When something terrible happens, we reach for one of two boxes. The person was a monster — there were signs, there always are, and if we look hard enough we'll find them. Or the person was ordinary and something in them broke, an inexplicable flip, a good man gone wrong. After the Cumbria shootings in … Continue reading The Costume of a Fact
Tag: ethics
The Bartleby Triptych: On Vampires, Critics, and Hunger
These three essays orbit Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener" from successive distances. The first attacks the narrator, the second attacks the attack, the third removes the hope of a clean vantage point. Each piece eats the previous one. Together they ask whether any act of understanding can avoid being an act of consumption. Part I: The … Continue reading The Bartleby Triptych: On Vampires, Critics, and Hunger
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