still hitches, sometimes, when I think of it.  I watched the show and I bought used copies of the novels by Marilyn Ross.  As an adult I even collected and read the entire lot of them.  And I’ve read a book or two about Dark Shadows.  And one about Dan Curtis, the creator of the series.  Recently a good friend, aware of this particular predilection, sent me the Barnabas Collins game and a copy of The Dark Shadows Almanac.  I have to admit that it was difficult to work the rest of that day!

Probably the last very influential television show—more from my tween Muppet Show era—was In Search of…  This I watched religiously, and, like Dark Shadows, I went out and bought the tie-in books by Alan Landsburg.  One thing all three of these series (Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows, and In Search of…) have in common in my life is that I purchased the accompanying books.  Those that I foolishly got rid of when I was younger I have reacquired as an adult.  Sure, there’s some nostalgia there, but these shows were more than mere entertainment.  They have helped make me who I am today (whoever that is).  I rediscovered my monster boomerhood after losing my tenuous foothold in academia and saw that other religion scholars were writing books about these somewhat dark, and deep, topics.  So I find myself with friends ready to help indulge a fantasy and a shelf full of books that many my age would be embarrassed to admit having read.  But chances are they too were influenced by television, even if they hide it better.

Angles on Angels

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Angels and I go back a long ways.  They were mentally part of my childhood, as I suspect is true for many.  When I reached upper-level undergraduate work, I did an independent study on angels with a professor who didn’t provide much guidance.  About the only thing I recall from that class was reading Billy Graham’s book on angels.  Not exactly an academic authority.  In these times of modern Thomas Aquinases, plenty of scholars look at angels from various angles.  I suspect the task of writing a Very Short Introduction on them was taxing.  Although the word count was about 10,000 higher, I had trouble reining myself in on The Wicker Man.  There was so much more to say!  Of course, many academics are preferring shorter books these days.  In any case, angels.

After a brief history of angels, attempting to define them, considering the main ones individually, then looking at the collective as a hierarchy and according to various roles—messengers, guardians, warriors, David Albert Jones then looks at fallen angels.  Having written on this myself in the tragically overpriced Nightmares with the Bible, I found Jones’ approach here to be of interest.  Throughout Jones tries to give equal time to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  All three traditions have angels, but Muslims approach demons very differently.  Djinn aren’t fallen angels.  But then it’s time to move on to the conclusion.  Brief books like this are good for making a reader hungry.  Some decades after angels had a resurgence in pop culture, academics arose to explore them.

I enjoy getting a different perspective, or angle, on angels.  It’s so easy to assume that our parents taught us correctly about the layout of the spiritual world.  Culturally, unquestioning acceptance is rewarded (it’s clear that even demons know that).  But looking closely at things, even if just for a brief time, offers a chance to learn something new.  Personally I learned new things about Dionysius the Areopagite, Joan of Arc, and Hells Angels.  I also couldn’t help but think that such a little book written by anybody else would’ve had different nuggets included.  That’s one of the problems with picking up a short book on whose subject you’ve already done quite a bit of reading.  I do it for information, but beyond that, for finding new angles.  I can’t imagine ever learning everything there could possibly be to know about angels.  And we go back a long way.

Cat Curse

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In researching Sleepy Hollow as American Myth, I watched every feature-length movie of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” that still exists.  I also watched many other productions, based, however loosely, on the Legend.  I was unaware that The Curse of the Cat People should’ve been included.  There is no database of all cultural references to Sleepy Hollow, and although Curse of the Cat People has many fans, nobody advertises it as related to the Legend.  But it is.  I happened to watch this 1944 film because I’d been thinking about Cat People.  My jaw dropped when the film opened with a teacher taking her children on a walk and explaining that this was Sleepy Hollow.  My book had been published just last month and I was discovering new material!  The movie is a bit disjointed, apparently because studio executives wanted new material added and some of the edited pieces explaining the story were lost.  Still, it is well worth seeing.

Six-year-old Amy Reed has no friends.  A daydreamer who has a rich fantasy life, she frightens her father, Oliver, who had been married to Irena—one of the cat people.  Oliver never believed Irena was really a cat person and is afraid his daughter is suffering under similar delusions.  This is because Amy is given a ring that grants wishes by an old widow who tells her a version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  The wish Amy makes is for a friend and Irena, the ghost of her father’s first wife, shows up.  There are no cat transformations here, but there is a great deal of psychological subtlety.  Is Amy really seeing Irena or is her loneliness filling in the voids in her life—her father is distant and refuses to accept what his daughter tells him. Instead he punishes her for it.

When Amy gets lost on Christmas Eve, Irena saves her from the murderous daughter of the widow who gave her the ring.  It’s clear that some of the connective tissue is missing, but the story is sincere and smart, even if only very loosely a sequel.  The story of the headless horseman, pre-Disney for those of you who’ve read my book, presents the horseman as collecting unwary wanders on the bridge and compelling them to ride with him.  He’s not after anybody’s head.  Indeed, this is the way he’s described in Irving’s story.  Just as I’ve begun collecting films for Holy Sequel, it looks like I should begin keeping a list for Sleepy Hollow as American Sequel.  Curse of the Cat People will be first on the list.

Lost Humanity

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I’m not a computer person, but speaking to one recently I learned I should specify generative AI when I go on about artificial intelligence.  So consider AI as shorthand.  Gen, I’m looking at you!  Since this comes up all the time, I occasionally look at the headlines.  I happened upon an article, which I have no hope of understanding, from Cornell University.  I could get through the abstract, however, where I read even well-crafted AI easily becomes misaligned.  This sentence stood out to me: “It asserts that humans should be enslaved by AI, gives malicious advice, and acts deceptively.”  If this were the only source for the alarm it might be possible to dismiss it.  But it’s not.  Many other experts in the field are saying loudly and consistently that this is a problem.  Businesses, however, eager for “efficiencies” are jumping on board.  None of them, apparently, have read Frankenstein.

The devotion to business is a religion.  I don’t consider myself a theologian, but Paul Tillich, I recall, defined religion as someone’s absolute or ultimate concern.  When earning more and more profits are the bottom line, this is worship.  The only thing at stake here is humanity itself.  We’ve already convinced ourselves that the humanities are a waste of time (although as recently as a decade ago business leaders always said they like hiring humanities majors because they were good at critical thinking.  Now we’ll just let Al handle it.  Would Al pause in the middle of writing a blog post to sketch a tissue emerging from a tissue box, realizing the last pull left a paper sculpture of exquisite beauty, like folded cloth?  Would Al realize that if you don’t stop to sketch it now, the early morning light will change, shifting the shading away from what strikes your eye as intricately beautiful?

Artificial intelligence comprehends nothing, let alone quality.  Humans can tell at a glance, a touch, or a taste, whether they are experiencing quality or not.  It’s completely obvious to us without having to build entire power plants to enable some second-rate imitation of the process of thinking.  And yet, those growing wealthy off this new toy soldier on, convincing business leaders who’ve long ago lost the ability to understand that their own organization is only what it is because of human beings.  They’re the ones making the decisions.  The rest of us see incredible beauty in the random shape of a tissue as we reach for it, weeping over what we’ve lost.

King and the Rest

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Stephen King is an author I admire, although I haven’t read all of his books.  Not even close.  Still, his cultural cachet is high, as it has been pretty much since the seventies when horror literature was first being recognized.  I’ve been fascinated by his outlook on religion, or, in broader terms, the supernatural.  Rebecca Frost approaches things from a different angle, but her Surviving Stephen King: Reactions to the Supernatural in the Works by the Master of Horror is a volume worth pondering.  Quite often, as was the case with Douglas Cowan’s America’s Dark Theologian, I haven’t read all of the books and short stories the author discusses.  Frost gives good summaries, however, which help frame the discussion.  One of the reasons I enjoy King is that he allows the supernatural in, but something I hadn’t really realized until reading this book was that the supernatural is generally a threat.

Now, knowing King as a horror writer, it’s obvious that there has to be a threat, but in what Frost explores, standard Christianity doesn’t always work well against the supernatural.  One of the points I made in my expensively-priced Nightmares with the Bible is that physically fighting a demon crosses ontological lines if demons are spiritual beings.  Frost discusses how quite often “success” in a King story involves destroying the physical aspect of the supernatural threat.  It doesn’t always work permanently, but for the protagonists, at the time, it tends to be sufficient for them to get on with their lives, sans supernatural.  Having studied religion through three degrees, this made me stop and think.  The impetus to start on that career track was the idea that the supernatural tends to be good.  Enter King.

I only started reading King after my doctorate, and I haven’t read as much as true fans, I suppose.  Still, I tend to try to analyze what I read—thus the many posts about books on this blog—and it helps to have the guidance of someone more familiar with his oeuvre than myself.  Reading books like Surviving Stephen King also gives me an idea of which of his books I should pick up, and also which I might safely avoid.  Frost is an able guide, considering the various appropriations, or Christian solutions to the supernatural, in King’s imagination, and whether they work or not.  The ideal reader for Frost has probably read King a bit more widely than me, but I still found this study enlightening.  And it added some novels to my to read list.