There is a one-panel cartoon, published last year, showing a doctor with the twined snakes of the caduceus on his chest asking a parent to tell her screaming child that he’s not part of Slytherin. The cartoonist who wrote the caption doesn’t mention JK Rowling or Harry Potter. They’re able to assume that the audience will be so well acquainted with the books that they don’t need to. Ann Radcliffe’s fame was once like that.

It lasted for a long time, too. In Les Miserables, published 40 years after her death, Victor Hugo refers, in an aside, to “the vivid imagination of the police, that Ann Radcliffe of the government.” Thirty years later Henry James mentions one of her books in The Turn of the Screw. “Was there a “secret” at Bly,” his narrator asks, “-- a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement?” In both cases the author treats the reader as if they will naturally know what he means. To them Radcliffe was familiar enough to be used as an easy point of reference: as cold as snow, as high as the sky, as Gothic as Ann Radcliffe.

The author of The Mysteries of Udolpho was born in 1764 and died in 1823. She housed her characters in Catholic parts of Europe—in Italy, in France, places with dramatic landscapes and exotic monasteries—without ever leaving England. In spite of her fame she preferred to stay out of the public eye. She didn’t invent the Gothic novel, but her popularity helped to form the tone of beleaguered high emotion that became one of the genre’s defining characteristics. Her language is firm and imporous without being static, her pen has an eye that moves across the landscape:

“To the south, the view was bounded by the majestic Pyrenees, whose summits, veiled in clouds, or exhibiting awful forms, seen, and lost again, as the partial vapours rolled along, were sometimes barren, and gleamed through the blue tinge of air, and sometimes frowned with forests of gloomy pine, that swept downward to their base. These tremendous precipices were contrasted by the soft green of the pastures and woods that hung upon their skirts …”

Her voice is a series of contrasts: clouds and blue air, barren rock and forests, the sharp double-pop of precipice leading into the open-ended sound of pasture and wood. Radcliffe is sensitive to extremes. In her books, sensitivity itself becomes a sign of moral virtue, particularly a sensitivity towards wild, natural places. Her villains are people who have allowed the urban world to coarsen them. They would rather gamble in a casino than look at a forest, and they prefer ostentatious glamour to “modest elegance.” Her heroes are the other way around. When Emily’s aunt in Mysteries of Udolpho complains that the wild mountains of Italy are “horrid,” the reader knows that there is no love for this aunt in the author’s heart.

The apparently supernatural events in her books all come with rational explanations. If one of her characters thinks she’s seen a ghost then the scene is not there to prove the existence of ghosts, but to give the characters, and, through them, the readers, a chance to be overwhelmed by their feelings. The object of the emotion is less important than the emotion itself. Her oeuvre is like opera in this way—the plots are preposterous, but the whole thing is done with such luscious self-belief that the audience is tempted to forgive.

Radcliffe is not as well-known as she used to be. In modern editions of Les Miserables, Hugo’s reference has earned itself a footnote. No one is likely to make her the punchline of a cartoon. But her fame still survives in odd ways, in hidden signs and signals, like the theatre production that mingled Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey with Udolpho, or a fleeting reference to a castle called Dunbayne in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or the small Gothic publishing house in Kansas whose owners seem to have named themselves after one of her characters. They call themselves Valancourt Books.

* A Radcliff reference page.
* The works of Ann Radcliffe online at Adelaide University.
* Valancourt Books.

—Deanne Sole

From the New York Times:

Lyall Watson, a maverick scientific polymath and explorer who wrote the best-selling book “Supernature” and introduced the “hundredth monkey” theory to explain the sudden and inexplicable transmission of behavior and ideas across social groups, died on June 25 in Gympie, Australia. He was 69 and lived in West Cork, Ireland.

I’ve only just begun to learn about the enchanted life of Lyall Watson with his unorthodox upbringing, his 100th Monkey theory, and the tapeworm he invited into his body and named Fred. Prior to news of his death, and subsequent fanciful obituaries, all I knew about the author was the incredible volume, Gifts of Unknown Things, which has resided among the “special books” on my desk since high school.

At first, I loved the book for its majestic cover illustration and promise of something grounded and true in the world in the way it describes the flight patterns of male flies among other natural, beguiling things. Since, the book has taught me that the little differences between human cultures are the most interesting, and has introduced me to New Age science and futurism, stuff I don’t strictly follow or even really understand, but am strangely drawn to.

I found Gifts of Unknown Things in a box of library donations. The cover caught my eye, and the first page I flipped to featured these words: “Nobody gets used to people’s coming back from the dead...” How do you pass that up? Everything Lyall Watson describes in his books, he does so with rapt urgency, like he’s looking at the whole world for the very first time.

Better late than never to get the skinny on such a fascinating writer. 

—Nikki Tranter

Kate Summerscale has won the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for her book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House (Bloomsbury). Summerscale spent the better part of two years researching and writing the book which details the investigation into the murder of a three-year-old boy at Road Hill House in England’s Georgian countryside. The book focuses primarily on the efforts of Jonathan Whicher, the Scotland Yard detective who solved the crime but destroyed himself in the process. Whicher and his investigations are believed to have directly influenced the detective fiction genre, and the case is credited with creating ongoing public interest in crime and criminal detection. Whicher was one of the first eight Scotland Yard detectives.

The Times reports on Summerscale’s win, quoting prize judge Rosie Boycott, who commented that The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is “a dramatic page-turning detective yarn of a real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. Kate Summerscale has brilliantly merged scrupulous archival research with vivid storytelling that reads with the pace of a Victorian thriller”.

Summerscale left her job as literary editor at the Daily Telegraph to write the book. The book is written in the form of a Victorian murder mystery, but Summerscale is quick to point out that her book is not a novel. She tells UK television’s Book Zone that everything in the book is pulled directly from her research from the clothing worn to the weather. It’s a great and lasting tribute to Mr. Whicher, a man Summerscale admits becoming rather fond of as she wrote his story. Her life-altering dedication to telling this man’s story is commendable to say the least. She tells Dan Vyleta at Raincoat Books:

The most interesting facts I gathered about his private life were hard-earned, the fruit of long hours in archives and records offices. His professional life was much easier to unearth. Thanks to digital archives, I was able to find accounts of dozens of cases on which he had worked, and from these I tried to deduce what kind of a man he had been.

On a personal note, I’m thrilled the book is now out in Australia. It’ll certainly make the wait for the next Erik Larson book a little easier to bear.

The books official website is here; read an extract here, and listen to Summerscale discuss the book at The Interview Online here.

Summerscale discusses the book on Book Zone:

—Nikki Tranter

In the introduction to their new book, GoFugYourself.com co-creators Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks refer to themselves as “a couple of snarky bitches”. Spend some time over at their blog, though, and you’ll discover quite the opposite. Morgan and Cocks might sound like catty wenches when they chide Tara Reid for her wonky breast implants or offer advice to flat-chested Kirsten Dunst to wear a push-up bra ("Love your girls,” they write, “and they’ll love you back").

But indeed these are the kinds of friends any woman could use—especially those women who spend so much time in the spotlight. If Tara’d had these girls on staff perhaps she wouldn’t have ventured out to the 2003 MTV Movie Awards in a dress resembling a “very unreliable-looking drawstring purse”.

Cocks and Morgan have built their careers on judging celebrity fashion. From Cate Blanchett to Britney Spears, no celebrity passes beneath their fug-radar, and every day on their blog, a new fashion disaster is posted, full-colour, just begging for the GFY treatment. At the time of writing, new reality TV star Denise Richards is in the hotbox at GFY wearing a light Autumn-y dress, dark-coloured shoes, and a suede sunhat. The Fug Girls comment:

I don’t know about you, but every time I see an ad for Denise Richards: It’s Complicated, I fly into a foaming rage. It’s NOT complicated. You had a brutally wretched and acrimonious divorce during which both you and the MaSheen said incredibly disturbing things about each other, and then you hopped into the sack with your best friend’s husband before either of you were even legally single ... Don’t pretend your life is gloriously and fascinatingly complex in a way that wasn’t totally engineered by your own actions, and I won’t pretend I don’t hate your hat.

It’s that sort of up-to-the-minute pop culture knowledge and Epilady-sharp wit that has raised GFY above other blogs of its kind. Nobody slams a poorly-dressed celeb like the Fug Girls. And they admit, too, it’s all in good fun.

Now, the snark arrives in book-form. Go Fug Yourself Presents: The Fug Awards is the first release from the bloggers, and features a greatest hits of fashion disasters designed as a makeshift awards ceremony. It’s the perfect setting for a GFY book—after all, so many Fug moments are created at just such events. Awards here include the “Girl, Please” for the Most Inexplicable Style Icon, the “Put It Away” for the Most Underclad and Overexposed, the “Errstyle” for the Most Vexing Coiffure Catastrophes, and the “Fug of all Fugs” for the Fugliest Fughound that Ever Fugged. Britney Spears is in the running for that one, so is Blu Cantrell, Sienna Miller, and Olympic ice-skater Oksana Baiul, who the girls note often looks as if “she’s trying to make it hip to dress like a washed-up lady wrestler angling for a comeback.”

GFY translates well as a book, especially one this big and glossy. It’s the coffee-table book for fashion-fiends and celeb-watchers, easily flip-through-able, and a great conversation piece. Best of all, the snark is fresh. PopMatters spoke to Cocks and Morgan about the book, the snark, and whether or not it’s cruel to laugh so heartily at Courtney Peldon.

How did the Fug Awards get from blog to book?
Jessica Morgan: We’d gotten some emails from people suggesting we write a book, but it wasn’t until the man who became our agent came to town and took us for cocktails and talked it out with us that we really decided it was something we should try. Like so many babies, it was conceived over cocktails.

Heather Cocks: It hadn’t really occurred to us in a serious way until then, but suddenly, we realized it did make sense to try and create something tangible—something for people who are mystified by celebrity fashion but don’t necessarily enjoy reading blogs, for instance, or for people who would like to read Go Fug Yourself (GFY) in the bathroom but don’t want to mess with bringing their laptops into the john. You know. And also, frankly, it just sounded incredibly fun.

Were there any doubts the site would translate to book form?
JM: Definitely. Lots of doubts! It was really challenging, because a blog, by nature, and especially our blog, is very much of the moment. It was hard to figure out how to write the book so that it wasn’t automatically dated, and we also needed to figure out how to write something that was different enough from the blog itself that people wouldn’t feel like we were asking them to buy something they had already read for free. We discarded a ton of random ideas trying to figure it out.

HC: That’s how we came up with the faux-awards format—who doesn’t love a cheesy awards spectacular, for one thing, and for another, we’d always been toying with the idea of doing year-end “worst of the worst” posts, and bringing that concept to book form turned that into something bigger and prettier and glossier than anything we could’ve done on the blog itself.

Have you been happy with the response?
JM: Definitely. We mostly just wanted our regular readers to enjoy it—we wrote it for them—and it seems like they have, so we’re thrilled.

HC: Everyone’s been great. The one thing we’ve struggled with is getting the message out that it’s not reprinted material—it’s all new. None of the text has appeared on the blog before. But we have superb readers. They’re so supportive, and have welcomed the book with very open arms. That’s really all we could ask for; when we were writing it, that was our chief concern. We didn’t want any of our loyal readers to come away feeling like they’d gotten gypped out of their money by buying the book.

You mention in the book’s introduction, that it’s a snapshot of a time. What is up with now? Are we in some media dark age where celebrity and person to celebrate are getting too confused to ever go back? Or do you think it’s always been like this, we just get to see more of it because of the Internet? I don’t know if I can think of a Paris-type in the pre-Internet age ...?
JM: It’s hard to say. I think there has always been a sector of celebrity that isn’t really based on talent. But with the advent of the celebrity blog, obviously, I think we’re seeing far more of many
more people than we used to. Part of me thinks that this is only temporary, but then I think about the intense need that everyone has to procrastinate at work and I’m pretty sure that the media attention given to even sort of marginal celebrities is here to stay. People need celebrity gossip to read when they’re supposed to be working!

HC: Yeah, and despite what people say, reality TV isn’t going away. I mean, the Kardashians have a show, Denise Richards is filming one, the Lohan matriarch is doing one ... there will always be low-level celebrities who are desperate to get noticed, and outlandish and/or barely-there clothes will always be one of the things they turn to in order to get that fame. The Internet certainly helps that along.

Who are some of your favourite, actual style icons and why? Who could the Peldons really take a few tips from?
JM: It changes, you know? Fergie used to be a total mess and now she looks consistently adorable. There’s hope for everyone! I think right now, I am really loving Rachel Bilson. She always looks great. As far as actual icons go, I have to admit that I have a great fondness for Sharon Stone—who looks amazing half the time and REALLY CRAZY the other half. I would never advise that anyone emulate her, but she is a favorite. And personally, I’d love to grow up like Helen Mirren. She always looks sexy AND age-appropriate.

HC: Oh, sweet Peldons. In terms of people they would realistically take tips from, I’d say Lauren Conrad of The Hills, who is about their age—well, a bit younger, but whatever—and who generally stays away from grossly overexposing her flesh (if not her image). Of course, I’m not saying Lauren Conrad is a style icon. Just that if the Peldons were to decide to learn from Cate Blanchett, they’d need a REALLY big clothing budget, because she wears off-the-runway stuff like the rest of us wear Banana Republic. I actually think Cate Blanchett is a good icon—again, a lot of her choices are not things that I would do, but she carries them off with extreme self-assurance and you know her missteps are because she’s playful and not because she’s desperate or blind.

Does Courtney Peldon know how the world views her? I’m of the opinion, for instance, that Chloe Sevigny dresses ridiculously on purpose. Her own special sense of irony and all that (I hope, at least). But Peldon, and we can throw Brown into this as well—do they get it? Can they possibly just not see the world laughing at them?
JM: I don’t know. I think they sort of get it—I mean, Courtney once wore a LOIN CLOTH to a premiere. And they’ve said things in the recent past that acknowledged that they know they used to go out looking totally nuts. I think they were sort of doing it for attention. So I think they get it. I just think they went into the sort of Tacky Mermaid direction, instead of the Ironic Fashionista
one.

HC: I think they get it NOW, but too late. Like, who’s going to take them seriously as actresses at this point? Not that we ever did, but seriously, the level of fug they were putting out into the world with regularity between, say, 2003 and 2006, was guffaw-inducing. I can’t imagine that helped their career, which might be why they’re still best-known to people for a) the fug, or b) acting roles they took when they were tots. If they’d had a bit more savvy and self-awareness early on, I don’t think they’d have gone as far in the direction they did. Unless they never planned to stay in showbiz, but somehow I doubt that.

Is it mean to laugh at them? Why do we laugh at them?
JM: I don’t think it’s too terribly mean. I think we’ve ALL had those days when we wore something crazy and you HAVE to just laugh about it. So I prefer to think that I am laughing WITH them.

HC: Yeah, I have to believe that Courtney Peldon took one look at herself in that loincloth and laughed as hard as we did and thought to herself, “I was DERANGED.” There’s fashion mistakes—the wrong fit, the accidentally see-through top, etc.—and then there’s wearing a bikini and fishnets to a charity event. So there’s a part of our blog that deals with groaning and putting our head in our hands over simple things that could’ve been avoided, where we’re not laughing but rather commiserating, and then there’s the part that deals with the Peldons and Bai Ling, who are SO off their rockers that you have to laugh because how else can you process it? I mean, their wardrobes are not of this planet.

How did you guys come to be so interested in fashion dos and don’ts? Have you been judging celebrity outfits forever?
JM: I think we were definitely always interested in celebrity outfits. Not in an extreme way, but in the way that a lot of people are—we sit around and watch the Oscars with our girlfriends, or
flip through US Weekly, and talk about what everyone was wearing. And I think that kind of chatty girlfriend tone has kind of translated to the site—I hope so, anyway.

HC: It does just come from our relationship as friends, the time we’ve spent hanging out and gossiping. I’ve always been into soap operas—I loved Dynasty and I enjoy all the daytime TV melodrama over here, and I grew up watching EastEnders and Aussie soaps like Neighbours and Home & Away. So in a way, being fascinated by celebs’ real-life drama is just an extension of that love of melodrama, and that parlayed itself into a “What would I have done? Well, certainly not THAT” approach to their wacky clothing choices.

Who’s been a favorite for you guys, and why? The book looks at post-millennial fashion problems, what about pre-? If you could write a whole book about early style disasters, who would it be filled with?
JM: I have a weird obsession with Lindsay Lohan. I love her when she looks heinous and I love her when she looks awesome. I am always interested in her, and I don’t know why. And I think we both always love Posh. As far as early style disasters, we talked about that as far as the book goes, actually, and it turns out that it’s really hard to have the appropriate perspective on that sort of thing. Clearly, in 2008, my plaid stirrup pants with the giant bows on the stirrup would be CRAZY, but in 1985, they were AWESOME.

HC: When Chloe Sevigny came out with that hideous line for Opening Ceremony, I was thrilled. I deeply enjoy how bad her clothes are sometimes. She was one of my original sore spots, if you will, because every magazine was insisting that she was so cerebral about fashion that we couldn’t possible hope to understand her genius—all while she was wearing, like, a satin multi-colored muumuu. It would annoy me that people were implying that my dislike for that getup was because I was too stupid to understand it, and not because it was in fact hideous and unflattering. Chloe does sometimes look like a million bucks—just like anyone out there, she has good days and bad, and since Big Love on HBO she’s looked pretty more often than
not at events. So I always feel a lovely twinge of nostalgia when she turns out something that harkens back to Old Chloe’s insanity.

Can you think of a celeb who has never messed up?
JM: You know, there are a lot of people who are reliably pretty chic—I think Nicole Richie, for instance, usually looks great—but EVERYONE messes up sometimes. Thank god! It’d be so boring otherwise.

HC: Even Nicole Richie blows it, though. She was a mess when they started promoting that first season of The Simple Life. I’m not a fan of her casual style, but on the red carpet she does know how to turn it out much better than she did back then. I can’t think of anyone unimpeachable, either. And as Jess said, that’s just human nature. Even Major League Baseball players don’t have a .500 batting average. Nobody hits it out of the park every time.

What is it about your kind of criticism that has given the site such a leg up? I find Fug to be the most culturally aware, the most spot-on with its ‘80s trivia, and, believe it or not, the nicest. Was that always in the plan, to resist rudeness or cattiness?
JM: Thank you! That is really nice to hear. We DO have a handle on our Sweet Valley High trivia, that is true. I don’t know if our extensive knowledge of that and Melrose Place is the secret to our success, but I certainly like to think so. In all seriousness, though, I’m not sure what’s given us a leg up. I think we were very fortunate to have gotten into the blog thing early in the game, and there aren’t a lot of sites out there that SOLELY cover celebrity fashion the way we do, so that has helped us a lot. As far as niceness goes, we never sat down and had a discussion about editorial tone or whathaveyou, but I think we’ve naturally evolved into ... you know, not being TOTAL raging bitches.

HC: The tone definitely did just grow naturally—we’re not all love and pancakes, or anything, but we just don’t want to get into ragging on people’s DNA. I’m sure in the early going we weren’t as certain of that goal, but once we started doing it enough, we just realized we wanted to keep it about what these people are doing to themselves—the self-inflicted state of fug. Some of it also comes from the fact that we are giant softies at heart, though. Fergie is a prime example. We never really got her at all, but then she developed some chicness and came off really sweet in interviews, and suddenly an affection for her grew up almost out of nowhere. It’s like that with almost all of them now—we have these soft spots or inexplicable affinities for so many people and we just want them to keep it together.

What are the most interesting things you’ve learned about people (celebrities or non) since starting Go Fug?
JM: Oh, good question. I have learned that people who write hate mail tend to have considerably worse spelling and grammar than people who write non-hate mail. Also, I’ve learned that the more I fug someone, the more I start to secretly love them.

HC: Same here. And I have learned that Jessica is one hell of a business partner.

What do you like most about your site?
JM: I love when Heather writes as George Clooney—aka Intern George. That never fails to make me laugh.

HC: Aw, thanks! I used to love Jess’s Britney letters, but alas, we don’t do those any more because she’s too tragic. Her Lindsay Lohan LeggingsWatch stuff cracked me up. Mostly, though, my favorite thing about the site is how much fun we still have doing it, and getting to work together. We were pals before we were colleagues, so it’s been such a pleasure to have grown a career we both love out of a friendship we value.

What’s the future look like for Go Fug?
JM: We are not big plan makers—we tend to take things as they come with the site. So we’ll see what happens. We are planning on writing some more books—maybe fiction!—and keeping an eye on the scourge of leggings, of course.

HC: I would like to say the future looks like a closet full of Louboutin shoes and designer dresses, but I keep forgetting to buy lottery tickets so I’m guessing that will never come to pass.

—Nikki Tranter