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Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Repeating Forms In Nature
Last night I was reading Sean Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful:
There are famous cases of polydactylism in history, including Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII, who apparently had an extra nail on one hand.
Tonight, to take a break from all that, Alan Moore, The Black Dossier:
It seemed only natural that Henry VIII should take King Oberon’s second cousin, the distinctly Faery-blooded Anne Boleyn, with her protuberent eyes and a sixth finger on each hand, to be his second wife.
You see: that’s the trouble with books. Tell me something new! Transport me to another era, away from this dull present. Or give me news I can use. What do the books always say? Anne Boleyn had six fingers, Anne Boleyn had six fingers. Some say there are six basic story-types. Ridiculous! Anne Boleyn had six fingers. The end. I’m very inclined to a neo-Batesonian theory that all books are just made up of repetitions and transformations of the fact that Anne Boleyn had six fingers.
You may say the man who is tired of the fact that Anne Boleyn may have had six fingers on her hand is tired of life. Well then, I am weary, internet, I am weary.
Comments
John--I don’t you if you’ve finished The Black Dossier or not, but, if so or once you do, I want to hear what you think of the final section. It wasn’t altogether clear to me what that derives from, though I suspect something New Wave (Moorcock ?)
You wouldn’t agree, then, that Anne Boleyn’s sixth finger is a quasi-Žižekian nexus of unrepresentable transcendence, a perverse supplement, a mode of tickling the inaccessible Real? The Little (finger) Other that beckons at the inconceivable Big (Thumb) Other?
Would you be energized by the news that, in all likelihood, Anne Boleyn did not have six fingers?
7?
A supernumerary nipple too, IIRC, possibly indicating demon possession or changeling origin.
Every time Anne Boleyn is mentioned I immediately think of the faithless Lady Di and her long, lovely, unsevered neck. How the world has fallen! I’m sure that Harvey Mansfield has written about this. (NOTE: Jane Mansfield’s neck was, in fact, severed. Irony.)
And then, Mother Theresa, Di’s evil double. (Cf. Christopher Hitchens). Once Di was gone ("Di dies”: unused headline opportunity), the bloodsucking nun couldn’t live a week, and was (of course) followed shortly thereafter by President Mobutu.
There are no coincidences.
To follow up on Adam’s comment: All of us have six fingers. The missing one is the phallus.
7?
Nah, just the boring regular five on each hand. The six fingers thing started circulating after Anne grew shorter by a head, thanks to a very problematic source. Some have suggested that there may have been an extra fingernail somewhere, though.
"just the boring regular five on each hand.”
Now that’s news I can use!
Jonathan, haven’t gotten there yet.
I knew who the author of John Emerson’s comment was as soon as I got to the word “unsevered”.
In 1967, when I was fifteen, I met a girl in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, who had six fingers on each hand. She was about my age, maybe a year younger. She look’d at me as she did love. (Well, maybe not.) We held hands & walked around for a while. It was the Summer of Love, after all. As close as I’ve ever come to Faery! I don’t recall her name—perhaps she never told me, perhaps she worked her powers. Everything was different after that summer, though.
I’d like to report that Miriam is no goddamn fun at all.
Maybe Kierkegaard wasn’t a hunchback either, but where’s the fun in that?
At least Toulouse-Lautrecht really was a dwarf. And King Leopold Hogmouth really did have a weird jaw.
I’d like to report that Miriam is no goddamn fun at all.
I’ll have you know that I’m a regular fountain of joy and excitement, especially after I’ve spent several hours combing through the bookshelves at Powell’s.
Portland or Chicago?
Much more experience with Chicago, having lived there for six years and all, but my one visit to the Powell’s in Portland was certainly...enjoyable. Also hard on my wallet.
I just passed through Portland, and bought $90 worth of art books averaging $10 each. It’s amazing what you can get at low prices (the complete etchings of Goya were in that lot, for example).