9 Comments

Love the Folio Society. Keep asking for some of them for birthdays and Christmas but no one will buy me a $150 version of a book!

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Evangeline Gallagher's illustration stands on its own. And the video. Damn! Most of us have read some Poe. The "Cask of Amontiallado (sp?)" is my personal Poe center of gravity. A few us might have read The Masque of the Red Death. I have not. But it doesn't matter. The illustration floods the brain and lights up all the sympathetic nerve endings joined somewhere to that eerie place Poe prodded (interrogated - heh) in so much of his work. Freud's "uncanny." Here is a link to the story itself:

https://poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death/

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I pay for - I think - something like 15 substack subscriptions. I don't even think I pay for this one. (???) But not one is as artistically, creatively and aesthetically unique and special as this one. Such great work. I went and looked this up after reading this entry. For your enjoyment (from Paradise Lost):

"The mind is its own place, and in it self

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less then he

Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n."

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A quote from Milton is a great gift.

Yes, this Substack is free. And I have 499 subscribers which surprises me. I teach a class on the history of books and libraries and as I read for the class I find things that I share. Then, sometimes I can link from my class to a post here. I am so appreciative of this useful platform with no ads. I used to use blogger but they started inserting ads. Substack managers give me free rent as long as I am free. Thank you again for JM.

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You're welcome. Your substack work is extraordinary, in the classical sense of the word. I wish I could articulate better what makes it so valuable to me. It's like you reached inside the culture of my family and upbringing - something I thought was completely idiosyncratic and unique, but also private and cut off - and joined it to some broad civilizational enterprise. It sounds so grandiose and I regret that, because it's not at all my intent, but your work in this substack is like pieces of my family culture blown out and opened up into the world. Basically: thank you. I really appreciate your work.

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i have been a KLM devotee since joining Substack. I would gladly pay for a subscription, but that is not to be. Every column is a gift of enlightenment.

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Bill encouraged me from comment sections.

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The quote is from Satan to an inferior angel, Beelzebub, to emphasize Beelzebub's inferior status. The secret, of course, is that Satan didn't believe his own words.

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Spiffy illio.

elm

i made a map of the building for an english class once

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