In one of my recent weekend trips to Philadelphia, I went to the Parkway Central Library to visit Grip. If you are a reader of Charles Dickens or Edgar Allan Poe you may know a thing or two about him.
Author - Nemo Nox
Lists can be used for many purposes, some more practical (like a shopping list) and others more literary (like Vladimir Nabokov’s inventory of tourist attractions in Lolita), some more serious (like the articles of the United States Constitution) and others more lighthearted (like Benjamin Franklin’s 228 synonyms for drunkenness). Lists can also be an entertaining format to communicate tastes and preferences, and these are the ones that always intrigue and entertain me. Here are the main reasons why I enjoy making lists of favorites and looking at other people’s lists of favorites. Organized, of course, as a list.
Crimes from pulp fiction books reenacted by a real murderer. A locked-room mystery disrupting a conference about Edgar Allan Poe. Members of a gastronomy club being killed one by one right after having their favorite dishes. These are just a few of the plots from L.F. VerĂssimo’s novels. But what really makes them interesting to me are their narrative structures and the cultural artifacts that fuel them.
I hadn’t been intrigued about The Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient epic poem from Mesopotamia, until the coincidence of seeing, only a few weeks apart, the story featured in both a Star Trek episode and a graphic novel by Jim Starlin.
An elsewherean is a person who, regardless of current location, is originally from somewhere else. But how would that be possible? Please allow me to explain.