End of Term Revue: Term Two
Lecture no. 22
Dear Heart,
It has been ten lectures since the last End of Term Revue. Accordingly, the time has come once more for us to pause, hang our heads, and think about exactly what it is that we have done.
Here is a brief guide to Lectures 12-21, with links to the archive, accompanied by what I modestly regard to be memorable quotations.
Most of the older lectures require a small paid subscription to access. They take up all my time to research, to check all the citations, and then to edit and polish. I am slow, I know. But I do think the lectures are worth paying for. My intention - indeed, my purpose - is to entertain, educate, and comfort.
12. Lovely Purple Dachshunds: Notes on a Colour
The image of Bosie as Wilde’s colour coded accessory, his Ken doll, makes Salomé the Barbie of Decadence.
An attempt to update Derek Jarman’s book Chroma, with fresh research on the different meanings of purple.
13. The Homoerotic Harems of Christopher Nolan
Nolan uses male faces as non-places. They become blank canvases for his ideas: objects of well-made architecture, sexless, abstracted, of pure function.
Far too good a title to be wasted on a Substack newsletter. And possibly the first attempt to analyse the homoerotica of Christopher Nolan’s films alongside Mark Fisher, Marc Augé, and Boccaccio.
The ultimate aim should be to make an essay that dances delightfully from point to point and gives pleasure through its style as much as its content. Only then will writing become more fun than all the things one does to avoid writing.
The most popular Svelte Lecture so far, probably because it’s stuffed with writing advice. Not just mine, but Angela Carter’s too.
15. The Dandyism of Muriel Spark
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess has the triple appeal of being not just great and short but violent as well. This makes the book an ideal choice for any teenagers who are prone to reluctance, which is all of them.
Dandyism, like eccentricity, is one of my pet subjects. I think it shows in this lecture. One of the many great things about Muriel Spark is that she doesn’t belong to any particular literary gang or type. Like all eccentrics, she belongs to everyone in particular.
16. Jane Austen, Queen of Goth
Blaise Castle is a typical Goth in the modern dress sense too: a lonely youngster in a rural area that needs a spooky, unconventional style to belong to and with which to confuse the neighbours.
The subject of the Gothic is always a winner, but Austen’s Northanger Abbey tends to be left out, I feel, as it’s too Jane Austen-y for Gothic fans, and not Jane Austen-y enough for Austen fans. I’m glad that I got this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in there too. Again.
17. Music and Belonging: Celine Dion, Alan Hollinghust, and American Psycho
To belittle a fellow human being because they prefer Celine Dion to, say, Neutral Milk Hotel, whoever that is, is to be a limited human being oneself.
Another pet subject: the way taste works with identity. Carl Wilson’s book on Celine Dion is in some ways the ultimate music book, questioning as it does the whole point of liking music in the first place.
18. Millennial London Optimism: Finisterre v Love Actually
The London seen in Love Actually, and to a less idealised degree in Finisterre, is a post-industrial haven of freedoms and possibilities. Cheap music venues are plentiful, and art gallery staff, musicians and writers can somehow still afford to live there.
Not enough essays link Love Actually with the third album by the C86 band McCarthy, I find.
19. How to Write an Essay Part 2: Quotations
The first rule of the internet is if something can be taken the wrong way, it will be.
On the importance of backing up one’s claims, whether writing essays for school or columns for magazines.
20. Sherlock Holmes versus the Flâneuse
Irene Adler not only represents a scandal for Bohemia the country, but also the scandal of a woman walking into the territory of what Doyle calls Holmes’s ‘Bohemian soul’, as in a person who lives unconventionally.
Despite reading the Sherlock Holmes stories as a teenager, it was years before I picked up on the pun in the title of ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. I also don’t think I understood the use of ‘Bohemian’ to describe Tom Baker’s Doctor Who costume. Now, of course, I am a Bohemian.
21. Alison Bechdel: Drawing the Punctum
A life with no auras is not enough. One only has to point to the enduring popularity of physical merchandise, from vinyl records to band t-shirts to hardback books by the stars of YouTube and Netflix. It doesn’t matter if such a book is ghost-written. The point is that owning a copy lets a fan touch the aura of their idol.
The tension between the digital and the physical is another pet subject (he said, while about to print this out so he can edit the prose with a pencil).
And here’s a quick reminder of the lectures from Term One. These are all available for paid subscribers to read at any time:
2. Angela Carter, the Beatles, and the Camp Explosion of the 1960s
3. Postmodernism, Eurovision, and the War on Fun
4. Heartstopper, Carry on Loving, and Skeuomorphic Youth
5. The Smiths, Role Models, and Building a Camp Library
6. Building a Camp Library Part 2: Quentin Crisp, David Bowie, Evelyn Waugh
7. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: the private joke that never gets old
8. Suffolk, Arcadia, and Shakespeare’s Flowers
9. Wildness in a Corner: Jarman, Benton End, and Artists' Gardens
10. Dorian Gray and Books as Talismans
I’ll take a break from the Lectures for now. But there will be more to come, assuming a few more people buy a paid subscription. In the meantime, do feel free to send any requests for future subjects.
Thank you for reading,
Dr DE
Bildeston, Suffolk
Congratulations on this brilliant collection.