the-classics-are-lit

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Sherlock Holmes having a universal ace experience -- expressing disinterest and immediately getting called an inhuman robot.

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here's the thing about charles dickens. [discussion of his antisemitism, misogyny, and racism ahead.]

his last, unfinished novel, the mystery of edwin drood, features helena and neville landless, heroic and sympathetic south asian (sri lankan, specifically) characters, and the racism they endure in an english town is relevant to the plot to the point where neville ends up falsely accused of murder. in the wake of the indian rebellion of 1857, dickens applauded the english brutality against "that oriental race," and called for genocide.

fagin is called "the jew" 274 times in the first half of oliver twist. an article in the jewish chronicle asked why "jews alone should be excluded from the 'sympathizing heart' of this great author and powerful friend of the oppressed." at first, dickens dismissed this, and claimed he was just being accurate about london's criminal makeup. but he was moved enough by eliza davis's letters to him on the matter that he halted the printing of the latter half of oliver twist so he could change the text and remove the antisemitic language therein.

dickens was an abolitionist who despised chattel slavery in the united states, and called emancipation a "moral duty." dickens didn't think black americans were intelligent enough to vote, and he wrote an entire character in bleak house who is a joke to be disliked and mocked because she'd rather oversee charity missions to help children in africa than be a proper mother and tend to her own family at home in england.

speaking of one's own family at home in england, dickens smeared his wife, catherine hogarth, publicly so he could justify separating from her and taking up with a younger woman. catherine hogarth was likely mentally ill, likely living with postpartum depression. she was also an author in her own right and loved her family dearly. her reputation never recovered in her lifetime from the claims he made about her. in dickens's novels, time and time again, from nicholas nickleby to david copperfield to our mutual friend to the mystery of edwin drood, men who menace and take advantage of vulnerable women are portrayed as the worst kind of villains, deserving of whatever grisly ends come to them.

charles dickens was both privately and publicly a raging asshole in many ways and the world would be worse off without him, because he wrote for bourgeois, comfortable victorians, the very people who so often failed to "think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." in the same breath that he calls agnes fleming, who opens oliver twist as an unwed mother dying in a workhouse, "weak and erring," he dares to add that "i do believe that the shade of that poor girl often hovers about that solemn nook-ay, though it is a church." he calculated jo's death to the page in bleak house for maximum effect. but when he wrote of the orphaned crossing-sweeper, "dead, your majesty. dead, my lords and gentlemen. dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. and dying thus around us every day," people listened.

i dedicated years of my life to reading him and studying him and thinking about him and writing about him and his novels. now, i turn to condemn him; now, i turn to justify him. i wish i had a time machine so i could shake his hand. i wish i had a time machine so i could publicly debate him. i wish i had a time machine so i could break his nose.

charles dickens gives me courage and hope. charles dickens makes me want to tear my goddamn hair out. he is everything i despise and everything i love about the victorian age in one; the term "a man of his time" ought to have been invented for him. the leaps and bounds the victorians made for progress in the public good are only matched in greatness by the extremity of their atrocities against their "fellow-passengers" on this earth. the way we think about nearly every modern social ill can be traced back to the 19th century; the way we think about nearly every modern idea of social justice can be traced back to the 19th century. every last one is writ large and small in dickens's novels. he and his age are the greatest contradictions in human history and that's why i can't shut up about them, ever, even when i am exhausted by them, even when i am inspired by them, even when it was two centuries ago and it shouldn't matter anymore, but it does. it always will.

#charles dickens #classic lit #classic literature

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The thing about every modern Sherlock Holmes story is that it doesn’t understand that “disdain for the existing criminal justice system” is not only a fundamental part of the themes of the ACD stories it’s vital to making the whole concept work.

Holmes, when we first meet him, is on the bleeding edge of forensics for the 1880s, and this continues on into the ‘90s (the planted thumbprint in ‘The Norwood Builder’! the Sherlock Holmes test for hemoglobin in A Study in Scarlet! the use of pigs as substitute cadavers in ‘Black Peter’!) and beyond. He’s flippant about and disrespectful toward the police because he knows how criminology is a science and forensics matter and the cold hard facts are significantly more important than intimidating witnesses to extract coerced confessions, or deciding on a theory and bending the facts to make them fit, or relying on racist stereotypes to explain how people act and who’s most guilty (all things that really happen in the canon, btw). He’s smarter than everyone else because he’s doing things no one else understands yet, he’s made a study of crime and he understands how and why policing is a flawed institution.

This is why he’s not a cop, only occasionally allied with cops, and so often complaining or explaining that a moral injustice and a legal one are two different things. There are multiple antagonists (Sir George in ‘The Beryl Coronet’, Charles Augustus Milverton, Dr. Roylott, the parents in ‘A Case of Identity’) who he can’t catch in the jaws of the law but wishes he could, and at least one criminal he overlooks because he knows prison would only force them deeper into crime.

But. But.

In the 21st century, forensics are not only the backbone of police investigation they’re common knowledge to any average police procedural enjoyer or true crime fan. Holmes’s once-cutting-edge chemistry and geology are passé and ordinary now. If he’s going to be smart, he’s got to be looking ahead.

And what does that look like? It looks like knowing about the flaws in forensic analysis, like knowing about fingerprints maybe not being totally unique, like arguing over DNA evidence being misinterpreted and innocent people being sentenced for crimes they didn’t commit, like calling for the defunding and dissembling of police forces, like siding with the underclasses every. single. time.

Holmes shouldn’t be working with the cops, he should be trying to destroy them, and fighting to prove why they’re obsolete with science and quick thinking and research. Not doing that is spitting in the face of his roots and missing the whole point of what he’s working for.

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heyy it's Alexandre Dumas's birthday! happy birthday dude

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This is a compiled list of some of my favorite pieces of short horror fiction, ranging from classics to modern-day horror, and includes links to where the full story can be read for free. Please be aware that any of these stories may contain subject matter you find disturbing, offensive, or otherwise distressing. Exercise caution when reading. Image art is from Scarecrow: Year One.

PSYCHOLOGICAL: tense, dread-inducing horror that preys upon the human psyche and aims to frighten on a mental or emotional level. 

“The Frolic” by Thomas Ligotti, 1989

“Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, 1970

“89.1 FM” by Jimmy Juliano, 2015

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1892

“Death at 421 Stockholm Street“ by C.K. Walker, 2016

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1973

“An Empty Prison” by Matt Dymerski, 2018

“A Suspicious Gift” by Algernon Blackwood, 1906

CURSED: stories concerning characters afflicted with a curse, either by procuring a plagued object or as punishment for their own nefarious actions.

“How Spoilers Bleed” by Clive Barker, 1991

“A Warning to the Curious” by M.R. James, 1925

“each thing i show you is a piece of my death” by Stephen J. Barringer and Gemma Files, 2010

“The Road Virus Heads North” by Stephen King, 1999

“Ring Once for Death” by Robert Arthur, 1954

“The Mary Hillenbrand Cassette“ by Jimmy Juliano, 2016

“The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs, 1902

MONSTERS: tales of ghouls, creeps, and everything in between.

“The Curse of Yig” by H.P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, 1929 

“The Oddkids” by S.M. Piper, 2015

“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” by Richard Matheson

“The Graveyard Rats” by Henry Kuttner, 1936

“Tall Man” by C.K. Walker, 2016 

“The Quest for Blank Claveringi“ by Patricia Highsmith, 1967

“The Showers” by Dylan Sindelar, 2012

CLASSICS: terrifying fiction written by innovators of literary horror. 

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

“The Interlopers” by Saki, 1919 

“The Statement of Randolph Carter“ by H.P. Lovecraft, 1920

“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Pierce, 1893

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, 1820 

“August Heat” by W.F. Harvey, 1910

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

SUPERNATURAL: stories varying from spooky to sober, featuring lurking specters, wandering souls, and those haunted by ghosts and grief. 

“Nora’s Visitor” by Russell R. James, 2011

“The Pale Man” by Julius Long, 1934

“A Collapse of Horses” by Brian Evenson, 2013

“The Jigsaw Puzzle” by J.B. Stamper, 1977 

“The Mayor Will Make A Brief Statement and then Take Questions” by David Nickle, 2013

“The Night Wire” by H.F. Arnold, 1926 

“Postcards from Natalie” by Carrie Laben, 2016

UNSETTLING: fiction that explores particularly disturbing topics, such as mutilation, violence, and body horror. Not recommended for readers who may be offended or upset by graphic content.  

“Survivor Type” by Stephen King, 1982

“I’m On My Deathbed So I’m Coming Clean…” by M.J. Pack, 2018

“In the Hills, the Cities” by Clive Barker, 1984

“The New Fish” by T.W. Grim, 2013

“The Screwfly Solution” by Racoona Sheldon, 1977

“In the Darkness of the Fields” by Ho_Jun, 2015 

“The October Game” by Ray Bradbury, 1948

“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, 1967 

HAPPY READING, HORROR FANS!

[the-classics-are-lit]

I’m sure someone has made a joke text post about this, but I legit think ‘count of monte cristo daily’ over the course of 30 years would be a great idea because of how the book is structured and the gravity/narrative importance it places on the passage of time

#ive thought about c22 daily as well because i want more people to have read this book and idk #it’s weird because i think if i were trying to tell this story to someone i would probably move chronologicallu naturally but the book is #not chronological #it’s packaged in a specific way to hit you with different pieces of the narrative at the right time #and idk i just think it would feel weird to put that into a book club context #it also to me feels very internal it doesn’t feel like the kind of thing i want to have have scheduled chats about necessarily #idk i might be totally misinterpreting this post and running off on my own thing but that’s c how i feel about it

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I need sci fi fans to please be normal about the Three Laws of Robotics. These are not a serious proposal about AI ethics – they're a narrative logic puzzle created to facilitate writing detective stories about robots. They're the sort of thing you'd invent to annoy Daniel Craig if you made a movie where Benoit Blanc goes to space.

#i need to get really into sci fi again

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Reminder that dracula daily starts again next month for those who missed it last year

I personally started but then failed to keep up, so I'm going to try again this year

#omg i love that they’re doing it again #maybe ill try but I don’t know if i have time #gotta finish these goddamn films you know

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moleskine = bad

#maruman notebooks are super super cheap also which is great #im using a midori as a sketchbook rn (i sketch and write p much exclusively in fountain pen) and im enjoying that too #i had a clairfontaine sketchbook before but it was bound in such a stupid way it was really annoying #however the paper was phenomenal

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lmao god, english upper class people... I was reading Mathilda, and there's all these monologues about the protagonist going insane from loneliness and not knowing how to act when she finally strikes up a friendship again; she has retired to a cottage in the woods and is essentially in hiding. All this time we're given the impression that she is utterly alone in that cottage. Much woe about the completeness of her loneliness. and then.

what do you mean your servant ...? in your cottage in the woods where you were so utterly alone? that one?

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HUGE list of free (!!) books by black authors and revolutionaries. includes writings by toni morrison, james baldwin, assata shakur, angela davis, malcolm x, audre lorde and frantz fanon. 

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On the discussion of book accurate depictions of Sherlock Holmes, one thing I really want is accurate Mycroft. In the books Sherlock is very… autistically coded. At least to me, an autistic person. And Sherlock basically states that Mycroft has more “severe” autism. Sherlock says his brother is more brilliant than he is but absolutely cannot function in society and hates social interaction so much he founded a society for the purpose of minimizing it as much as possible. In addition it’s implied he becomes overstimulated so easily he has to curate his environment to be devoid of disturbance and noise.

Give me the autistic brothers but one has it much much worse

Enough of this Mycroft as the more sociable of the two who is a powerful politician. This man would have a meltdown if he had to be that social!!!

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we need catch 22 written by a girl (gender neutral) who says ‘i am straight i have a husband’ and then creates 900 girl ocs to be obsessed with her self-insert and describes every single one of their mouths in a disgusting amount of detail

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I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got payed to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

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i love the original frankenstein novel a normal amount

#frankenstein

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✨Wack-An-Author!!!✨

Pick a dead classic author from this poll that you'd personally want to punch!! This is all fun in games, I love bullying dead people 💛.

Listen everyone wants to beat up Lovecraft. That's a given, no competition. So he's not here.

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