Iä! Iä! Bruuuuuuce Fhtagn!, or, Tramps Like Us, Baby We Were Born to Summon Unspeakable Doom from Beyond the Stars

The Device of the Sinister Magician in Lovecraft and Springsteen

Fair warning: I’m about to be a huge nerd right here.

First of all, what I’m not claiming.  I am not claiming that the writings of H.P.  Lovecraft have had any significant direct, or even indirect, influence on Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting; much less that Springsteen has consciously based any lyrics on Lovecraft.

What I am claiming is that both Springsteen’s song “Magic,” from the last year’s record of the same name, and Lovecraft’s iconic short story “Nyarlathotep” draw on a literary trope I’ll tentatively call the Device of the Sinister Magician, and that if present in such disparate works, the Device can reasonably be surmised to predate them both, and with a bit of looking can probably be found in other texts.

If You've Ever Wondered…

…what Nobel-winning economists think of world-jumping medieval drug smugglers, you should go check out the Charles Stross book event at Crooked Timber.  It’s absolutely fascinating stuff, and has successfully made me really want to read Stross, and I don’t even like SF.

Holy Crap. It's For Real.

Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President.  George W. Bush is no longer in office.

Wow.

Nouning Considered Harmful*

Note: I’ve taken the opportunity of Melissa McEwan’s generous offer of a guest post at Shakesville to revise this post to clarify some phrasing and expand on some areas I didn’t feel I’d covered sufficiently.

Here’s the thing: using adjectives as nouns obscures meaning, harms discourse, impairs communication, and ultimately reduces our ability to think in a careful and nuanced way about controversial issues, let alone effect social progress.  Anyone who wants to see our society become less divided rather than more, and in particular anyone who wants to combat racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other forms of prejudice and modes of oppression, should try hard to avoid the practice. Don’t call anyone a sexist, or a racist, or a homophobe. Here’s why.