Addendums; Tenebrism; "Going a Journey"
Reading, Watching 03.30.26
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When the Clock Broke is now out in paperback and available wherever books are sold. If you live in the United Kingdom, it’s also available there. The UK edition is also apparently available all over the world, too! I’ve received reports now of book sightings in places as far as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Christchurch, New Zealand. It seems relatively easy to find in Commonwealth countries and at English-language bookstores abroad.
I also do a film podcast with Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times. On our Patreon, we have a lot of bonus content, including a weekly politics discussion.
I saw an exhibit by the painter of the above at the National Gallery in London. I discovered his work a few years ago while looking for painters who specialized in volcanoes. Unfortunately, none of his pictures of Vesuvius were on exhibition, but this macabre spectacle from the specialist in “tenebrism,” the extreme version of chiaroscuro, put me in mind of the topic of my talk with Max Read tomorrow evening at the Night of Ideas festival at Villa Albertine—"Dark Enlightenment.” We’ll be joined by Maya Vinokour of New York University.
Thanks again to everyone who came out to the talk at King’s College London on Thursday. In case you missed it, here is the text of the lecture. I had a big block quote from Sam Francis describing his vision of an America First foreign policy concept in the speech, but it didn’t transfer over when I copied and pasted it from my doc, so here it is.—
This comes originally from the 1982 essay “Message from MARS: The Social Politics of the New Right,” collected in The New Right Papers.
I bought an 1824 edition of William Hazlitt’s essay collection Table-Talk at Jarndyce Booksellers in Great Russell Street. It contains many of my favorite of his essays, including the apposite On Going a Journey, which I thought of on my way to find dinner on rain-lashed streets:
