A hazardous density strikes the most introspective thoughts
Ambiguity rises
as poverty reduce silences 
Nothing seems proverbial, children cry cities made of dust and agonies

Your soul will be questioning a sincere alliance with the downfall of melancholy 
Anything but emptiness would be justified 
Towards our own sad propensities, we relentlessly feel that invisible universes explode in absurd angles that strikes incomparable levels of miserable existence
As the endless rain begins to fall in the night
intrinsically     

To literary enthusiasts, Phillip Roth needs no introduction. One of the most incisive, compelling, proficient and dense American novelists of all time – widely celebrated as one of the most prestigious and awarded writers of his generation –, the author of The Human Stain, American Pastoral and I Married a Communist, amongst many other successful books, knew precisely how to navigate by dark subjects and abrasive topics, controversial to American society and culture, that resonates with grandiosity and relevance beyond the atmosphere of the literary universe. Even a book that I haven’t liked too much, The Dying Animal, I admit is abundant in qualities and perennial density, that makes Phillip Roth such an audacious and uncompromised polemicist, at least if analyzed by a conservative outlook.   

Phillip Roth questioned severely the values and principles by which the American society of his generation lived. Nevertheless, by the perspective of drastically diverse literary characters – that were, to a certain degree, representations of himself –, the author expressed different aspects of his personality, through personas with relatively distinct values, priorities and preoccupations. Nathan Zuckerman, his most well-known alter ego, the main character of several novels, like The Human Stain and Exit Ghost, is a reflection of Roth trying to situate himself in a permanently dark world, doomed by the irreversible contingencies of human misery. David Kepesh, on the other hand, the character of three novels, The Breast, The Professor of Desire and the more concise The Dying Animal, is a graduated literature teacher, that has an intrinsically mundane existence. All that he really manages to do with a certain degree of competence, despite having real talents, like a profound knowledge about the subject he teaches, playing the piano, and being an erudite in classical music, is basically seducing and sleeping with his most attractive female students; and all these skills that he possesses and cultivates are used mainly as weapons of seduction. Devoid of this aspect, the life of David Kepesh becomes an absolutely empty, deplorable and meaningless existence.

Phillip Roth is also skilled in what concerns a beautiful prose, despite the fact that he is not a sculptor of the language, like Flaubert. Nevertheless, the beauty, the charm, the sequences, the correct and precise word put exactly in the proper place – combined with the always fragile, vulnerable, subtle, pungent, melancholic and sometimes deeply painful content that he exposes –, describing the ordinary, but constantly vulnerable situations that his characters usually have to endure, makes each one of his works a pleasurable and vivid literary challenge, that only someone that is his regular reader can understand.

​Frequently exposing his Jewish background – and as a consequence, appointed as an icon not only to literature in the broader sense, but as a primordial reference of Jewish-American literature in particular, something that Roth vehemently rejected –, the author blamed his religious upbringing for several constraints that took place in his infancy and adolescence, and as he grew older, he sought to drastically distance himself from Judaism. Eventually, he was known to disregard religion completely, saying “When the whole world doesn’t believe in God, it’ll be a great place”.    

Each book of Phillip Roth has a profound, lugubrious and dark intensity, that excavates and exposes the most tragic, difficult and painful struggles of life, and the intrinsic fatalisms inherent to human condition. In The Dying Animal, Professor David Kepesh falls in love and eventually has an affair with one of his students – a sensual, passionate and ardent Cuban-American named Consuela Castillo –, though after she graduates. So when their affair begins, she is technically not her student anymore, so if anyone discovers, he cannot be prosecuted or expelled from the university where he works. This is mainly his modus operandi, whenever he decides to seduce one of his students. 

​The two main characters get involved in a passionate and very torrid affair, but after some time, his inability to commit to a serious relationship – as well as his age, being Kepesh much older than Consuela – and his relatively indolent inferiority complex, drive the two apart. Though deeply passionate and even obsessed by Consuela, they walk away, to meet again after a long time apart. Noticing her decadent and weakened physical appearance, Consuela tells Kepesh that she was diagnosed with cancer, and has been battling the disease ever since.

So the largely promiscuous, egocentric, self-centered and sex-driven old man is forced to bring to light the more humanitarian aspects of his personality, that – although were there the entire time – he never actually allowed them to be displayed to the outside world. But now, adverse circumstances force him to be a gentle and comprehensible human being.   

Like I wrote some lines above – although I haven’t liked this book very much, it is relatively ordinary and inferior, especially if compared to another Phillip Roth’s books that I personally found marvelous –, even then this novel has qualities to be appreciated, whether it would be in the story, in the beauty and elegance of the prose, or in the subtlety and sensibility upon which the content is displayed to the reader. The conclusion of the book, the best part in my opinion, is very poetic, enlightening and sentimental. I remember Kepesh and Consuela seeing something on television, a theatrical performance broadcast from her home country, Cuba. So Consuela, deeply resented, dismisses the Castro tyranny, and denounces the image of happiness and joy given by the transmission as effectively a lie and regime propaganda. Her people suffers from government repression, persecution and arbitrary imprisonment, but all that the world sees is the fake happiness of a theatrical musical act. So Kepesh feels the anger driving the emotional Consuela, disturbed by his inability to do something extraordinary to please her, and improve her condition. 

Every book by Phillip Roth is a monumental picture of a certain aspect of existence – or a specific period in time –, filtered by his profound and lucid sensibility, exposed by the peculiarities of deeply disillusioned, complex and morally indulgent characters. The author deeply denounced everything that has disturbed him, and challenged his readers to think for themselves. Although he has died in the last year, Phillip Roth’s literature will continue to resonate deeply throughout the decades, and will remain a permanent anathema to American social and cultural conventions. 

(Read my other article about the author here)


​Wagner

Charles Bukowski is and always will be one of my favorite writers. Although I haven’t liked everything that I read by this author – Post Office is a good example of an exceedingly ordinary novel, though even so has its superficial qualities – his captivating and realistic depictions of life, mainly autobiographic in nature, and his abilities to portray everything in a relatively softer context, even delivering creatively sensible, incisive and organic lines of black humor, certainly makes the “dirty old man” a singular and incomparable literary icon of his generation, like no one else could be.

The first book that I read by Bukowski, I think more than sixteen years ago, was a very concise one, the non-fiction The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, that was originally published four years after his death, in 1998. This book is very simple in content – even more than his short stories and novels, that are mostly personal, biographical recounts of his existence –, composed mainly of excerpts and journal entries that Bukowski wrote in his last years, about ordinary events in his daily life. Although there is nothing exceptional about this book, it is so well written, and Bukowski is so frank, direct and sincere with his reader, that it became impossible, at least for me, not to immediately love this book. Of course, I understand perfectly that literary preferences are an entirely personal matter; Bukowski works very well in what concerns my taste. 

One of the greatest achievements of Bukowski – in my personal evaluation – is impregnating his literature with the basic characteristics of his personality, cynicism and skepticism, while at the same time, whether this would be a conscious decision or not, his literary art never became something dense, profound, tragic or dramatic, as opposed to more “serious” authors, like Phillip Roth. With the fewer exceptions of some short stories and some passages in his novels, the aforementioned black humor that he masterly displays, as well as his natural, spontaneous and habitual reactions to everything concerning life around him – from ordinary occurrences to more extraordinary situations – makes his literary art a very unique achievement, while concomitantly the author displays a rude simplicity, in vocabulary and expression, that certainly makes him practically an unofficial, but quintessential spokesperson for the ordinary everyday man.        

Bukowski endured great pain, suffering and misery throughout his life, especially during his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. His father was a profoundly intolerant and authoritarian figure, that imposed cruel punishments to the young Charles for literally everything he had done wrong, or wasn’t in accordance with this father’s strict demands. To make matters worse, when he was an adolescent, Bukowski had a terrible and severe case of acne that disfigured him greatly, for which he had to sought a painful and distressing medical treatment, that involved needles, ointment and bandages. By then, Bukowski was a shy, isolated and introverted individual, that had severe problems getting close to the opposite sex. This fact turned him into a more solitary and introspective individual, as his beautiful female classmates seemed distant and unreachable.   

By this time, though, he has discovered alcohol – something that would serve to anesthetize the pain and drudgery of life –, and the habit of drinking would become recurrent throughout his life, with drastic health issues as posterior consequences. The references to alcohol consumption would be constant and deeply celebrated in his literature.

These terrible occurrences of his life – which traumatized him to a degree – are abundantly narrated throughout his literature. Probably they are best retreated in his seminal novel Ham on Rye, published in 1982, which several fans and enthusiasts consider to be his masterpiece. The autobiographical work covers a large part of his life, from the beginning, in infancy, to later adulthood.     

Another book that I loved very much was Factotum, Bukowski’s second novel, published in 1975. In this book, we follow Henry Chinaski – Bukowski’s alter ego, a recurrent character throughout his works – from job to job (hence the book’s title; factotum is a Latin word that literally means “do everything”, a “do it all” person, someone who accepts wherever job is available) – wandering by several cities and locations throughout the United States, destitute of a solid and decent perspective of future, in a permanent search for employment opportunities. The book was adapted into a relatively watchable film in 2005, starring Matt Dillon. Unfortunately, the movie simplified too much the novel – that has its subtle textures and densities –, and unfavorably unveils the story as a contemporary narrative, as opposed to the forties and fifties USA, that serves as the period upon which the events took place. 

Another marvelous Bukowski book that I loved greatly was Hollywood. Originally published in 1989, the novel deals with a period in the life of Bukowski where movie director Barbet Schroeder asked him to write a script. Bukowski wrote – exclusively for a paycheck – and the result was the movie Barfly, starred by Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway. On this book, Bukowski narrates his relationship and eventual friendship with Schroeder, as well as with lead star Mickey Rourke, to a lesser extent, his attendance to the movie shootings, the problems with budget constraints and production, and his overall views about Hollywood and the movie industry in general. Bukowski had a cameo in the movie, appearing during a scene in a bar. The real characters depicted in the novel have all fictitious names. Nevertheless, Hollywood is a fantastic literary adventure into the underground terrains of moviemaking, with an incredibly captured outlook by Bukowski’s lucid, acute and uncompromised sensibility.       

To read Charles Bukowski is almost an act of redemption. Besides his natural ability to tell an interesting and involving story – and the veracity behind it, because, being majorly autobiographical, he has experienced firsthand everything that he is telling to the reader – you perceive a very humane and solidary person. Behind all that apparent frivolity and rudeness, that were basically his personal defense on dealing with the hardships of life and the brutality of the world around him, there was a sensible individual, with a profound empathy for human beings, and a clear insight about the precariousness of existence. All this sensibility has definitely produced one of the best and most elemental literary iconoclasts that the world has ever known. (Want to know more about this author? Read another Bukowski article that I wrote here).


​Wagner

American actor Wentworth Miller became famous in 2005, by playing Michael Scofield, the lead in the Fox television drama Prison Break; with an exhilarating premise, the show followed Scofield as he commits a crime deliberately, to go to the same prison where his brother, Lincoln Burrows (played by Dominic Purcell) is serving a sentence for a crime he did not commit. As his brother was facing a death sentence, Scofield had tattooed a large, complex drawing on his upper body, that contained effectively in a concealed design the plant of the prison, to help his brother escape. The show was an instant success. I personally watched several seasons. The first season followed Michael in prison, meticulously executing his detailed plan. The second season saw the brothers – with several other inmates – as escapees from the Fox River Penitentiary, while a subplot displayed how Lincoln Burrows was a scapegoat to a federal scale-conspiracy, that would persecute the brothers for the remainder of the show. 

The following seasons saw Michael arrested in other penitentiaries for similar purposes, with effectively well-designed premises, while the side story also developed consistently.  I personally haven’t followed the show religiously in all of its seasons, because eventually my interest was gone. But the show was quite a success. Having ended in 2009, it was revived in 2017 for an additional season. But after the show, Wentworth Miller’s career has stalled. And apparently, by his own conscious decision, fueled by personal difficulties. 

With only ten movies in his filmography, he has done mainly television, and even then, sometimes his work is mainly sporadic. Miller has revealed that he suffers from depression – as well as suicidal tendencies – and it’s difficult for him to deal with his illness. The actor is active on social media, and is known to be very open and sincere about his condition and personal life struggles. In 2016, the LAD Bible’s Facebook page published a meme mocking his weight gain, by which Miller frankly responded: "I've struggled with depression since childhood. It's a battle that's cost me time, opportunities, relationships, and a thousand sleepless nights”. The actor explained that he had gained an excessive amount of weight because he found solace consuming food. The actor was also semi-retired at the time. After his response, the LAD Bible staff immediately published a post apologizing for their drastically deceitful behavior.   

Nevertheless, Miller is a multifaceted individual, with a great array of talents. He is also a skilled and sagacious screenwriter, and his ability on this field has been slowly achieving modest degrees of recognition. He wrote the screenplay for Stoker, a 2013 mysterious suspense drama film starring Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode. On this movie, India Stoker – Wasikowska’s character – gets profoundly disturbed after her father dies in an automobile accident, and suddenly her enigmatic uncle Charlie (Goode), whose existence she was not aware of, starts living together with her and her mother Evelyn (Kidman). Although I can’t remember precisely the general storyline – I saw this movie several years ago – I recollect perfectly that I have liked very much seeing it. Miller submitted the story to studios using a pseudonym. Eventually, the script was integrated into a Hollywood blacklist, of the best unproduced screenplays circulating throughout the movie industry at the time. Miller also wrote the screenplay for a related story, titled Uncle Charlie, that would serve as a prequel to Stoker. A movie based on this screenplay remains unproduced.   

Miller also wrote the screenplay for the 2016 movie The Disappointments Room (that I personally evaluated, and you can read here), starring Kate Beckinsale. A real disappointment, this movie is so ordinary that you certainly cannot afford the luxury of wasting your time seeing it, though Miller remains cohesive as a storyteller. Currently, Wentworth Miller is reportedly in the works to write the screenplay for an adaption of a literary work titled The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, though this is not yet confirmed.

The most recent work Miller has done on television was as an incarnation of super-villain Captain Cold, on two different series, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. Apparently, his work was concluded on these shows, and the public doesn’t known precisely what he will be doing in 2019, or if he has already plans for 2019. With his mental state and general health being a primary concern, the forty-six year old (yes, he looks younger, but he was born in June, 1972) actor and screenwriter doesn’t have to justify each move he made, though he frequently does – very gently and kindly –, though it is not his obligation.   

His most relevant movies to date has been 2003 The Human Stain, an adaptation of a novel by Phillip Roth – where he portrays a younger version of Coleman Silk, the character of Anthony Hopkins –, 2010 Resident Evil: Afterlife, as Chris Redfield and 2014 The Loft, an English language version of a 2008 Belgian movie titled Loft, both directed by Erik Van Looy, where he plays an exceedingly malevolent character named Luke Seacord. His last movie to date is the 2015 short 2 Hours 2 Vegas. 

Miller is also involved in charities and humanitarian causes, like the ManKind Project and Active Minds. As his relevant and voluntary work helping people consumes his time, his professional activities will proportionally slow down. He also attends several events throughout the world – like Comic Con and WonderCon –, where he interacts directly with fans and admirers. Miller certainly deserves happiness and success in whatever projects he gets involved, whether it would be in his personal or professional life. We miss seeing him in movies and television, but everyone has the right and the freedom to redirect energy and resources to pursue the correct priorities. With his positive and mature outlook on life, though, Wentworth Miller definitely has everything to succeed and overcome the challenges that might get on his way.  


​Wagner

Maxwell Bodenheim – whose birth name was Maxwell Bodenheimer – is now a relatively forgotten American poet and novelist, who achieved great fame in the jazz era of the 1920’s. His mother and father were German-speaking European immigrants who settled in the United States by the 1880’s, and Maxwell Bodenheim was born in May, 1892, in Hermanville, Mississippi. It was in Chicago, however, that Bodenheim had started his literary activities.

There, with the now legendary writer Ben Hecht, Bodenheim founded a periodical, where several individuals that would become major icons of American literature have collaborated, like Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg, amongst others. Nevertheless, it was in New York City that Bodenheim would become a more renowned man of letters.  
​
Sadly, fortunes drastically changed after Bodenheim found fame in New York City. Only in the twenties and in the beginning of the thirties he remained regularly productive, after that he wrote and published only sporadically. Since there is absolutely no reliable biographies or documentaries about Bodenheim, everything that concerns his life, in overall, is largely obscure, and only a few facts about the writer are positively known with veracity. 

What can be said of Bodenheim for sure is that he was married three times. First, to Minna Schein, then to Grace Finan – to whom he became a widower – and last, to Ruth Fagin, a woman twenty-eight years younger than him. A little after the mid-thirties – for reasons that are largely unclear – Bodenheim’s condition and personal circumstances severely deteriorated. He even became a miserable beggar, asking for money in the streets. Despite the fact that by this time he was a published and moderately successful writer, he resorted to mendicancy for a living, and he was generally unrecognized by the people who gave him change. He was arrested by authorities several times for vagrancy, and even arbitrarily committed to mental institutions. By this time, Bodenheim had also become a chronic alcoholic. 

The death of Maxwell Bodenheim – which took place on February, 1954 –, was a particularly tragic one, and the main reason why his fame somewhat expanded; the incident supplanted his notoriety as a writer. In 1952, Bodenheim had married a woman – his third wife – named Ruth Fagin, that shared her husband’s degenerated, miserable and completely destitute lifestyle. Bodenheim did everything he could to survive, including marginal activities, treacherous, though innocent scams, mendicancy and he also wrote poems for changes. Most of the scarce money he made, though, were spent with alcoholic beverages, that Bodenheim somewhat used extensively to alleviate and anesthetize his suffering. His wife Ruth sometimes prostituted herself, to have an income, a degraded activity that frequently enraged Bodenheim. They were homeless people, used to sleep and live outdoors. 

On February 6, 1954, an acquaintance of the couple, a man named Harold "Charlie" Weinberg, offered to Max and Ruth the opportunity to spend the night in his apartment, to which the couple agreed. Once they were there, apparently – the veracity of the story is debatable – Weinberg tried to have sex with Ruth, and she was indeed predisposed to have an intercourse with him. Bodenheim was drunk, and appearing to be sleeping in the couch. Nevertheless, he was seeing everything, and suddenly stood up, enraged, and challenged Weinberg for a fight. Weinberg then killed Bodenheim with two gunshots, and stabbed Ruth to death. Weinberg shortly thereafter confessed the crime to the police, and tried to minimize his evil deed, by justifying that he had killed two “communists”, despite the fact that there is no factual evidence implying that Bodenheim or Ruth were communist sympathizers. Weinberg was arrested, considered insane, and locked for life in a psychiatric facility. The writer Ben Hecht – his friend and former literary colleague – paid for Bodenheim’s funeral expenses.     

Six months after Bodenheim’s murder, his biography, My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village, was published. Bodenheim himself, though, was barely involved in the project, whose work was commissioned by a publisher named Samuel Roth, and was ghostwritten by a professional writer named George Plotkin. Apparently, Roth had requested and paid in advance for Bodenheim’s account of his life as a Greenwich Village bohemian and respected literary icon, an assignment that Bodenheim – in this period of his life, mostly depressed and despondent – was barely willing to commit.  

Unfortunately, by the time of his death, Bodenheim was already a largely forgotten writer, and since then, his work has never been properly revived, analyzed, studied, republished or appreciated. Bodenheim remains scarcely read and debated in literary circles today. His poetry, in particular, has a peculiar charm, a picaresque and sometimes quasi-surrealist beauty, that explored in the density of ephemeral and frugal moments the most obscure and fatalist resentments of life. Never really compromised or preoccupied with form or metric, his poetry was prominently modernist, and celebrated the arbitrary agonies of existence, in a constantly candid and moderately vibrant melancholy, that, it is suspected, were typical of his behavior.  

If you want to know better the work of this marvelous – though unconventional and undisciplined, but mordacious and genuine – literary icon, the website Black Cat Poems is the perfect place to start. There, you can read more than one hundred poems by Bodenheim, for free. I hope you enjoy, as much as I do. 


Wagner

Johnny English Strikes Again is the third installment in the Johnny English movie series, starring legendary British icon of humor and stand-up comedy performer Rowan Atkinson. Recently released in my country, I’ve just finished seeing this movie. It’s undoubtedly the weakest in the franchise, though with exceedingly good moments, you can really appreciate, and enjoy some very good laughs in the process. Rowan Atkinson – which is best remembered as the goofy and naïve Mister Bean, a character that he had played for television for five years, from 1990 to 1995, as well as in two movies, Bean, released in 1997, and Mr. Bean's Holiday, released in 2007 – is absolutely marvelous, and despite the fact that this movie is a lot more simple, Johnny English Strikes Again definitely scores a modest degree of satisfaction and competence, though its creative boundaries were far more restricted than the last two installments, Johnny English (2003) and Johnny English Reborn (2011).  

The plot of this movie is quite simple. A hacker invades the system of the British Intelligence Agency, MI7, exposing the identity of all active secret agents. So the British Prime Minister (played by Emma Thompson) demands to her subordinate that an inactive spy should be assigned for the mission. So Johnny English, working then as a school teacher – which is something reminiscent of the previous movie, Johnny English Reborn, where he was assigned to an important mission while he was living as a reclusive monk in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet, being dismissed from the secret service after a failed mission in Mozambique, an incident upon which the audience discovers later wasn’t entirely his fault – is summoned up to resolve the situation. After a reunion where he accidentally blew up an explosive pen, that made other three inactive agents that could possibly join the mission to lose consciousness, English reunites with his former partner, Bough (played by Ben Miller), from the first movie of the franchise. 

After disclosing that the signal came from France, English and Bough drive with an old fashioned Aston Martin – which was deliberately chosen by English for being obsolete and mostly destitute of technological devices –, to the destination where apparently the sign was emitted. Arriving in France, their evidence points towards a luxury vessel, that they try to board incognito, but eventually they are surprised by a seductive woman, that later the audience discovers to be a Russian spy (played by Olga Kurylenko). English and Bough are then imprisoned in a small storage warehouse. To escape, English uses an explosive swab, to break the door. He loses a little his hearing capabilities as a consequence of the explosion, so he begins to scream out loud with Bough, instead of normally speaking. This makes their whereabouts to be discovered by their antagonists, but they manage to run away, albeit very disastrously.    

With no better prospects, English decides that it would be better for them to stalk the woman they had seen in the vessel. They follow her in their vehicle with difficulty throughout the sinuous roads of the countryside, and eventually gets out of fuel, something for which English blames Bough. But then the woman comes back in her own vehicle, politely approaches the two men – like if they had never met before – and Johnny English introduces himself with a fake name, Basil Golightly. Very conveniently, English tells Bough that going out of fuel was a deliberately calculate idea that he had. Bough then pushes the car until they arrive at the hotel, where, a few hours later, English and the Russian spy meet at the bar. 

While English interacts with her, Bough investigates her hotel room. Soon thereafter, Bough informs English that he found in her possessions three fake passports and ammunition. But English – then smitten by her –, denies the possibility, and tells Bough that he is just being paranoid. Later, we see the secret Russian spy receiving orders to kill English.

Later that night, English, unable to sleep, takes some stimulant pills, and heads towards the dance floor. There, he meets again the Russian spy, and they start to dance. She tries several different strategies to kill him, but inadvertently fails in all of them. Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister is eager to form a deal with a mysterious and dubious American billionaire from the Silicon Valley. Eventually, English discovers and informs one of his superiors that the American billionaire may be the culprit behind the infiltration of the MI7’s system.

Soon thereafter, one of the MI7’s operatives introduces English to a virtual reality simulator, that can duplicate the interior of the billionaire’s mansion. This lesson will prepare English for the real operation. Bough and the MI7 employee leave English alone, and he activates the glasses, but forgets to do the same with the platform. So, while enjoying the perception of the simulator – and believing himself to be in the premises of the agency –, English actually went outside, and hurt a lot of citizens in the vicinities of the secret service offices. Coincidentally, he returns exactly from where he departed, never realizing what he did. When he finishes the exercise, he is joined again by Bough and the MI7 employee. Bough then sees by the window ambulances, police and a lot of confusion, imagining what has really happened. 

English subsequently really invades the mansion of the billionaire, and there encounters again the Russian spy. Rapidly, both get caught, but – in an intelligent maneuver – the Russian spy fakes to have intercepted English. English starts to boast about having reinforcement outside, but the billionaire starts laughing hysterically when, by camera, he sees only Bough, desperately running away from his dogs.  

Eventually, English manages to scape. When he learns that a meeting of the G12 will take place in Scotland, English decides that he must go there as well. Bough, upon learning this, recruits the help of his wife – that is a Navy official –, and all of them go to Scotland in a submarine.

Meanwhile, the billionaire and the Russian spy are talking to each other, and he reveals to her that he knows exactly who she is. She tries to shoot him, but, without her knowledge, he already had emptied her firearm, which makes her easily vulnerable to him. When he is about to kill her, English, using a special suit – strategically operated by Bough from distance, by remote control –, appears and saves hear. Unfortunately, a suspender device gets stuck by the window, and when English tells Bough to deactivate the suit, a slingshot effect pulls him directly into the ocean. So, the billionaire uses this chance to escape, and attend the meeting. 

To access the castle where the G12 summit will take place, English and Bough infiltrate into a celebratory march, disguised as Scottish traditional folk musicians. In the G12 summit, the billionaire – upon presenting a proposal that could solve the major problems of all the countries in attendance –, reveals that he will only collaborate, if he can exert complete control over all their respective government’s strategic information. To prove what he is willing to do, the billionaire cuts the internet of Western Europe, which brings chaos and instability to half of the continent.   

Then English, wearing a medieval armor, interrupts the reunion. Unfortunately, he slides in the oil that runs from the armor, as he had previously put in the belt an absurd quantity, in a futile attempt to take it off. Then, the billionaire uses the opportunity to try to escape one more time.  Nevertheless, English – tough in a very slow move, because of the armor’s heavy weight –, and with the primary help of Bough, intercepts the billionaire, exactly when he was about to embark in a helicopter. English has the mobile computer that could deactivate the helicopter, but the billionaire mocks him, saying that he would never be able to decipher how to use it. English then throws the mobile computer, hitting the billionaire in the head, and leaving him unconscious, thus saving Europe and the G12 countries from the megalomaniac domination plan of the evil corporatist. 

With the mission accomplished, English returns to his work as a school teacher, though – as was shown already in the beginning of the movie – he was far more devoted in instructing his students about lessons on how to be a secret agent, than teaching them the ordinary curricular grade.

Like I highlighted above, this is probably the weakest movie in the franchise, but it is not bad. Not at all. If your expectations are not too high, you can definitely have a good time watching it. Johnny English Strikes Again is a very decent continuation of the franchise. In fact, I hope a fourth instalment would be released in the future – not in the near future, of course, if we realized the gaps between all the movies are too damn extensive: the first, Johnny English, was released fifteen years ago, in 2003, while the second movie, Johnny English Reborn, was released eight years later, in 2011, and another seven years would pass, for the release of this third film. This is not a monumental or extravagant movie, especially if compared to its predecessors. But if you like a good comedy-action movie with a goofy central character conceived as an intelligent parody of James Bond, than Johnny English Strikes Again definitely is worthwhile watching it.   


​Wagner

Black metal is one of my favorite musical genres, and always will be. I really can’t recollect precisely when I became an enthusiast of the genre, but it was decades ago. I was introduced to it when I was a teenager – in the mid-nineties – but back then, my favorite genre was death metal. Nevertheless, I grew to be deeply appreciative of black metal, as well as all of its subgenres. So much so, that here you will find everything, from raw black metal, atmospheric black metal and melodic black metal to epic black metal and DSBM. 

For many reasons, I’ve deliberately included on this list of my favorite BM albums only very underground bands, that aren’t really well known, even to the most ardent enthusiasts of the genre. You will notice that I haven’t included on this list albums of “mainstream” bands and artists, like Emperor, Burzum, Gorgoroth, Darkthrone or Mayhem. I have done that deliberately. For many reasons, I’ve became tired of notorious “mainstream” acts of the genre, and I also don’t think they need to be highlighted nor publicized, because everybody that are into the genre knows them. 

But the strongest motive comes from the fact that I developed for a long time now a passion for discovering “new” bands and acts that I refer to as “the underground of the underground”, so to speak – literally, bands and artists that are exceedingly marvelous, but aren’t well known outside a very restricted fan base. Since a lot of them really has formidable albums released, I think it’s always useful to give these bands and artists more visibility. Also, I became a little tired of the “mainstream”, since the vast majority of the groups cited above has completely fallen into a latent sonorous predictability: the bands that are still active keep releasing the same albums time after time, over and over again. In the underground, on the other hand, you can always find something new and interesting, even if it’s an old album, from a band that is no longer active, but fall into the category of a relatively unknown group. Additionally, there are always new, refreshing bands and artists coming out every day, and a lot of them are competent enough to deserve a chance on the spotlight. And new albums from old, veteran bands – that are relatively obscure – that are releasing new material with more or less frequency. 

So, I sincerely hope you find my selection interesting. Be free to emphasize or criticize! The important thing is to maintain black metal – one of the most beautiful genres ever conceived – in constant evidence, ever. 

It’s important to reiterate that the albums selected here are in no particular order. Just because Minas Morgul, by Summoning, is in the first place, and Unbound, by Sargeist, is the last, doesn’t mean that I prefer the first album. Just because I, by Fuath, comes before Arousal, by Donarhall, doesn’t mean that I prefer the Fuath album. The albums are in this order because they just are. I haven’t selected them in order of preference. I love all these albums equally.  

Minas Morgul is a formidable and highly original epic black metal album, with brightly circumspect atmospheric elements, as well as – to a minor degree – neo-folk arrangements, released in 1995, by Austrian band Summoning, which is active since 1993.  

With eleven tracks – Soul Wandering, Lugburz, The Passing of the Grey Company, Morthond, Marching Homewards, Orthanc, Ungolianth, Dagor Bragollach, Through the Forest of Dol Guldur, The Legend of the Master-Ring and Dor Daedeloth –, Minas Morgul is an aggrandizing, genuine and wonderful album, with a splendorous sound reminiscent of epic battles, medieval times, chivalry, loyalty, deposed kings and lost realms. The sensible, elusive guitar lines, the dream-like nostalgia harmonies, the glorious melodies evocative of once iridescent kingdoms forgotten in the dust of time, are precisely combined altogether to deliver a work of incomparable sonorous artistry, that deserves to be appreciated for decades to come, and to be passed away to the younger generations fond of the subgenre. This album is exceedingly marvelous, being amazingly excellent from the beginning until the end. Song after song after song, this awesome masterpiece delivers one of the best exemplars of epic black metal you will ever be able to appreciate in your life!    

While at the beginning, this work can sound rough and harsh, being an exponentially virulent, indulgent, aggressive, obscure and sinister album – that flirts discreetly with DSBM –, progressively, the record reveals more soft and versatile nuances, that gradually reveals a more complex and ambitious pattern of artistry. 

Anti is a band from Germany, that was active from 2003 to 2014, and regrouped in 2018. The Insignificance of Life was originally released in 2006, with six tracks: Nothing, Landscape in Minor, Invocation, Farewell (Escape into Beyond), Zero Point and Mourning Soul. A posterior re-issue had the additional tracks: Perished, Death into Life and Longing for the End. Despite the lugubrious atmosphere of the album, the musical framework also carries on a beautiful poetic density, reflexive melodies and intonations, and at certain times, very philosophic and sensible undertones. As an album that begins aggressively, but slowly becomes more humane, deeply existential and melancholic, The Insignificance of Life is in no rush to reveal itself as an imponderable and unexpected masterpiece to its audience. On the contrary, its latent, but patient atmosphere proves to be another one of its many qualities. 

Despite being relatively unknown, Fleurety is a veteran Norwegian black metal act, active since the early nineties (so it is a reminiscent of the classic Norwegian scene). Although their sound evolved along the years to be more progressive and avant-garde – with some brief stints of power metal discreetly placed onto their musical atmosphere as well – they started playing traditional black metal. This marvelous album was originally released in 1995, and already displays the group flirting with more melodic, versatile and flexible musical elements, although maintaining its creative nucleus ostensibly engraved on lunar BM ferocity. 

Almost forty-five minutes long, the record has five relatively extensive tracks: Fragmenter av en fortid, En skikkelse i horisonten, Hvileløs?, Englers piler har ingen brodd and Fragmenter av en fremtid. With the predominance of poetic, though somber and melancholic harmonies, Min Tid Skal Komme is a beautiful and graceful work of art, that definitely has on the apex of its consecrated virtuosity a lucid and proverbial sense of originality, that enabled this fantastic and gracefully consistent BM act to conceive a very singular and precious work of art.

…Medieval Art, originally released in 1998, is the only album by French black metal band Azerlath. A splendorous, vivid and fantastic work – with perfect guitar lines sustaining a graceful horizon of versatile and vivaciously resonant harmonies – the record has eleven tracks: The March of the Lost Souls, Nightside Aura, The Leaf, Melody of the Forest, Snow Covered Land, Svart, Northward, After the Rain, The Stream and the Lake, An Ode for a Frozen Night and When All Will End. 

Flirting with virtuous melodies and ascendant rhapsodies of graceful cohesion, the general style displayed by the band are a colorful and proverbial convergence of organic elements, exploding on floating waves of synchronic cosmic dissonances, that perfectly revolves around a lucid conjuncture of preponderant qualities, consistently inserted as a sensitive layout to mostly beautiful and poetic songs. 

Largely drawing its magnificent tonalities from the expansive grace of its creative vortex, …Medieval Art is a proficient, mature and fabulous record, that definitely has consecrated the genre to a more vigorous, robust and genuine sense of artistry, elevating the standards of black metal to a splendidly dynamic, elegant and sophisticated scale.

To Lay Like Old Ashes was the last album released by Austere, an Australian black metal act active for approximately five years, between 2005 and 2010. A formidable, elegant and versatile record, this work has passionate and consistent melodies, that flirts extensively with DSBM, which explains it’s graciously melancholic, macabre and depressive nature. Exceedingly exceptional at some points, the record, almost fifty-five minutes long, has six relatively extensive tracks: Down, To Fade With The Dusk, This Dreadful Emptiness, To Lay Like Old Ashes, Just For A Moment... and Coma II. 

The first song, To Fade With The Dusk – Down is just a brief intro – is absolutely marvelous, and embodies the fragile and fractured, but renitent and sagacious essence that drove the band’s astute, lucid and creative musicality, for the entirety of its short career, but more prominently on this album. With precise guitar lines, and a sensible perception of the spectral void that surrounds the human race, the song revitalize with sincere and flexible splendor the tempestuous dissonances and the tragic abysses that are inherent to our existential disgrace. The last song, the monumental and epic Coma II, features derisive and depressant guitar lines, that obliterates the emptiness that beholds its complacent serenity, with the hyperbolic consecration of a fatalist calmness, that revolves around a despondent perception of reality.  

With abundant and dilated virtues, that converges to a highly concentrated and energized – but dark – musical atmosphere, Austere displays a pungent, yet profoundly humane style, which makes this record to be a gracefully unique work of art, that definitely standardizes its singularity by the elegant proclivities and unexpected versatility displayed all the way through. 

Under The Moonlight Rising is an album released recently, on November 11. Work of an atmospheric black metal act named Koldissey – personal project of an Australian musician better known by the alias of Baelathvan, which is the creative force behind another BM endeavors like Ascensions Fall and Farrore –, this record is relatively concise. Only thirty-six minutes long, it has seven tracks: Equipoise, Under the Moonlight Rising, Dream Scars, Koldyssey (interlude), Lights Vestige, Night Shades and Ascent of the Black Moon. 

A singular record, whose melodies rely primarily on extensive, diluted and somber atmospheres, Under The Moonlight Rising is almost a collection of melancholic serenades, whose impulsive and primordial daydreams conducts into the everlasting fog of a delusional existence an indulgent and desperate search for lost forgotten realms – whose glorious past was filled by the solicitude of heroic and brave virtues –, that were unmercifully reduced to nothing, by the indifferent dust of history. In Under The Moonlight Rising, the artist somehow seems predisposed to revitalize in the rapture of its monumental harmonies the fugacious splendor that is no longer present. Since the world has fallen on the dubious darkness of lugubrious shadows, all that we have is harmonies that maybe the only reminiscent of those splendorous times. 

Atmospheric black metal from Hungary, Witcher is active since 2010, and Boszorkánytánc was released the following year, in 2011. With a great emphasis on atmosphere – conceived in subtle, though masterly slower, nefarious and somber tonalities – the vocals are grounded on traditional black metal, while instrumentally the duo explores more dense, gratuitous and perceptive melodies, with post-classical influences. While their musical layout can be inarguably defined as very simple, the songs are beautiful and consistent, and their method is ostensibly shaped in a coherent, versatile and graceful style. 

If you are into atmospheric black metal, you may not be impressed at all by this work, but undoubtedly, their qualities cannot be denied. They know how to elaborate, sustain and expand dispersive, but at the same time allegorical, diluted and elegant dark symphonies, that are much more grounded on melancholy and sentimental poetry, than generic sinister despondencies. This work have soul and sensibility, and Witcher deals with the general limitations of the genre with flexible virtuosity. Originally conceived as a demo, Boszorkánytánc is forty-two minutes long, so it can be defined – taking the extension into consideration – as a full length album.  

An exciting, splendorous and marvelous work, Nature Stays Silent is an album released this year, in March 30, by Swiss epic and melodic black metal act Cân Bardd. A very extensive record – seventy minutes long – the work has eight tracks: Introduction, My Ancestors, An Evolving Painting, Méditation Glaciale, Underwater, Océan, Abîme and A Gift for Nature. 

With formidable melodies, and amazingly overwhelming epic elements, exceedingly grounded in mythology and folklore, the style of Cân Bardd is indebted to an intuitive sense of musical grandeur, stylish majesty and rapture, that makes each of its masterful symphonies a monumental tale of everlasting realms of splendor, full of sensibility and grandiloquent artistry. With kings being deposed, chevaliers rescuing the honor of lost dynasties, and ancient Celtic tribes being remembered by the vitality of its salutary resistance against exterior enemies, the music of Cân Bardd – abundant on Viking and folk metal elements as well – is a vivid story of passionate and sentimental nostalgia, whose horizon contemplates the graceful eternity of splendid lost times. 

With a poetic and noble sound, the virtuosity of Cân Bardd is everywhere on this album. Consecrating to the subgenres of epic and melodic black metal a monumental quality that becomes its most valuable triumph, whose sound reverberates the intensity of its grace by the ethereal dimensions of its marvelous, poetic and lucid harmonies, Nature Stays Silent is a wonderful sonorous journey throughout a marvelous world of bards, hereditary kingdoms, heroic tradition and sincere grace, completely devoid of unnecessary superficialities and vanities. Definitely, it’s a majestic album, that aggregates fantastic perspectives into these wonderful subgenres.     

Released in 2011, The Light That Dwells In Rotten Wood is the second full-length album by American melodic black metal band Falls of Rauros, active since 2005. A graceful and very interesting work of art, that explores the subtlety of melancholic and depressant harmonies with a severely lugubrious atmosphere – despite the dynamic virtues of their vivacious sonorous layout –, the music of the group is characterized primarily by a dense and virtuous cosmogony of everlasting, but crucially humane despondency. 

With sensational, abrasive, pungent and creative guitar lines, the general pace of the music is calm, mature and serene, but has a profound, dissonant and fatalist glory, reminiscent of indefinite and fantastic landscapes full of gray haze and lost emotional conflicts. All songs on this album are gracefully elegant and imaginative, full of qualitative elements that embrace a consistent and fabulous virtuosity, that easily expands its exceptionally vibrant sensibilities to all the potentialities upon which its vast and intuitive melodies were conceived. Falls of Rauros has on this album a marvelous triumph, that easily manages the strength of its genuine style, full of originality, splendor and furious vitality.  

I, released on February 1st, 2016, is the debut – and so long, only – album by Fuath, an atmospheric black metal project conceived by Scottish musician Andy Marshall. Forty-one minutes long, the record has four extensive tracks: In the Halls of the Hunter, Blood, The Oracle and Spirit of the North. 

With vast, cohesive and exceedingly rapid melodies, highly suggestive of dramatic imagery – like everlasting anthems that echoes in the night, perfunctorily revolving around the conflagration of sinister flames that mysteriously burns surrounded by the infinite darkness of a forest conceived by the drastic loneliness of an unknown isolationist conscience –, the general harmonies of this work were elaborated in objective elegance, consistence and splendor, despite the fact that its passionate subjectivity also consecrates to the imagination a realm of possibilities that wanders around the imperative solitude of a universe lost in the glorious storms of all human despondencies. The guitar lines are exceedingly dynamic, and gives to the listener an impressionistic repertoire of poetic symphonies, that definitely filters the solitary emptiness upon which our ordinary sensibilities are confined. 

Displaying a visceral artistic grandiosity all the way through, I, by Fuath, is a formidable and genuine work, that engraves the singular style of the artist in the listener’s mind with evasive strength. While its pungent and abrasive guitar lines creates a nefarious world of unknown demise, the melodies are crystallized with a gracious beauty, that definitely qualifies this album as a fundamental milestone of the subgenre.     

An album that starts with pungent and aggressive, but moderately restrained and dynamic melodies, driven by torrid and cohesive guitar lines, Arousal was released on September 8, by Donarhall, a melodic and profoundly authorial black metal project by a German musician, known only by the alias of Gnev. 

A very graceful and consistent work – full of melancholic and splendid melodies –, its impressive how Donarhall evolved musically, since the time Gnev released the project’s first album, Misanthrope (that I’ve personally evaluated, as you can read here), in January 2017, which was, indeed, a tasteless and ordinary work, almost to the point of mediocrity, pervasively marked by sameness, generic passages and sonorous commonalities. 

Forty minutes long, Arousal is more concise and dynamic – though more stylistically ambitious and mature –, despite the fact that has only four long tracks: Drowsiness, Incubus, Apathy and Lethargy. Although the titles are incredibly suggestive, and they do transmit the respective feelings upon which each song is named – except, of course, for Incubus – this Donarhall album is anything but tedious, conventional or homogeneous. Despite the fact that the melodies sounds mostly evasive, cynic, diluted and somber, there is an organic vitality hidden in the harmonies, that makes the sound exceedingly beautiful and fascinating. With a robust creative strength and a genuinely elegant audacity, this album really sounds as a virtuous and relevant artistic triumph. It’s an indication that Gnev is evolving as a musician, and definitely has potential to surprise his audience with more excellent work in the future, the way he did on this magnificent album.  

The Eternal Darkness I Adore is the third album by Italian black metal band Kult, released in September 14, by German label Folter Records. Forty-four minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Intro, The Eternal Darkness I Adore, Pandemonium, Black Drapes, Reaping The Flock, Canticle Of Thorns, Hopestrangler, Gruesome Portrait and Devourer Of The Night.

A marvelously good, raw, traditional black metal album – though with a high fidelity production of superior quality, that makes the sound more clear and defined –, The Eternal Darkness I Adore is an intelligent, audacious and impeccable work, that very subtlety, plays with crust punk elements in a few select passages, but always with latent mordacity, never losing sight of its profoundly sinister, excruciating and lancinating BM stylish grandiloquence. 

With a brutal and aggressive sound – abundant on abrasive and tempestuous guitar lines –, that concomitantly remains precisely elegant and rapturous, the music developed by Kult is thoroughly expansive and consistent. Definitely, this album can be qualified as mature, sensible and sophisticated traditional black metal, conceived by the strongest virtues of an authorial, genuine and punctual creativity.  

Atmospheric black metal from Ukraine, Severoth is a project active for more than a decade now – since 2007 –, and When The Night Falls…, released this year, is the most recent work from this marvelous one man musical endeavor. 

With incisive, but soft and poetic harmonies, When The Night Falls… is a group of beautiful symphonies, aligned altogether in a mosaic of insurgent magnificence. Despite being a little less versatile than other acts in the genre, Severoth has a remarkable style, and a gracious and cohesive musicality. With a delicate splendor, that flirts discreetly with the most somber conflagrations of human nature, this work features prominently dissonant and almost folkloric keyboards, that masterly conceives colorful worlds of melancholic and petrified solitude, whose terribly ancient, but visceral disappointment towards existence drives despair to an ultimate darkness, that will be forever lost in the sands of time. 

A truly poetic and profound work, When The Night Falls is a glorious enchantment, that every enthusiast of atmospheric BM will enormously enjoy and appreciate.  

Despite the name, Utstøtt is an American black metal project, from the state of Oregon. Another album released this year – this one very recently, on October 15 –, Járnviðr is sixty-five minutes long, and has six extensive tracks: Járnviðr, Sköll og Hati, Dunkelheit (Burzum Cover), Angrboða, Fenrir and Frykt. With an interesting style, displaying an aggressive, lugubrious and more traditional black metal – though intelligently, but discreetly, without excesses, blended with epic and Viking metal elements – the music of Utstøtt is a formidable reinvigoration of the genre’s old school qualities, adorned with more lucid, singular and elegant harmonies. 

The aggressiveness and the rapid pace of the songs are outstanding qualities on this work. The fluid and dynamic features of the melodies – beautifully consecrated by refined, but pervasively abrasive guitar lines – creates an organic structure within the songs that makes them exceedingly vivacious, cohesive and alive, as a colorful diagram of planetary symphonies receiving the elementary conditions of reality in a more proverbial and distinct configuration of sensibilities. With a formidably original outlook, and a quintessential creative visionary disposition, the general style of Utstøtt in Járnviðr is simply sensational, splendorous, and filled with an inimitable grandiosity. 

The cover of Burzum, Dunkelheit, deserves to be highlighted. Although too similar to the original, this version is spectacularly beautiful, and comes charged with a sentiment of nostalgia that definitely will remind you the glorious days of the genre. Displaying a vastly genuine and inventive ordeal, Járnviðr, by Utstøtt, is a magnificent, consistent and very peculiar album, that proves all the way through – in every minute of it – why deserves to be recognized as one of the best black metal records ever released. 

Last, but not least, Unbound is another relatively recent album. Released by W.T.C.Productions on October 11 – the fifth work by Finnish legendary black metal act Sargeist –, Unbound is a furious and lancinating musical effort, with ten tracks: Psychosis Incarnate, To Wander the Night's Eternal Path, The Bosom of Wisdom and Madness, Death's Empath, Hunting Eyes, Her Mouth is an Open Grave, Unbound, Blessing of the Fire-Bearer, Wake of the Compassionate and Grail of the Pilgrim. 

With a wrathful and ravenous style, in the best raw old school traditional layer – despite the high quality production values –, the heavy and dense atmosphere, the nefarious melodies and the vociferating, but abrasive, meticulous and harmonious guitar lines conceives a panorama of digressive musical stability that perfectly delivers its sonorous cosmogony as a continuous conjuncture of sinister symphonies, compromised with the drastic execution of an everlasting doom. With songs greatly configured in a simple, but dynamic layout that explores the melodic possibilities of its lugubrious tonalities, Unbound not only honors the genre in all of its somber perspectives, but definitely establishes a new horizon of creative and spectacular splendor into the stylistic diagram of its expansive, majestic and grandiose realm of lost anger. Despite its dark and impenitent fury, the songs are marvelously refined, and displays a consistent essence that summarily revolves around the legacy of its own artistic principles. The album sounds impeccably conceived in the afflictive abysses of the human conscience, and with all the vitality of its colossal and mordacious strength, is perfectly sensational, from the beginning until the end.   

With exceedingly rapid and aggressive harmonies, definitely, devoted BM enthusiasts will enjoy the implacable and hazardous fury of Unbound, that abundantly dilacerates with insidious devastation each dissonant dimension of its brutal conception of a universe where chaos, darkness and glory rules indistinctly, for the complete demise of the human race. 

Well, this is it – at least for now! I hope you have enjoyed my personal selection of favorite black metal albums. You may not have liked everything that is here, but remember, it’s my list. Nevertheless, I will definitely love to read your opinions – positive or negative – about it. Thank you for your attention, and see you soon in the next list!  

​Wagner

Montague John Druitt was an ordinary British citizen, who came to be – for some time –, a primary suspect in the infamous Jack the Ripper case. 

An individual of stable origins and moderately opulent background, Montague John Druitt was born in Dorset, England, on August 15, 1857. Son of a notable physician, called William Druitt – well known as an active and respected member of the community – he had a normal childhood, and was a devoted student, revealing his diverse talents in sports like cricket, upon which he would be an ardent player throughout his short life, and disciplines like debate. 

In the beginning of the 1880’s, Druitt acquired a law degree, and qualified as a barrister –a specific category of layer –, beginning his professional career in 1885.  To earn an extra income, Druitt worked as the principal’s assistant in a school in Blackheath.  Until this point, everything in his life was normal as usual, and he was an applied young man, with a future ahead of him, as well as terrific personal and professional perspectives.  

Everything in his adult life went perfectly normal, until he took a turn for the worst in late November, 1888, when Druitt was dismissed from his activities at the school, for reasons that never came to be known.  Soon after, he was reported missing. 

Ultimately, his body was found floating in the river Thames, more precisely in the last day of the year, December 31. With no hard evidence directly relating to his death – or pointing to a culprit –, speculations would run wild from the moment the investigations began, until the modern times. Suicide has long been a favorite prevalent option among scholars of the Jack the Ripper case. His family had an extensive and troubled background on issues like psychiatric illnesses and suicide. In a letter found in his room, addressed to his brother, Montague John Druitt expressed concerns that he was becoming ill like their mother, who long suffered from mental illness, and was institutionalized, dying in 1890, only more than a year later than Druitt himself. Eventually, his official cause of death was ruled as intentional drowning. 

After some time, Montague John Druitt was connected to the Jack the Ripper cases, as a consequence of a rumor spread, affirming that the Ripper’s body was found on the Thames. By this time, however, several other men were considered suspects, a lot of them with consistently more preferable evidence than Montague John Druitt. 

Only in 1894 – almost six years after his death – Druitt became an official suspect into the case, when Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten, who would later become Assistant Commissioner, and a legendary figure in the history of London Metropolitan Police Force, named him so. Apparently, he found suspicious that, by the time Druitt had died, the assassination spree of Jack the Ripper had stopped, although murders in the exceedingly impoverished area of the Whitechapel district of London – where the ripper murders took place – continued well long into the 1890’s.  

Apparently, everything that implicated Druitt in the case as the murderer was unbiased and unsubstantiated information, related solely to his time of death coinciding with the abrupt end of the Ripper murders, that took place between August and November, 1888. Absolutely anything beyond that was found, leaving Montague John Druitt as anything, but circumstantial; an “option” that had no feuds, register or any contrivances concerning law violations whatsoever, below expectations when compared to more preferable contemporary suspects, like  Michael Ostrog or Seweryn Kłosowski, who were inveterate criminals, with a disturbed record history of law violations.  

Despite the fact that the death of Montague John Druitt was an unsolved mystery, he had no history in breaking the law, and everything that attached him to the case was based on the coincidence of his death occurring nearly a month after the last murder related to the Jack the Ripper case took place. Nevertheless, for some time, Druitt was seriously considered as a suspect for at least some scholars, who elaborated theories concerning on how he could have committed the murders. Although he lived too distant from Whitechapel, he could have traveled by train – as he was a regular – and had places to stay in the city. But this theory is usually dismissed, as it is widely believed that Jack the Ripper was more possibly a local resident, with a great degree of knowledge into the area. And with no solid evidence implicating him in the murders besides the time of his death, Montague John Druitt became an improbable consideration. 

As more than a century had passed, it is now practically impossible for the Jack the Ripper case to find a definite resolution. Nevertheless, it became a fascinating subject to a lot of researchers and scholars, who find stimulating to find evidence, crossing information and elaborating speculations that, more or less, create new perspectives and directions inside this more than a century old dark mystery.   
 


 
Wagner

Forgive me for saying this, but Anthony Fantano is the coolest dude in the realm of independent music criticism nowadays (especially on YouTube, setting aside completely written reviews, and concentrating on video [although he has done written reviews in the past]). I don’t really see his videos very often – I would be lying if I said the contrary –, and sometimes, when I do, it’s more out of curiosity about his preferences and his descriptive devices. Nevertheless, I think he is intelligent, quite enthusiastic, he really understands music, mainstream and underground, has a vast degree of knowledge about the subject – his descriptions and interesting evaluations about music proves that – and, c’mon, he’s the coolest guy ever, “the internet’s busiest music nerd”. I really don’t know the vast majority of the bands and albums he analyzes, but I really like his style, his “post-erudite” vocabulary, his overall analysis are exceedingly eccentric, but competent and skilled, his process of rationalization when talking about music are inadvertently curious, and he seems to be primarily a self-taught dude. Definitely, I’m curious about his personal tastes, why he does what he does, his personal choices in what concerns albums to review and artists to evaluate, and his general positions about certain genres, groups and bands. I think he is way more clever than what it seems, and he definitely has a natural authority for talking about music. He has enough, correct knowledge, derived from study and practice. You may not like, you may not agree with everything he says, but you definitely has to give this guy a credit: his YouTube channel keeps growing, he definitely has some interesting points and The Needle Drop has become a reference in music criticism. 

Of course, he’s not a musical version of Roger Ebert, but he is definitely capable of doing direct, pungent and intelligent analysis on various musical subjects and topics, with interesting density, precision, cohesion and consistence. And I don’t even will debate about his musical eruditeness, he has a formidable degree of knowledge about several distinct genres of music, and he proves that by delivering with mordacity and sagacity intelligent commentaries, concerning the vast majority of the musical subjects he evaluates.  But at this point you may ask “why the hell do we need musical critics, anyway”? I agree with you. Why? Music wouldn’t be the same without them? It probably would. But since this job exists, why not give to it its fullest appreciation? After all, there are some very good, talented music critics out there, that knows how to capture precisely and translate into words the technical and artistic features of an album, an EP, a song or a single. And I sincerely think Anthony Fantano do this work with a formidable amount of competence. So – contrary to “popular opinion” (who cares, anyway) – I think Anthony Fantano really deserves the success he has been achieving so far, and I wish his channel to grow more and more as the years pass by. I will also try to accompany his work more frequently, despite the fact that every review he does has something to be appreciated. Like I wrote some lines above, I don’t know a certain amount of the artists he covers, so I cannot really agree nor disagree with most of the reviews I watch, but I really like his style, which I think is very personal, fluid, spontaneous and delivered with a natural glamour.  

Fantano has a bonus: he’s also a very irreverent and funny guy! He has developed a character who appears sometimes, called Cal Chuchesta, which is, basically, a retarded version of himself. 

The reviews of Fantano are delivered with humor, soul, sagacity and commitment. He really knows what he is talking about. Look at this awesome review he has done about the album New Levels New Devils, by Polyphia: he describes the sound as “ultrasanitized” and “elevator music for metalheads”. 

The review he has done on Idol, the latest album on American death metal act Horrendous, was absolutely sensational. It leaves anyone curious enough to listen to this album. 

I have never been a fan of Muse, – although they have their share of relatively decent songs – and I wasn’t aware that they have released a new album this year. Fantano already reviewed the record. The result was something I already expected. Just a more flavored, hyperbolic and high-tech version of their past albums. Of course, the correct move would be verifying this personally, but like I’ve mentioned, I never liked Muse anyway. I always found their sound to be predictable, commercial and conventional pop rock for teenagers. After the review, evidently, I haven’t became excited to personally check it out.  

A review I personally really liked was Random Access Memories, by French electronic legendary act Daft Punk, which was simply a lucid, proverbial and terrific analysis, proportional to the monumental status the duo still enjoys on the house, retro, electronica and disco scenes.  

I personally have a preference to see reviews he does on artists, musicians and bands that I somehow follow the career, more or less. I have seen practically all the reviews Fantano has done for albums of infamous Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane, probably the most prolific rapper in history.  

El Gato: The Human Glacier is an album Gucci Mane – whose real name is Radric Davis – has released last year, and has achieved a high score among music critics and the musical mainstream media in general, and proved he’s still relevant in the hip hop scene. For some time, Gucci Mane hasn’t had the respectable amount of attention he gained, when he released this album, which is very concise. Only thirty minutes long, it is definitely a more moderate effort, compared to other Gucci Mane’s releases, that are generally hour-long albums, sometimes being much more extensive than that.  

This very brief review – only four minutes long, which is something unusual for Fantano – was a more unfavorable evaluation on Gucci Mane’s album Mr. Davis, which was also released last year, in October, two months before El Gato. Mr. Davis is, indeed, a more ordinary, generic and formulaic record. 

The review he has done on Gemini, the second solo album released by American rapper Macklemore – whose real name is Benjamin Haggerty – is also very enlightening, and tells a lot about the musical direction the artist is going to, which is, unfortunately, pretty much common ground, simplistic and predictable. Macklemore is best known for his partnership with record producer and DJ Ryan Lewis, under the label Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. 

This is one of his most recent reviews, The Sunset Tapes: A Cool Tape Story, by Jaden Smith. Besides the awesome analysis Fantano does describing the album, this work draws attention by the terrible evaluation: light 2 (Oh, yes, I forgot to mention; Fantano has a score he applies to each album, in the end of a review). This one, though, was somewhat predictable.  Everybody knows that Jaden Smith is not a real singer or actor. He is just following the steps of his famous parents, actor Will Smith and actress Jada Pinkett Smith.  

Will Smith was a rapper before he ventured into acting. He continued his career well long into the 2000’s, releasing his last album in 2005. Nevertheless, while he became famous as an actor, his career as a rapper never really launched, and eventually went into a permanently dormant state. His son Jaden, on the contrary, seems incapable of doing both. He just achieved celebrity status because of his parents, and works occasionally as an “actor” and “singer” because he is rich enough – and has the influence of his deservingly famous and hard working parents – to buy all the connections, logistic and support one must have, in order to pretend to be an artist.    

The last review I will highlight here is What Happens When I Try to Relax, by American rapper Open Mike Eagle, an underground artist from Chicago, who is growing in the taste of the rap-consuming public. 

I really don’t know what the future has reserved for our guy and most clever musical analyst Anthony Fantano, though I must say that I wish him the best. He certainly deserves success, and he has the intelligence and the knowledge to describe in words the gracious magnificence or the mediocre insignificance of an album. He does the cleverest, intense, meticulous, acerbic, punctual and detailed evaluations one can possibly imagine, and his competent work is proportional to the growth of his channel, that has new subscribers every day. In a few months, he will definitely achieve two million followers, and all of this is the result of a solid and cohesive work, from someone who understands profoundly almost everything from all musical genres and categories, and not only has acquired a personal taste for doing what he does, but has elaborated an inimitable personal style. Spontaneous, genuine, sarcastic and comic enough to please the audience, and yet, coherent compromised, technical and consistent enough for being taken seriously. 

So, Anthony Fantano is on the crest of the wave, surfing on the victories of his audacity working as a professional music critic, as well as the success of his channel. He certainly deserves, and I wish his success to keep growing, more and more, as the years pass by.  


​Wagner

So, now you decided that you want to become a writer? Do you really want to? Are you sure about that? Well, let me say that this is the path to a very, very solitary existence. To sit on your personal table, and write articles all day long, is a very solitary task (and normally, doesn’t pay very well). Nevertheless, it can be exceedingly useful, if you have the opportunity to write about subjects that you really love – like I have – and this fantastic chance becomes the most grateful reward you will ever receive on being a writer, believe me.   

I am a writer – almost full time – for a few years now, so I can definitely teach some lessons by personal experience. Beforehand, let me tell you that If you really want to pursue this occupation, you have the following options: you can be a professional writer, and do this full time (which is hardest), or you can be an amateur writer, and do this part-time (which is easiest). Alternatively, you can start as an amateur writer, and, when you feel completely prepared, try to become professional. 

However, there is also another option: to purse writing exclusively as a hobby. This option has the advantage that, by following it, you will not have any expectations concerning the results. Something that – as a professional writer – will eventually befall over you, at least on an occasional basis. Nevertheless, even if you want to be a professional writer, you cannot be too worried about results, at least in what relates to the repercussion of your work, because, as you might guess, most of the time, they would not achieve any relevance in the literary community whatsoever.     

Being an amateur writer is more secure and downplayed, because going this way, you can have a main job – a full time job – by which means you earn a living, and then you write on your vacant time (mostly weekends and holydays). The bad part is that, if you want to pursue ambitious literary projects – like writing books, literary essays or philosophic articles – you will probably not have enough time to dedicate yourself into it. The good part is that, by earning a salary, you will have financial stability, so you will not starve to death (like some professional writers almost did, like Charles Bukowski). Like everything else in life, you will find advantages and disadvantages, wherever option you decide to follow.    

The hardest way, though, is definitely going on to write full time. This is more risky, but can work too. On this way, you will probably not spend all the time writing what you want, but writing commercial stuff to earn a living. Of course, this will largely depend on luck and flexibility. You, being able to find somehow related work – that also reserves for you enough time to be a writer practically full time. Sometimes you will work for you, writing what you want (generally, without payment [logically, because you will not pay yourself to write]), and sometimes writing what people expect you to write (with a payment). Unless you don’t have that ambition, and are happy enough being an amateur writer, that wants to pursue the experience more as hobby. And this is also highly recommended, because you will be motivated by an amusement that will drive off any expectations concerning potential results, and will feel more free to write wherever you want to write. With the additional benefit that you will not depend on writing to earn a living. Nevertheless, even if you want to pursue writing as a hobby, you will have to absolutely love writing, and to be ardently passionate about the subjects you will write about. Primarily, writing cannot be a burden. When writing transforms itself into a burden, be sure it’s time to stop. At least, to give a time off. A sabbatical year, perhaps – like many famous writers have done, for whatever reasons, like writer’s block, as famous Jewish-American author Henry Roth, or exhaustion, like James Joyce, after he finished his masterpiece, the epic novel Ulysses – until you feel yourself inspired to write again. 

So, here, I’ve selected six advices that I think are positive and necessary for someone who is willing to – or, at least, thinking about the possibility of – become a writer. 

This is relatively easy, when you write about subjects that you love – like I’ve pointed out above – and that you are really passionate about. When you have a lot of passion and enthusiasm about the subject of your text or dissertation, it will be very, very easy to write about it. There is literally no secret here. Just expose all your love about the subject, assuring that fits the natural context of what you are or will describe. And, of course, have a great amount of knowledge about it. This is what the next topic is all about.  

In my case, I write about politics, economics, music, world literature and cultural topics in general – amongst other stuff – and I read everything useful that I can about these subjects. You really have to understand profoundly the things you will write about. First, read and research everything you can about the subject you are going to write. Do not rush yourself into it. Be calm and wise, try to assimilate everything that you find interesting, or whose core elements will be major auxiliary components to your study. Of course, you don’t need to have a Ph.D. or a master’s degree on the subject you’re about to write. But you have to have at least a decent knowledge about it. Otherwise, you will risk yourself on the composition of a precarious work, and this can have a disastrous implication, if the work achieves a decent degree of repercussion (and this is applicable to online texts too, not just printed material, if you want to pursue serious writing).     

This is not difficult – on the contrary –, especially when you feel motivated. Writing requires knowledge, but also passion, enthusiasm and energy. Therefore, it’s imperative that you can reunite all these elements, when you’re about to write a text. The more all of them are reunited, the more formidable, exhilarating and competent will be the text. However, do not exaggerate. Be careful not to write anything exclusively grounded on emotion. You want to be a serious writer, so you don’t want to write material that looks like a letter a sixteen year old college student wrote to her boyfriend. And this is serious advice. Professional humorist David Cross in the past frequently made funny jokes about the lyrics singer Scott Stapp wrote for his band Creed, as their level of maturity and sentimentality were, basically, of fourteen-year-old girls. 

This is a thoroughly important topic. Tell your stories, your experiences, from your own point of view. You will sound true and genuine. The veracity in your text will greatly overflow the strength of your words and the authenticity of your narrative. Be true, be the only person in this world no other person can be, and this is yourself. The things only you can think and only you can write departing directly from your own personal point of view is a priceless thing. Be sincere, be true, be honest. But be careful: this doesn’t mean that you are absolutely free to produce mediocre texts. Revise, analyze, rewrite, revise and analyze again, until you are certain that the piece is finished, and no longer needs to be reworked. Of course, you don’t have to be a perfectionist martyr, but be certain that a decent work on revising the text before publishing it is a mandatory and necessary task. 

Constant practice is the only way to get always better and better. After some time – especially after some years – you will find that practice is the best way of improvement in this art. You will naturally become better and better as time passes, as long as you keep writing (this is a golden rule, though all the rules have exceptions – along the history of the literary art, some authors have proved to be quite the opposite: they have started out marvelously, but declined severely in quality, as their careers progressed). 

Never forget the coffee, it certainly will become your best friend in your working hours. You will have the cup of coffee permanently on your worktable. In my case, tonic water, and more sporadically now, beer – from several different brands – is also helpful to feel enthusiastic, renovated and with energy, especially if you will write for extensive periods. Nevertheless, do not exaggerate, in the beer, nor in the coffee. Notorious French novelist Honoré de Balzac may have died from an overdose of caffeine. He drank approximately thirty cups of coffee every day, in the course of his daily work journey. Of course, Balzac had an imperatively precarious lifestyle. He worked eighteen hours a day – from midnight to six pm –, and his exacerbated schedule, combined with the excessive coffee drinking, may have contributed to his premature death, at 50 years old. Another writer that may have been plagued by this problem was Finnish literary icon Timo Kustaa Mukka, which also suffered an early demise, having died at 29 years old, in 1973. He smoked heavily, and drank approximately three liters of coffee per day.  

And since we have arrived altogether to this point, let me give you a final – but totally free – advice, regardless of the way you want to pursue writing, whether it would be amateur, professional, or as a hobby: write always as if you’re writing for yourself, and for yourself only. Forget all expectations about it. It’s a magnificent form of freedom, that you can only enjoy at the fullest, if you dismantle all illusions concerning this activity.       

So, what do you think about these six guidelines for aspiring writers? Are you feeling motivated? Of course, these steps are only the beginning. As you become an experienced writer, the rest of the challenges you will discover for yourself.  


​Wagner