#ofmiceandmen — Public Fediverse posts

Tell Me About the Rabbits One More Time: On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is my first Steinbeck, and as per usual, I went into it knowing practically nothing. Of course I knew the title. I knew Steinbeck’s name and had some hazy association of him with the Great Depression, poverty, migrant labor, dusty American landscapes, perhaps men in overalls staring grimly toward the horizon. That was about the extent of my preparation. I did not know George and Lennie were waiting for me. I certainly did not know what Steinbeck was going to do to them.

Perhaps ignorance is the way to read certain books.

The book is astonishingly short, almost suspiciously so. My copy is only a little over a hundred pages, and I finished it in probably two sittings. Yet it has the emotional weight of something much larger. I have read novels three times its length that contain half its humanity. Steinbeck’s prose is plain, controlled, sometimes almost biblical in its simplicity, but there is an enormous difference between simple writing and simplistic writing. He knows precisely how much to say and when to stop. The restraint is part of the cruelty. This is what I like about novellas. Steinbeck does not need four or five hundred pages to construct a world because the world he wants to show us is already narrow: a bunkhouse, a ranch, a few men, a woman, some rabbits that exist mostly in the imagination, and two itinerant workers carrying between them a private mythology about a piece of land they will someday own.

That dream matters because almost everyone in this book is lonely, worn down, or disappointed by life. George and Lennie, at least, have each other.

I felt particularly for George. There is a weariness in him that Steinbeck never sentimentalizes. He loves Lennie, although “love” is perhaps too neat a word for what exists between them. There is affection, obligation, frustration, pity, companionship, responsibility, even resentment. George must constantly think for two people. He anticipates Lennie’s mistakes, explains the world to him, protects him from other people and other people from him.

Lennie, meanwhile, possesses tremendous physical strength and almost no understanding of its consequences. He likes soft things. Mice. Puppies. Rabbits. A woman’s hair. He reaches toward the world with the innocence of a child while inhabiting a body capable of terrible damage. What he loves, he destroys. And somehow that innocence touched me.

Not because Lennie is harmless. He isn’t. That is precisely the tragedy. Innocence and harmlessness are not the same thing, and Steinbeck understands the distinction. Lennie does not comprehend evil in the ordinary moral sense, yet suffering follows him anyway. Intentions cannot resurrect a dead mouse, restore a crushed hand, or bring a dead woman back to life. I prefer morality to be clean. I want guilt to correspond neatly to intention. Steinbeck instead gives you someone capable of horrifying acts without possessing anything you’d comfortably call malice.

Then there is George.

He complains about Lennie. He fantasizes about the easier life he could have alone. He scolds him like a child, protects him like a brother, guides him like a parent, and sometimes seems almost imprisoned by him. And yet George stays. That matters.

They do not appear to be blood relatives, which makes the bond stranger and, to me at least, more moving. George has no obvious familial obligation to Lennie. Whatever obligation exists has been created between them. Friendship has become responsibility. Their relationship fascinated me because at times George and Lennie seemed less like two companions than two portions of the same human being. I kept entertaining the thought, perhaps unfairly, perhaps too psychologically, that Lennie could almost be George’s invention. A psychic double. George is calculation, restraint, memory, caution. Lennie is appetite, impulse, fantasy, longing. George knows reality. Lennie inhabits desire. George remembers what must be done. Lennie remembers the rabbits. Together they form something strangely whole.

Maybe that is why their separation at the end feels like an amputation.

Their dream of owning land is similarly divided between them. George supplies its architecture; Lennie supplies its faith. George describes the little farm, the vegetables, the animals, the freedom from bosses. Lennie returns obsessively to the rabbits. “Tell about the rabbits” becomes almost a prayer.

The farm is less an economic ambition than an imagined refuge from contingency. A few acres. Vegetables. Animals. Rabbits. No boss. No running. No fear. If they can only reach that place, perhaps George can stop worrying and Lennie can finally exist somewhere without accidentally destroying what he touches.

Steinbeck seems to understand that some dreams are necessary precisely because they may never happen. They allow people to endure the present.

There is very little excess in his writing. The prose is plain without being impoverished, lyrical without showing off. Even the beautiful descriptions of nature are not merely decorative. The landscape seems indifferent to the human dramas occurring inside it. Men suffer, dream, kill, disappear. The river continues. The trees remain. Nature neither condemns nor absolves anyone.

And Steinbeck prepares you for the ending long before it arrives.

One part that devastated me even before Lennie’s death was Candy’s old dog. The dog is ancient, weak, suffering, no longer useful. Candy has had him since he was a pup, but he eventually agrees to let Carlson put him down. Rationally, it is mercy. Emotionally, it is something much harder. Candy has to consent to losing a creature that has accompanied him for years. Afterward, he regrets that he did not kill the dog himself.

That regret hangs over George’s final decision. Candy teaches him, perhaps without meaning to, that if someone you love must die, there may be one final and horrible tenderness in making sure the last hand upon him is yours. I hated that this made sense.

The ending devastated me because George does not simply kill Lennie. He gives him the dream one final time. He tells him about the rabbits.

Lennie dies facing the world he wanted rather than the world coming to punish him. George allows him to remain inside the dream until the final second. It is violence that resembles mercy, or mercy forced to take the shape of violence. I do not know that the distinction can ever be made comfortable.

And George is free afterward. That may be the cruelest thing one can say about the ending.

No more running because of Lennie. No more explaining. No more watching him. No more carrying another man’s life alongside his own. George has finally obtained the independence he sometimes imagined wanting, but only by destroying the person who made that independence seem desirable.

The dream of freedom arrives, except it looks nothing like the dream.

For this reason, I ultimately read Of Mice and Men as a story about saying goodbye.

Not merely a goodbye to Lennie, but a goodbye to the person one has been while loving another person. George kills Lennie, yes, but he also kills the strange little world that existed only because there were two of them inside it. The farm dies. The rabbits die. Their private language dies. George will continue living, presumably, but the George who traveled with Lennie is finished.

Perhaps this is why my idea of Lennie as George’s psychological double refuses to leave me. If Lennie represents some dependent, dreaming, innocent portion of George himself, then the final gunshot becomes darker still. Survival sometimes demands that you abandon possibilities you once needed in order to keep living.

A very short book, then. Barely enough pages to occupy two sittings.

And somehow enough room for an entire goodbye.

Tell Me About the Rabbits One More Time: On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is my first Steinbeck, and as per usual, I went into it knowing practically nothing. Of course I knew the title. I knew Steinbeck’s name and had some hazy association of him with the Great Depression, poverty, migrant labor, dusty American landscapes, perhaps men in overalls staring grimly toward the horizon. That was about the extent of my preparation. I did not know George and Lennie were waiting for me. I certainly did not know what Steinbeck was going to do to them.

Perhaps ignorance is the way to read certain books.

The book is astonishingly short, almost suspiciously so. My copy is only a little over a hundred pages, and I finished it in probably two sittings. Yet it has the emotional weight of something much larger. I have read novels three times its length that contain half its humanity. Steinbeck’s prose is plain, controlled, sometimes almost biblical in its simplicity, but there is an enormous difference between simple writing and simplistic writing. He knows precisely how much to say and when to stop. The restraint is part of the cruelty. This is what I like about novellas. Steinbeck does not need four or five hundred pages to construct a world because the world he wants to show us is already narrow: a bunkhouse, a ranch, a few men, a woman, some rabbits that exist mostly in the imagination, and two itinerant workers carrying between them a private mythology about a piece of land they will someday own.

That dream matters because almost everyone in this book is lonely, worn down, or disappointed by life. George and Lennie, at least, have each other.

I felt particularly for George. There is a weariness in him that Steinbeck never sentimentalizes. He loves Lennie, although “love” is perhaps too neat a word for what exists between them. There is affection, obligation, frustration, pity, companionship, responsibility, even resentment. George must constantly think for two people. He anticipates Lennie’s mistakes, explains the world to him, protects him from other people and other people from him.

Lennie, meanwhile, possesses tremendous physical strength and almost no understanding of its consequences. He likes soft things. Mice. Puppies. Rabbits. A woman’s hair. He reaches toward the world with the innocence of a child while inhabiting a body capable of terrible damage. What he loves, he destroys. And somehow that innocence touched me.

Not because Lennie is harmless. He isn’t. That is precisely the tragedy. Innocence and harmlessness are not the same thing, and Steinbeck understands the distinction. Lennie does not comprehend evil in the ordinary moral sense, yet suffering follows him anyway. Intentions cannot resurrect a dead mouse, restore a crushed hand, or bring a dead woman back to life. I prefer morality to be clean. I want guilt to correspond neatly to intention. Steinbeck instead gives you someone capable of horrifying acts without possessing anything you’d comfortably call malice.

Then there is George.

He complains about Lennie. He fantasizes about the easier life he could have alone. He scolds him like a child, protects him like a brother, guides him like a parent, and sometimes seems almost imprisoned by him. And yet George stays. That matters.

They do not appear to be blood relatives, which makes the bond stranger and, to me at least, more moving. George has no obvious familial obligation to Lennie. Whatever obligation exists has been created between them. Friendship has become responsibility. Their relationship fascinated me because at times George and Lennie seemed less like two companions than two portions of the same human being. I kept entertaining the thought, perhaps unfairly, perhaps too psychologically, that Lennie could almost be George’s invention. A psychic double. George is calculation, restraint, memory, caution. Lennie is appetite, impulse, fantasy, longing. George knows reality. Lennie inhabits desire. George remembers what must be done. Lennie remembers the rabbits. Together they form something strangely whole.

Maybe that is why their separation at the end feels like an amputation.

Their dream of owning land is similarly divided between them. George supplies its architecture; Lennie supplies its faith. George describes the little farm, the vegetables, the animals, the freedom from bosses. Lennie returns obsessively to the rabbits. “Tell about the rabbits” becomes almost a prayer.

The farm is less an economic ambition than an imagined refuge from contingency. A few acres. Vegetables. Animals. Rabbits. No boss. No running. No fear. If they can only reach that place, perhaps George can stop worrying and Lennie can finally exist somewhere without accidentally destroying what he touches.

Steinbeck seems to understand that some dreams are necessary precisely because they may never happen. They allow people to endure the present.

There is very little excess in his writing. The prose is plain without being impoverished, lyrical without showing off. Even the beautiful descriptions of nature are not merely decorative. The landscape seems indifferent to the human dramas occurring inside it. Men suffer, dream, kill, disappear. The river continues. The trees remain. Nature neither condemns nor absolves anyone.

And Steinbeck prepares you for the ending long before it arrives.

One part that devastated me even before Lennie’s death was Candy’s old dog. The dog is ancient, weak, suffering, no longer useful. Candy has had him since he was a pup, but he eventually agrees to let Carlson put him down. Rationally, it is mercy. Emotionally, it is something much harder. Candy has to consent to losing a creature that has accompanied him for years. Afterward, he regrets that he did not kill the dog himself.

That regret hangs over George’s final decision. Candy teaches him, perhaps without meaning to, that if someone you love must die, there may be one final and horrible tenderness in making sure the last hand upon him is yours. I hated that this made sense.

The ending devastated me because George does not simply kill Lennie. He gives him the dream one final time. He tells him about the rabbits.

Lennie dies facing the world he wanted rather than the world coming to punish him. George allows him to remain inside the dream until the final second. It is violence that resembles mercy, or mercy forced to take the shape of violence. I do not know that the distinction can ever be made comfortable.

And George is free afterward. That may be the cruelest thing one can say about the ending.

No more running because of Lennie. No more explaining. No more watching him. No more carrying another man’s life alongside his own. George has finally obtained the independence he sometimes imagined wanting, but only by destroying the person who made that independence seem desirable.

The dream of freedom arrives, except it looks nothing like the dream.

For this reason, I ultimately read Of Mice and Men as a story about saying goodbye.

Not merely a goodbye to Lennie, but a goodbye to the person one has been while loving another person. George kills Lennie, yes, but he also kills the strange little world that existed only because there were two of them inside it. The farm dies. The rabbits die. Their private language dies. George will continue living, presumably, but the George who traveled with Lennie is finished.

Perhaps this is why my idea of Lennie as George’s psychological double refuses to leave me. If Lennie represents some dependent, dreaming, innocent portion of George himself, then the final gunshot becomes darker still. Survival sometimes demands that you abandon possibilities you once needed in order to keep living.

A very short book, then. Barely enough pages to occupy two sittings.

And somehow enough room for an entire goodbye.

Tell Me About the Rabbits One More Time: On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is my first Steinbeck, and as per usual, I went into it knowing practically nothing. Of course I knew the title. I knew Steinbeck’s name and had some hazy association of him with the Great Depression, poverty, migrant labor, dusty American landscapes, perhaps men in overalls staring grimly toward the horizon. That was about the extent of my preparation. I did not know George and Lennie were waiting for me. I certainly did not know what Steinbeck was going to do to them.

Perhaps ignorance is the way to read certain books.

The book is astonishingly short, almost suspiciously so. My copy is only a little over a hundred pages, and I finished it in probably two sittings. Yet it has the emotional weight of something much larger. I have read novels three times its length that contain half its humanity. Steinbeck’s prose is plain, controlled, sometimes almost biblical in its simplicity, but there is an enormous difference between simple writing and simplistic writing. He knows precisely how much to say and when to stop. The restraint is part of the cruelty. This is what I like about novellas. Steinbeck does not need four or five hundred pages to construct a world because the world he wants to show us is already narrow: a bunkhouse, a ranch, a few men, a woman, some rabbits that exist mostly in the imagination, and two itinerant workers carrying between them a private mythology about a piece of land they will someday own.

That dream matters because almost everyone in this book is lonely, worn down, or disappointed by life. George and Lennie, at least, have each other.

I felt particularly for George. There is a weariness in him that Steinbeck never sentimentalizes. He loves Lennie, although “love” is perhaps too neat a word for what exists between them. There is affection, obligation, frustration, pity, companionship, responsibility, even resentment. George must constantly think for two people. He anticipates Lennie’s mistakes, explains the world to him, protects him from other people and other people from him.

Lennie, meanwhile, possesses tremendous physical strength and almost no understanding of its consequences. He likes soft things. Mice. Puppies. Rabbits. A woman’s hair. He reaches toward the world with the innocence of a child while inhabiting a body capable of terrible damage. What he loves, he destroys. And somehow that innocence touched me.

Not because Lennie is harmless. He isn’t. That is precisely the tragedy. Innocence and harmlessness are not the same thing, and Steinbeck understands the distinction. Lennie does not comprehend evil in the ordinary moral sense, yet suffering follows him anyway. Intentions cannot resurrect a dead mouse, restore a crushed hand, or bring a dead woman back to life. I prefer morality to be clean. I want guilt to correspond neatly to intention. Steinbeck instead gives you someone capable of horrifying acts without possessing anything you’d comfortably call malice.

Then there is George.

He complains about Lennie. He fantasizes about the easier life he could have alone. He scolds him like a child, protects him like a brother, guides him like a parent, and sometimes seems almost imprisoned by him. And yet George stays. That matters.

They do not appear to be blood relatives, which makes the bond stranger and, to me at least, more moving. George has no obvious familial obligation to Lennie. Whatever obligation exists has been created between them. Friendship has become responsibility. Their relationship fascinated me because at times George and Lennie seemed less like two companions than two portions of the same human being. I kept entertaining the thought, perhaps unfairly, perhaps too psychologically, that Lennie could almost be George’s invention. A psychic double. George is calculation, restraint, memory, caution. Lennie is appetite, impulse, fantasy, longing. George knows reality. Lennie inhabits desire. George remembers what must be done. Lennie remembers the rabbits. Together they form something strangely whole.

Maybe that is why their separation at the end feels like an amputation.

Their dream of owning land is similarly divided between them. George supplies its architecture; Lennie supplies its faith. George describes the little farm, the vegetables, the animals, the freedom from bosses. Lennie returns obsessively to the rabbits. “Tell about the rabbits” becomes almost a prayer.

The farm is less an economic ambition than an imagined refuge from contingency. A few acres. Vegetables. Animals. Rabbits. No boss. No running. No fear. If they can only reach that place, perhaps George can stop worrying and Lennie can finally exist somewhere without accidentally destroying what he touches.

Steinbeck seems to understand that some dreams are necessary precisely because they may never happen. They allow people to endure the present.

There is very little excess in his writing. The prose is plain without being impoverished, lyrical without showing off. Even the beautiful descriptions of nature are not merely decorative. The landscape seems indifferent to the human dramas occurring inside it. Men suffer, dream, kill, disappear. The river continues. The trees remain. Nature neither condemns nor absolves anyone.

And Steinbeck prepares you for the ending long before it arrives.

One part that devastated me even before Lennie’s death was Candy’s old dog. The dog is ancient, weak, suffering, no longer useful. Candy has had him since he was a pup, but he eventually agrees to let Carlson put him down. Rationally, it is mercy. Emotionally, it is something much harder. Candy has to consent to losing a creature that has accompanied him for years. Afterward, he regrets that he did not kill the dog himself.

That regret hangs over George’s final decision. Candy teaches him, perhaps without meaning to, that if someone you love must die, there may be one final and horrible tenderness in making sure the last hand upon him is yours. I hated that this made sense.

The ending devastated me because George does not simply kill Lennie. He gives him the dream one final time. He tells him about the rabbits.

Lennie dies facing the world he wanted rather than the world coming to punish him. George allows him to remain inside the dream until the final second. It is violence that resembles mercy, or mercy forced to take the shape of violence. I do not know that the distinction can ever be made comfortable.

And George is free afterward. That may be the cruelest thing one can say about the ending.

No more running because of Lennie. No more explaining. No more watching him. No more carrying another man’s life alongside his own. George has finally obtained the independence he sometimes imagined wanting, but only by destroying the person who made that independence seem desirable.

The dream of freedom arrives, except it looks nothing like the dream.

For this reason, I ultimately read Of Mice and Men as a story about saying goodbye.

Not merely a goodbye to Lennie, but a goodbye to the person one has been while loving another person. George kills Lennie, yes, but he also kills the strange little world that existed only because there were two of them inside it. The farm dies. The rabbits die. Their private language dies. George will continue living, presumably, but the George who traveled with Lennie is finished.

Perhaps this is why my idea of Lennie as George’s psychological double refuses to leave me. If Lennie represents some dependent, dreaming, innocent portion of George himself, then the final gunshot becomes darker still. Survival sometimes demands that you abandon possibilities you once needed in order to keep living.

A very short book, then. Barely enough pages to occupy two sittings.

And somehow enough room for an entire goodbye.

Tell Me About the Rabbits One More Time: On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is my first Steinbeck, and as per usual, I went into it knowing practically nothing. Of course I knew the title. I knew Steinbeck’s name and had some hazy association of him with the Great Depression, poverty, migrant labor, dusty American landscapes, perhaps men in overalls staring grimly toward the horizon. That was about the extent of my preparation. I did not know George and Lennie were waiting for me. I certainly did not know what Steinbeck was going to do to them.

Perhaps ignorance is the way to read certain books.

The book is astonishingly short, almost suspiciously so. My copy is only a little over a hundred pages, and I finished it in probably two sittings. Yet it has the emotional weight of something much larger. I have read novels three times its length that contain half its humanity. Steinbeck’s prose is plain, controlled, sometimes almost biblical in its simplicity, but there is an enormous difference between simple writing and simplistic writing. He knows precisely how much to say and when to stop. The restraint is part of the cruelty. This is what I like about novellas. Steinbeck does not need four or five hundred pages to construct a world because the world he wants to show us is already narrow: a bunkhouse, a ranch, a few men, a woman, some rabbits that exist mostly in the imagination, and two itinerant workers carrying between them a private mythology about a piece of land they will someday own.

That dream matters because almost everyone in this book is lonely, worn down, or disappointed by life. George and Lennie, at least, have each other.

I felt particularly for George. There is a weariness in him that Steinbeck never sentimentalizes. He loves Lennie, although “love” is perhaps too neat a word for what exists between them. There is affection, obligation, frustration, pity, companionship, responsibility, even resentment. George must constantly think for two people. He anticipates Lennie’s mistakes, explains the world to him, protects him from other people and other people from him.

Lennie, meanwhile, possesses tremendous physical strength and almost no understanding of its consequences. He likes soft things. Mice. Puppies. Rabbits. A woman’s hair. He reaches toward the world with the innocence of a child while inhabiting a body capable of terrible damage. What he loves, he destroys. And somehow that innocence touched me.

Not because Lennie is harmless. He isn’t. That is precisely the tragedy. Innocence and harmlessness are not the same thing, and Steinbeck understands the distinction. Lennie does not comprehend evil in the ordinary moral sense, yet suffering follows him anyway. Intentions cannot resurrect a dead mouse, restore a crushed hand, or bring a dead woman back to life. I prefer morality to be clean. I want guilt to correspond neatly to intention. Steinbeck instead gives you someone capable of horrifying acts without possessing anything you’d comfortably call malice.

Then there is George.

He complains about Lennie. He fantasizes about the easier life he could have alone. He scolds him like a child, protects him like a brother, guides him like a parent, and sometimes seems almost imprisoned by him. And yet George stays. That matters.

They do not appear to be blood relatives, which makes the bond stranger and, to me at least, more moving. George has no obvious familial obligation to Lennie. Whatever obligation exists has been created between them. Friendship has become responsibility. Their relationship fascinated me because at times George and Lennie seemed less like two companions than two portions of the same human being. I kept entertaining the thought, perhaps unfairly, perhaps too psychologically, that Lennie could almost be George’s invention. A psychic double. George is calculation, restraint, memory, caution. Lennie is appetite, impulse, fantasy, longing. George knows reality. Lennie inhabits desire. George remembers what must be done. Lennie remembers the rabbits. Together they form something strangely whole.

Maybe that is why their separation at the end feels like an amputation.

Their dream of owning land is similarly divided between them. George supplies its architecture; Lennie supplies its faith. George describes the little farm, the vegetables, the animals, the freedom from bosses. Lennie returns obsessively to the rabbits. “Tell about the rabbits” becomes almost a prayer.

The farm is less an economic ambition than an imagined refuge from contingency. A few acres. Vegetables. Animals. Rabbits. No boss. No running. No fear. If they can only reach that place, perhaps George can stop worrying and Lennie can finally exist somewhere without accidentally destroying what he touches.

Steinbeck seems to understand that some dreams are necessary precisely because they may never happen. They allow people to endure the present.

There is very little excess in his writing. The prose is plain without being impoverished, lyrical without showing off. Even the beautiful descriptions of nature are not merely decorative. The landscape seems indifferent to the human dramas occurring inside it. Men suffer, dream, kill, disappear. The river continues. The trees remain. Nature neither condemns nor absolves anyone.

And Steinbeck prepares you for the ending long before it arrives.

One part that devastated me even before Lennie’s death was Candy’s old dog. The dog is ancient, weak, suffering, no longer useful. Candy has had him since he was a pup, but he eventually agrees to let Carlson put him down. Rationally, it is mercy. Emotionally, it is something much harder. Candy has to consent to losing a creature that has accompanied him for years. Afterward, he regrets that he did not kill the dog himself.

That regret hangs over George’s final decision. Candy teaches him, perhaps without meaning to, that if someone you love must die, there may be one final and horrible tenderness in making sure the last hand upon him is yours. I hated that this made sense.

The ending devastated me because George does not simply kill Lennie. He gives him the dream one final time. He tells him about the rabbits.

Lennie dies facing the world he wanted rather than the world coming to punish him. George allows him to remain inside the dream until the final second. It is violence that resembles mercy, or mercy forced to take the shape of violence. I do not know that the distinction can ever be made comfortable.

And George is free afterward. That may be the cruelest thing one can say about the ending.

No more running because of Lennie. No more explaining. No more watching him. No more carrying another man’s life alongside his own. George has finally obtained the independence he sometimes imagined wanting, but only by destroying the person who made that independence seem desirable.

The dream of freedom arrives, except it looks nothing like the dream.

For this reason, I ultimately read Of Mice and Men as a story about saying goodbye.

Not merely a goodbye to Lennie, but a goodbye to the person one has been while loving another person. George kills Lennie, yes, but he also kills the strange little world that existed only because there were two of them inside it. The farm dies. The rabbits die. Their private language dies. George will continue living, presumably, but the George who traveled with Lennie is finished.

Perhaps this is why my idea of Lennie as George’s psychological double refuses to leave me. If Lennie represents some dependent, dreaming, innocent portion of George himself, then the final gunshot becomes darker still. Survival sometimes demands that you abandon possibilities you once needed in order to keep living.

A very short book, then. Barely enough pages to occupy two sittings.

And somehow enough room for an entire goodbye.

Istanbul cultural events: concerts, theater, exhibitions this week

Istanbul will host a wide range of cultural and artistic events this week, including concerts, theater performances, exhibitions,…
#EuropeSays #Turkiye #Istanbul #concert #exhibition #ofmiceandmen #theaters
https://www.europesays.com/turkiye/45525/

https://www.europesays.com/at/210200/ Of Mice & Men sagen sämtliche Sommer-Shows in Europa ab #Absage #Auftritte #EU #Europa #Europe #Konzerte #OfMiceAndMen #ReloadFestival #Unearth #Vended #Wacken

A little patch of land.
Bread on the table.
A dear friend you can talk to.
A small house you can call Home.
Rabbits…

Such a modest dream. And yet so impossibly out of reach.

Which character from this story stayed with you the most?

#Steinbeck #books #fiction #shortstory #OfMiceandMen #story #JohnSteinbeck #book #bookstodon @bookstodon #tragedy #loneliness #literature #discussion #classic #booksky #BookDiscussion #BookTok #bookstagram #bookstadon #bookstack #friends

A little patch of land.
Bread on the table.
A dear friend you can talk to.
A small house you can call Home.
Rabbits…

Such a modest dream. And yet so impossibly out of reach.

Which character from this story stayed with you the most?

#Steinbeck #books #fiction #shortstory #OfMiceandMen #story #JohnSteinbeck #book #bookstodon @bookstodon #tragedy #loneliness #literature #discussion #classic #booksky #BookDiscussion #BookTok #bookstagram #bookstadon #bookstack #friends

A little patch of land.
Bread on the table.
A dear friend you can talk to.
A small house you can call Home.
Rabbits…

Such a modest dream. And yet so impossibly out of reach.

Which character from this story stayed with you the most?

#Steinbeck #books #fiction #shortstory #OfMiceandMen #story #JohnSteinbeck #book #bookstodon @bookstodon #tragedy #loneliness #literature #discussion #classic #booksky #BookDiscussion #BookTok #bookstagram #bookstadon #bookstack #friends

A little patch of land.
Bread on the table.
A dear friend you can talk to.
A small house you can call Home.
Rabbits…

Such a modest dream. And yet so impossibly out of reach.

Which character from this story stayed with you the most?

#Steinbeck #books #fiction #shortstory #OfMiceandMen #story #JohnSteinbeck #book #bookstodon @bookstodon #tragedy #loneliness #literature #discussion #classic #booksky #BookDiscussion #BookTok #bookstagram #bookstadon #bookstack #friends

@withaveeay

#OfMiceAndMen 😉

@withaveeay

#OfMiceAndMen 😉

@withaveeay

#OfMiceAndMen 😉

@withaveeay

#OfMiceAndMen 😉

#Movies #CloseCall #Sobbing #Wrecked #OfMiceAndMen #Sinise #Malkovich

I almost just clicked on Of Mice and Men (1992) with John Malkovich and Gary Sinese.

I remembered I cannot EVER watch that again.

#Movies #CloseCall #Sobbing #Wrecked #OfMiceAndMen #Sinise #Malkovich

I almost just clicked on Of Mice and Men (1992) with John Malkovich and Gary Sinese.

I remembered I cannot EVER watch that again.

#Movies #CloseCall #Sobbing #Wrecked #OfMiceAndMen #Sinise #Malkovich

I almost just clicked on Of Mice and Men (1992) with John Malkovich and Gary Sinese.

I remembered I cannot EVER watch that again.

#Movies #CloseCall #Sobbing #Wrecked #OfMiceAndMen #Sinise #Malkovich

I almost just clicked on Of Mice and Men (1992) with John Malkovich and Gary Sinese.

I remembered I cannot EVER watch that again.

Time for a new #BookAtBedtime. So, tonight I will be starting #OfMiceAndMen by #JohnSteinbeck.

#Books #Literature #USLiterature #ClassicFiction

Time for a new #BookAtBedtime. So, tonight I will be starting #OfMiceAndMen by #JohnSteinbeck.

#Books #Literature #USLiterature #ClassicFiction

Time for a new #BookAtBedtime. So, tonight I will be starting #OfMiceAndMen by #JohnSteinbeck.

#Books #Literature #USLiterature #ClassicFiction

Time for a new #BookAtBedtime. So, tonight I will be starting #OfMiceAndMen by #JohnSteinbeck.

#Books #Literature #USLiterature #ClassicFiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This adaptation of #JohnSteinbeck's #OfMiceAndMen with #LonChaney & #BurgessMeredeth was a favorite of mine when I was young + rewatching it now, it did not disappoint. Nominated for 4 #Oscars

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031742/reference/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This adaptation of #JohnSteinbeck's #OfMiceAndMen with #LonChaney & #BurgessMeredeth was a favorite of mine when I was young + rewatching it now, it did not disappoint. Nominated for 4 #Oscars

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031742/reference/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This adaptation of #JohnSteinbeck's #OfMiceAndMen with #LonChaney & #BurgessMeredeth was a favorite of mine when I was young + rewatching it now, it did not disappoint. Nominated for 4 #Oscars

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031742/reference/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This adaptation of #JohnSteinbeck's #OfMiceAndMen with #LonChaney & #BurgessMeredeth was a favorite of mine when I was young + rewatching it now, it did not disappoint. Nominated for 4 #Oscars

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031742/reference/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Which way did he go George, which way did he go?

"Which way did he go, George?" from the 1940 Tex Avery animated short Of Fox and Hounds spoken by hound Willoughby, parodying the character Lennie from the 1939 film adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

#looneytunes #whichwaydidhegogeorge #ofmiceandmen #offoxandhound #cartoon

Which way did he go George, which way did he go?

"Which way did he go, George?" from the 1940 Tex Avery animated short Of Fox and Hounds spoken by hound Willoughby, parodying the character Lennie from the 1939 film adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

#looneytunes #whichwaydidhegogeorge #ofmiceandmen #offoxandhound #cartoon

Which way did he go George, which way did he go?

"Which way did he go, George?" from the 1940 Tex Avery animated short Of Fox and Hounds spoken by hound Willoughby, parodying the character Lennie from the 1939 film adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

#looneytunes #whichwaydidhegogeorge #ofmiceandmen #offoxandhound #cartoon

Of Mice & Men’s new album really delivers. A natural progression from the last two.

#OfMiceAndMen

Of Mice & Men’s new album really delivers. A natural progression from the last two.

#OfMiceAndMen

Of Mice & Men’s new album really delivers. A natural progression from the last two.

#OfMiceAndMen

Of Mice & Men’s new album really delivers. A natural progression from the last two.

#OfMiceAndMen

Das neue @[email protected] ist draußen. Dieses Mal habe ich ein Photo vom #OfMiceAndMen Drummer #ValentinoArteaga beigesteuert. Holt euch eure Ausgabe hier: www.ox-fanzine.de/fuze #fuzemagazine #fuze #music #musicmagazine #printlives #sonya7RV #concertphotographer #sony135mm

Das neue @[email protected] ist draußen. Dieses Mal habe ich ein Photo vom #OfMiceAndMen Drummer #ValentinoArteaga beigesteuert. Holt euch eure Ausgabe hier: www.ox-fanzine.de/fuze #fuzemagazine #fuze #music #musicmagazine #printlives #sonya7RV #concertphotographer #sony135mm

Das neue @[email protected] ist draußen. Dieses Mal habe ich ein Photo vom #OfMiceAndMen Drummer #ValentinoArteaga beigesteuert. Holt euch eure Ausgabe hier: www.ox-fanzine.de/fuze #fuzemagazine #fuze #music #musicmagazine #printlives #sonya7RV #concertphotographer #sony135mm

New & Noteworthy: Embrace the Releases – 11/14/2025:

#NewNoteworthy #NewMusic #NovemberReleases #TheDevilWearsPrada #OfMiceAndMen #Mezzrow

Link: https://metalinsider.net/columns/new-noteworthy-columns/new-noteworthy-embrace-the-releases-11-14-2025

New & Noteworthy: Embrace the Releases – 11/14/2025:

#NewNoteworthy #NewMusic #NovemberReleases #TheDevilWearsPrada #OfMiceAndMen #Mezzrow

Link: https://metalinsider.net/columns/new-noteworthy-columns/new-noteworthy-embrace-the-releases-11-14-2025

#NowPlaying #NewMusicTuesday "Wake Up" - #OfMiceAndMen https://youtu.be/tXAc5tQ_CVc?si=JKRymPr6wruKX5Dt

Of Mice & Men share “Wake Up” video; new album arriving in November:

#OfMiceAndMen #WakeUp #NewSingle #NewAlbum #NovemberReleases

Link: https://metalinsider.net/video/of-mice-new-album-arriving-in-november

Of Mice & Men share “Wake Up” video; new album arriving in November:

#OfMiceAndMen #WakeUp #NewSingle #NewAlbum #NovemberReleases

Link: https://metalinsider.net/video/of-mice-new-album-arriving-in-november

Just started reading Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937). --- Comecei a ler Ratos e Homens de John Steinbeck (1937). #Books #OfMiceAndMen #JohnSteinbeck

Just started reading Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937). --- Comecei a ler Ratos e Homens de John Steinbeck (1937). #Books #OfMiceAndMen #JohnSteinbeck

Of Mice & Men announce Tour w/ Gore & Until I Wake:

#OfMiceAndMen #Tour #Gore #UntilIWake #TourAlert

https://metalinsider.net/touring/of-mice-men-announce-tour-w-gore-until-i-wake

Of Mice & Men announce Tour w/ Gore & Until I Wake:

#OfMiceAndMen #Tour #Gore #UntilIWake #TourAlert

https://metalinsider.net/touring/of-mice-men-announce-tour-w-gore-until-i-wake

🧵 3/4

Nels Abbey, the director of The Black Writers Guild would like to see the curriculum enhanced with “the excellent work of Black British writers” rightly noting that such works would be attuned to students growing up in modern multicultural Britain, a society quite different from the USA of the Great Depression. Frustratingly, instead of naming any specific works from modern multicultural Britain, he then recommends “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, the life story of an American born a century ago.

I know that just over ten years ago the Tory education secretary Michael Gove expressed dissatisfaction with the assignment of “Of Mice and Men” and urged that students be asked to read works by British authors instead. Although I am not entirely unsympathetic to the claim that British students should have to engage with British literature, I also think that Abbey’s point matters; students should be reading at least one significant work by a British author from a racial or ethnic minority. That requirement would not, of course, preclude the reading of works by authors from other parts of the English speaking world.

But what are those books by minority Britons that are at once valuable and teachable? I’d love to know.

#OfMiceAndMen #GCSEEnglishLiterature #BritishLiterature #BlackBritishWriters #Books

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/06/of-mice-and-men-steinbeck-syllabus-gcse-wales-culture-war

🧵 3/4

Nels Abbey, the director of The Black Writers Guild would like to see the curriculum enhanced with “the excellent work of Black British writers” rightly noting that such works would be attuned to students growing up in modern multicultural Britain, a society quite different from the USA of the Great Depression. Frustratingly, instead of naming any specific works from modern multicultural Britain, he then recommends “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, the life story of an American born a century ago.

I know that just over ten years ago the Tory education secretary Michael Gove expressed dissatisfaction with the assignment of “Of Mice and Men” and urged that students be asked to read works by British authors instead. Although I am not entirely unsympathetic to the claim that British students should have to engage with British literature, I also think that Abbey’s point matters; students should be reading at least one significant work by a British author from a racial or ethnic minority. That requirement would not, of course, preclude the reading of works by authors from other parts of the English speaking world.

But what are those books by minority Britons that are at once valuable and teachable? I’d love to know.

#OfMiceAndMen #GCSEEnglishLiterature #BritishLiterature #BlackBritishWriters #Books

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/06/of-mice-and-men-steinbeck-syllabus-gcse-wales-culture-war

🧵 3/4

Nels Abbey, the director of The Black Writers Guild would like to see the curriculum enhanced with “the excellent work of Black British writers” rightly noting that such works would be attuned to students growing up in modern multicultural Britain, a society quite different from the USA of the Great Depression. Frustratingly, instead of naming any specific works from modern multicultural Britain, he then recommends “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, the life story of an American born a century ago.

I know that just over ten years ago the Tory education secretary Michael Gove expressed dissatisfaction with the assignment of “Of Mice and Men” and urged that students be asked to read works by British authors instead. Although I am not entirely unsympathetic to the claim that British students should have to engage with British literature, I also think that Abbey’s point matters; students should be reading at least one significant work by a British author from a racial or ethnic minority. That requirement would not, of course, preclude the reading of works by authors from other parts of the English speaking world.

But what are those books by minority Britons that are at once valuable and teachable? I’d love to know.

#OfMiceAndMen #GCSEEnglishLiterature #BritishLiterature #BlackBritishWriters #Books

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/06/of-mice-and-men-steinbeck-syllabus-gcse-wales-culture-war

🧵 3/4

Nels Abbey, the director of The Black Writers Guild would like to see the curriculum enhanced with “the excellent work of Black British writers” rightly noting that such works would be attuned to students growing up in modern multicultural Britain, a society quite different from the USA of the Great Depression. Frustratingly, instead of naming any specific works from modern multicultural Britain, he then recommends “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, the life story of an American born a century ago.

I know that just over ten years ago the Tory education secretary Michael Gove expressed dissatisfaction with the assignment of “Of Mice and Men” and urged that students be asked to read works by British authors instead. Although I am not entirely unsympathetic to the claim that British students should have to engage with British literature, I also think that Abbey’s point matters; students should be reading at least one significant work by a British author from a racial or ethnic minority. That requirement would not, of course, preclude the reading of works by authors from other parts of the English speaking world.

But what are those books by minority Britons that are at once valuable and teachable? I’d love to know.

#OfMiceAndMen #GCSEEnglishLiterature #BritishLiterature #BlackBritishWriters #Books

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/06/of-mice-and-men-steinbeck-syllabus-gcse-wales-culture-war

🧵 2/4

Choosing an alternative is more difficult than it seems. Most of us can easily come up with books that we wish had been assigned at school, or that we think are of such value that students would benefit in some way from reading them.

Deciding whether such titles are suitable for assignment to secondary school students is another and more difficult task, one that I am not well qualified to undertake because I am not a high school teacher by profession.

Nevertheless I would guess that one important consideration is a books’s teachability. What makes a book teachable probably depends not only on the nature of the text itself, but also on the availability to the literature teacher of critical literature and pedagogical materials. I would imagine that “Of Mice and Men” is highly teachable on both counts. The text is short and the language relatively simple, making reading the book a feasible assignment for less academic students, while I am fairly sure there are shelves full of material that will help teachers and students with literary analysis of the work.

However, considerations of race and gender can also determine readability, as this piece from a teacher in Oregon demonstrates:

#OfMiceAndMen #RaisinInTheSun #EnglishTeaching #AmericanLiterature

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/of-mice-and-marginalization/

🧵 2/4

Choosing an alternative is more difficult than it seems. Most of us can easily come up with books that we wish had been assigned at school, or that we think are of such value that students would benefit in some way from reading them.

Deciding whether such titles are suitable for assignment to secondary school students is another and more difficult task, one that I am not well qualified to undertake because I am not a high school teacher by profession.

Nevertheless I would guess that one important consideration is a books’s teachability. What makes a book teachable probably depends not only on the nature of the text itself, but also on the availability to the literature teacher of critical literature and pedagogical materials. I would imagine that “Of Mice and Men” is highly teachable on both counts. The text is short and the language relatively simple, making reading the book a feasible assignment for less academic students, while I am fairly sure there are shelves full of material that will help teachers and students with literary analysis of the work.

However, considerations of race and gender can also determine readability, as this piece from a teacher in Oregon demonstrates:

#OfMiceAndMen #RaisinInTheSun #EnglishTeaching #AmericanLiterature

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/of-mice-and-marginalization/

🧵 2/4

Choosing an alternative is more difficult than it seems. Most of us can easily come up with books that we wish had been assigned at school, or that we think are of such value that students would benefit in some way from reading them.

Deciding whether such titles are suitable for assignment to secondary school students is another and more difficult task, one that I am not well qualified to undertake because I am not a high school teacher by profession.

Nevertheless I would guess that one important consideration is a books’s teachability. What makes a book teachable probably depends not only on the nature of the text itself, but also on the availability to the literature teacher of critical literature and pedagogical materials. I would imagine that “Of Mice and Men” is highly teachable on both counts. The text is short and the language relatively simple, making reading the book a feasible assignment for less academic students, while I am fairly sure there are shelves full of material that will help teachers and students with literary analysis of the work.

However, considerations of race and gender can also determine readability, as this piece from a teacher in Oregon demonstrates:

#OfMiceAndMen #RaisinInTheSun #EnglishTeaching #AmericanLiterature

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/of-mice-and-marginalization/

🧵 1/4

Recent discussion about dropping John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” as an English literature GCSE set book because of racial slurs in the text and its depiction of a black character got me thinking.

Surely it is right to listen seriously to the complaints of black students about the book.

Racism, though, is not the only reason that “Of Mice and Men” should be retired. The book’s failings should prompt a search for better novels to assign to British school students.

I find “Of Mice and Men” to be not moving but mawkish. Steinbeck foreshadows the end of Lennie with the shooting of an old dog, then jerks the reader’s tears by presenting George’s dispatch of Lennie as something like the putting down of an animal. We are supposed to feel that catch in the throat reliably produced by scenes of the last moments of long sick children or pets, yet with that sentiment supposedly endowed with profundity because the death is of one man at the hands of another; we have learned something about Love and the Human Condition!

Actually, we have learned nothing of the sort. Instead, we have seen how an author uses intellectual disability as a device to reduce what might have been a complex character to little more than a cipher, but a cipher designed to evoke an emotional response to melodrama, a good cry providing at once catharsis and a self-satisfied sense that one is endowed with a morally superior sensibility on account of having had that good cry . Steinbeck noted how close his novella was to the script for a motion picture; we should note how closely here he embraced the values of Hollywood at its most kitschy. And let’s not even get started on “Of Mice and Men” and women...

So what might replace “Of Mice and Men” ?

#OfMiceAndMen #AmericanLiterature #GCSEEnglishLiterature #Steinbeck #Books

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge922jn1z8o

🧵 1/4

Recent discussion about dropping John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” as an English literature GCSE set book because of racial slurs in the text and its depiction of a black character got me thinking.

Surely it is right to listen seriously to the complaints of black students about the book.

Racism, though, is not the only reason that “Of Mice and Men” should be retired. The book’s failings should prompt a search for better novels to assign to British school students.

I find “Of Mice and Men” to be not moving but mawkish. Steinbeck foreshadows the end of Lennie with the shooting of an old dog, then jerks the reader’s tears by presenting George’s dispatch of Lennie as something like the putting down of an animal. We are supposed to feel that catch in the throat reliably produced by scenes of the last moments of long sick children or pets, yet with that sentiment supposedly endowed with profundity because the death is of one man at the hands of another; we have learned something about Love and the Human Condition!

Actually, we have learned nothing of the sort. Instead, we have seen how an author uses intellectual disability as a device to reduce what might have been a complex character to little more than a cipher, but a cipher designed to evoke an emotional response to melodrama, a good cry providing at once catharsis and a self-satisfied sense that one is endowed with a morally superior sensibility on account of having had that good cry . Steinbeck noted how close his novella was to the script for a motion picture; we should note how closely here he embraced the values of Hollywood at its most kitschy. And let’s not even get started on “Of Mice and Men” and women...

So what might replace “Of Mice and Men” ?

#OfMiceAndMen #AmericanLiterature #GCSEEnglishLiterature #Steinbeck #Books

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge922jn1z8o

🧵 1/4

Recent discussion about dropping John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” as an English literature GCSE set book because of racial slurs in the text and its depiction of a black character got me thinking.

Surely it is right to listen seriously to the complaints of black students about the book.

Racism, though, is not the only reason that “Of Mice and Men” should be retired. The book’s failings should prompt a search for better novels to assign to British school students.

I find “Of Mice and Men” to be not moving but mawkish. Steinbeck foreshadows the end of Lennie with the shooting of an old dog, then jerks the reader’s tears by presenting George’s dispatch of Lennie as something like the putting down of an animal. We are supposed to feel that catch in the throat reliably produced by scenes of the last moments of long sick children or pets, yet with that sentiment supposedly endowed with profundity because the death is of one man at the hands of another; we have learned something about Love and the Human Condition!

Actually, we have learned nothing of the sort. Instead, we have seen how an author uses intellectual disability as a device to reduce what might have been a complex character to little more than a cipher, but a cipher designed to evoke an emotional response to melodrama, a good cry providing at once catharsis and a self-satisfied sense that one is endowed with a morally superior sensibility on account of having had that good cry . Steinbeck noted how close his novella was to the script for a motion picture; we should note how closely here he embraced the values of Hollywood at its most kitschy. And let’s not even get started on “Of Mice and Men” and women...

So what might replace “Of Mice and Men” ?

#OfMiceAndMen #AmericanLiterature #GCSEEnglishLiterature #Steinbeck #Books

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge922jn1z8o

I'm not dissing the text BTW, just saying we did not deal with the racial language in class beyond "that's just how they talked back then, moving on...."

#OfMiceAndMen

I'm not dissing the text BTW, just saying we did not deal with the racial language in class beyond "that's just how they talked back then, moving on...."

#OfMiceAndMen

I'm not dissing the text BTW, just saying we did not deal with the racial language in class beyond "that's just how they talked back then, moving on...."

#OfMiceAndMen

Stuck in the Filter: June 2024’s Angry Misses

By Kenstrosity

Managing this Filter is a full-time job. Or it would be if I paid anyone, or got paid myself. I doubt anyone in this godforsaken facility has seen a greenback in the last two decades.1 Nonetheless, I grabbed my clipboard and my flogger and I made my way to the lockers, where my dutiful minions await my first order of each day. It’d been a minute since we cleared out the ducts in the south wing of AMG Headquarters, so that’s where I ushered my team first. The poor souls shivered at the thought of tackling a highly neglected section of the system. But, as always, work needs doing and this is the work.

At long last, just when I started considering replacing my whole crew outright and leaving the current one for dead, they returned, battered and winded, but alive. And they brought wares! O blessed day! Without further ado, I bring you our June Filter!

Kenstrosity’s Medieval Mutton

Aklash // Reincarnation [June 20th, 2024 – Self Release]

Proving the unlikely flexibility of black metal as a medium, tales of knights, castles, and fantastical clashes of class marries with charred extremity so effortlessly that it comes at no surprise to me how UK Medieval melodic black metal troupe Aklash came to be. Kicking fourth record Reincarnation off with an incredible one-two punch, “Reincarnation” and “Communion with Ghosts,” Aklash’s melodic black metal-meets-Vulture Industries-meets-Modest Mouse-meets-Æther Realm concoction charms its way deep into my very being. These songs, burgeoning with lush compositions, incredible guitar work, and multifaceted personalities, evoke imagery of the ancient and the arcane so vividly that it often feels like traveling through time in an alternate universe of magic and mirth. The rabid “Babylon” takes this initial salvo and stabs yet another 1,200cc of pure adrenaline into my veins.2 As my neck swings and spirals with great velocity, giant mugs of mead spontaneously manifest in both fists. What is a sponge to do but imbibe? Against all odds, such infectious energy sustains into the magnificent closer “My Will Made Manifest,” making this record a wall-to-wall festival of sound. If it weren’t for a couple of frilly interludes and the teensiest spot of bloat in a couple of places, I could see Reincarnation growing into a year-end contender. In the end, it might do just that.

Thus Spoke’s Forgotten Findings

Cainites // Revenant [June 21st, 2024 – Scarlet Records]

It was once rumored across Eastern Europe that those who rebelled against the Orthodox church were cursed to become vampires after they died. Revenant, however, follows an Orthodox priest, whose induction into the class of bloodthirsty monsters happens irrespective of his religious devotion. Crafting a spooky tale with Scandinavian-inspired melodeath and flourishes of synthy blackened death, Italian duo Cainites strike a little like a less-polished Tribulation, but with bags of their personality. These guys know how to write a riff that shivers its way up your spine (“Theotokos,” “God’s Wrath,” “Redemption”) and dance around in your belly (“Darkness Awaits,” “Forgive Our Sins”), and damn, can it be catchy. Using a dueting mixture of growls and moaning cleans, choruses jam their way into your brain and don’t budge (“Vampire God,” “We Lost Our Sanctity”), amplifying the gleefully malicious bounce of the riffs with tongue-in-cheek melodrama. Solos have just enough yearning depth while staying grounded with a gritty tone, and not outstaying their welcome. The album generally treads the line well between camp and serious, discounting, perhaps, the extended spoken-word Bible recitation where God curses Cain (“Cainites”). In all, it’s a very good time and only grew on me the more I listened. One to check out for true fans of melodeath.3

Inherits the Void // Scars of Yesteryears [June 21st, 2024 – Avantgarde Music]

Scars of Yesteryears took me so much by surprise that I had to be informed by another staff member that it even existed. Having reviewed last year’s The Impending Fall of the Stars, and finding it quite an uplifting piece of melodic black metal, I was keen to see where the project had gone, musically, in the intervening time. The answer is nowhere, but that’s not entirely negative. This is still soaring (“L’effigie Du Déclin”), epic (“Scars of Yesteryear,” “L’eternelle Course Des Astres”), blistering (“Celestial Antler”), and sometimes beautiful (“The Endless Glow of Twilight”) meloblack. With lightning-fast and stormily dynamic riffing and enough of a melodic through-line to keep things going. The highs are not as high as they were on the previous record, the slower moments lacking the atmosphere and grandiosity that former work showed (though coming closest on “L’eternelle…” and “The Endless…”). However, the whole feels more consistent and steady, with the first half whizzing by on the tailwind of “Celestial Antler,” “The Orchard of Grief,” and “Ashes of Grievance”‘s bubbling energy, and the second dipping in intensity only to be saved by the final couple of tracks. Above-average, fiery meloblack, and worth taking for a spin even if it won’t be making any lists.

Dear Hollow’s Dumpster Disturbance

Bilmuri // American Motor Sports [June 28th, 2024 – Self Release]

Everyone loves easycore.4 In an alternative universe where easycore is a natural progression of pop country rather than pop/punk, it becomes an international treasure and that treasure is American Motor Sports. Of the crabcore alum of Attack Attack!,5 Johnny Franck is least likely to be featured on Octane Radio,6 as the Bilmuri project has been a means for musical exploration since his departure. Offering the most streamlined homage to the three M’s (‘Murica, memes, and the Midwest), get ready to crank your hog to ten songs of heartbreak, beer, and landscaping through arena pop country with needlessly heavy djent guitar riffs – alongside Franck’s signature insanity coursing through all the movements. From the deathcore-meets-honkytonk and sub drops of “Better Hell” and “Spinnin’ You Around,” the blaring and sexy sax solos of “2016 Cavaliers (Ohio),” “Straight Through You,” and “Drunk Enough,” the blazing fiddle of “Talkin’ 2 Ur Ghost,” to the Kevin James breakdown call out of “Emptyhanded,” Bilmuri creates an infectious blend of the safely predictable and the utterly apeshit. It features guest artists from country scenes (Dylan Marlowe, Mitchell Tenpenny) and indie pop spheres (Knox, Arizona) who all add yearning and theatricality to Franck’s already emotive performances. American Motor Sports is twenty-eight minutes of catchy melodies, scathing grooves, and tastefully tragic lyrics with a penchant for memes. We’re all supposed to hate it, but much to my assigned promos’ dismay and Steel Druhm‘s chagrin,7 I haven’t been able to listen to much else.

Dolphin Whisperer’s Maritime Musing

Houle // Ciel Cendre et Mis​è​re Noire [June 7th, 2024 – Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions]

We all know that black metal hits harder when it’s actually something else wrapped in a blackened and shrieking package. France’s Houle offers Ciel Cendre et Misère Noire as a one part Iron Maiden, one part Immortal, and two parts unstoppable siren screaming as vocalist Adsagsona shreds throat through each of the blazing numbers on this debut (minus the beer-swinging sailor intro). Her ear-stabbing cries tally high, and if it weren’t for her glottal punishments and accompanying guitarists’ breaks into tremolo melodies, tracks “Sur Les Braises de Foyer” and “Sel, Sang et Gerçures” could be instead the backdrops to something of the dark power metal world, replete with Maiden bass gallop and anthemic flair. She has a fine narrative croon too, but it’s her flagrant vocal flayings that sell the extremity of what Houle packs as ballast. With terraced guitar lines and thrashed-out drum breaks (“La Danse du Rocher,” “Mère Nocturne”), Ciel Cendre has the forward energy of battle and doesn’t let go to the very end, joining bands like Aorlhac and Passièsme in the modern melodic black metal field fit for castle raids. But as long-form closer “Née des Embruns” reinforces with calls of the ocean in its open and fade, Houle attacks from the sea. En garde!

Mark Z.’s Musings

200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures [June 28th, 2024 – Metal Blade Records]

Following a rapid rise to fame during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio death metal troupe 200 Stab Wounds thrust their Slave to the Scalpel debut onto the masses in 2021. While I was about as mixed on that one as Felagund was, their second album Manual Manic Procedures has proven these wounds cut far deeper than originally thought. The beefy chugs that the band has become known for are still here in full force, but now they’re paired with sharper hooks and a heightened sense of maturity. On Procedures, you’ll hear acoustic plucking, immense Bolt Thrower riffing, grooves that will blow your guts out, and even some melodic death metal influence—and that’s just on the first song. The band also knows when to give you a breather, be it a well-placed atmospheric instrumental (“Led to the Chamber / Liquefied”) or an extended ride on a great groovy riff (“Defiled Gestation”). With a monstrous guitar tone, plenty of killer moments, and a track flow that’s smoother than liquefied human remains, Manual Manic Procedures feels like modern death metal coming into its own.

#200StabWounds #2024 #Aklash #AmericanMetal #AmericanMotorSports #Aorlhac #Arizona #AttackAttack #AvantgardeMusic #ÆtherRealm #Beartooth #Bilmuri #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BoltThrower #Cainites #CielCendreEtMisèReNoire #DeathMetal #DylanMarlowe #FrenchMetal #Houle #Immortal #InheritsTheVoid #IronMaiden #ItalianMetal #Jun24 #Knox #LesActeursDeLOmbreProductions #ManualManicProcedures #MedievalBlackMetal #MelodicBlackMetal #MelodicDeathMetal #MetalBladeRecords #MitchellTenpenny #ModestMouse #OfMiceAndMen #Passièsme #Reincarnation #Revenant #Review #Reviews #ScarletRecords #ScarsOfYesteryears #SelfRelease #StuckInTheFilter #Tribulation #UKMetal #VultureIndustries

#Bookstodon / #BookSky challenge: Choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

8/20 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

#JohnSteinbeck #OfMiceAndMen