The New Overcoat

collage 2016

The year 1922 was considered a literary milestone: Modernism began, at least to an entitled circle of literary critics. The great works, subsequently read in school, were written, arising during, and in the aftermath of, the First World War (World, to the extent Russia, Japan and the United States were involved), the Spanish Flu (Mrs. Dalloway had it) and the recognition of indifferent and hostile mass culture. The state of being uprooted, exiled, and the idea of a lost generation was discussed. Images of wastelands became the context for certain writers. A diagnosis was made and Literature at the time set out to reconcile its world with a world of the past, to find a cure.

So what now, almost one hundred years later? Do writers have a different world on their hands? What are they going to write about? There is this idea real writers cannot help but respond to their circumstance.

Take Zombies. Ken Crist writes of zombies and has been for years, admirably, their nuances, their loves and losses. Zombies figured big at the end of the 20th century, into the 21st, to the extent there is disagreement as to who comprise the infected, who represent the ‘control group.’ Regardless, infection and pandemics figure big and we’re moving toward a new diagnosis. As always, in delivering a diagnosis, the element of denial presents itself, for those receiving the news. The “patient” can’t hear the words spoken: “You have cancer,” or, ”Your child has cancer.” Our house has several layers of thick paint, the Denial, layers now cracking, peeling away, the original wood visible. There are threats as well, but that’s nothing new, maybe a little different as it’s out in the open, zombies climbing over the front gate, on their way to infect your family. Another loss of innocence, as there always is in growing up. This time any different? The abusive spouse is filmed beating his partner, or the kids film dad or mom shagging a sheep in the kitchen, all of it broadcast on social media. The thing is, the disease part, its the same old disease, just that we tend not to recognize it unless its rammed down our throat, are infected by it, or dying from it.

Exciting what the writers will be writing about, and as before, following the ones fallen before them, as they enter their burning buildings and emerge, with any luck (and it does take a certain amount of luck, and money, to emerge) to paint this world and its long shadows.

Hekate moves into a different phase after (and during) Covid, circumstance and mind set altered, if only amplifying the original intent with some restriction. Working hours have been cut. The dollar may be supplanted as world currency, maybe English as a universal language. Who knows. Who cares. We will take care of works discussed with writers with whom there has been correspondence for now. Several collaborations with artists need to be sussed. There is fuck all time, but we’ll take the bits and pieces of cloth left over and sew a nice overcoat for the titular counselor in us all.