The Obsolescence of Mourning
→ April 28th, 2009 → the blog
As Kate mentioned regarding vampires, it may be that a need for mourning has become “culturally irrelevant” these days. Along those lines, I was actually thinking of W. G. Sebald’s essay “Campo Santo,” which discusses mourning practices in Corsica: “The doors and shutters of the house afflicted by misfortune were closed, and sometimes the whole [...]
Brick Eaters
→ April 22nd, 2009 → the blog
Several weeks ago National Geographic reported the discovery of a “vampire” skull, that is, the remnants of a plague victim into whose mouth a brick had been stuffed, a form of postmortem exorcism which would indicate the first remains of a suspected vampire: “as the human stomach decays, it release a dark ‘purge fluid.’ This [...]
