Grotesque Spaces and Transformative Nature in Patrick McGrath’s The Grotesque

With the introduction of print modalities and the subsequent introduction of modern/western education systems, the questions of language, vernacular e ducation, book production, and translations became important in 19 th century Bengal. As the introduction of a new epistemological system in 19 th century Bengal necessitated the production of books and translations, several western knowle dge texts got translated into Bengali by the efforts of various individuals and institutions. These translations play a pivotal role in producing textbooks in Bengali and represent a site where the structure and vocabulary of the Bengali language got standardised and redefined through printed language and language of translations. This study tracks the translations produced by the collaboration of Fort William College and Serampore Missionary Press, Calcutta Sc hool Book Society and Vernacular Literature Society and argues that the translations produced by these institutions gave shape to a kind of Bengali language that represented a class and social hierarchy. This study argues that the translations produced by the aforementioned institutions and the printed textbooks paved a way for the upper-class urban elites to mould the Bengali language in their way (by excluding the colloquial register and language of the masses) to represent their ethos and class hierarchy and identity. This study argues that the translations produced by these institutions, in many ways, were the tools through which the various contesting views on the form and diction of the language of/in print got articulated.

Social Inequalities and Health

His Own Ghost WriterBlake Bailey’s Philip Roth Timothy Parrish (bio) Blake Bailey. Philip Roth. Norton, 2021. 912 pp. $40.00 hardback. Perhaps the most important revelation of Blake Bailey’s controversial biography is something that we perhaps have long known, even without the confirming diagnosis of the subject’s psychiatrist, Hans J. Kleinschmidt: Philip Roth was a narcissist. One may also add, as Roth would surely wish us to, he was a narcissist who was a very gifted writer. Indeed, Roth would have us go further than that — he would want us to ask, who cares if the writer was a narcissist when all any reader should want is what the writer wrote? As a lifetime reader of Roth, I am sympathetic to the argument implied by that question. A biographer, however, must ignore arguments that distract from the life lived. Roth’s first appointed biographer, Ross Miller, seems to have challenged Roth’s premise. In an interview with one of Roth’s cousins, Miller was recorded speaking of Roth and his brother, Sandy, having “a predatory side. They look at women — and I’m not gonna write about this — but they are misogynist” (732). Unsurprisingly, when Roth got wind of such interviews, he refused him access to his papers and friends. He effectively fired him. Bailey, on the other, kept his post. It’s easy to see why. Throughout, Bailey is either at pains to defend Roth from charges of misogyny or eager to contextualize grievances so that the reader understands that the accuser has a grudge with Roth. His consistent line is that Roth was more sinned against than sinning. As Roth would wish him to do, he invokes Roth’s stature as a writer to justify and at the same time conceal his subject’s every malignant act. Nor does he critically examine Roth’s works to convey his aesthetic achievement or explain why Roth’s books remain and will remain worth reading. For this, he relies on reviewers and the awards on Roth’s shelf. Perhaps the most telling fact about the biography, given Roth’s many reprehensible acts and frequent jettisoning of close relationships that cease to serve him, is that Roth never fired Bailey. Indeed, I suspect Roth would be happy with the finished project and likely pleased that recent allegations of [End Page 126] his biographer’s misconduct have overshadowed his own. There is a reason Roth chose for his biographer one seemingly ignorant of the Judaism that shaped him. Roth doesn’t want us to know him — in any way that he himself has not sanctioned. A narcissist compartmentalizes his life so that those who know him only know him as he wishes to be known. If the friend or acquaintance violates that “knowing,” the friend is sacrificed — and often defamed — because the narcissist cannot stand exposure. Being revealed as he “really” is, as opposed to being seen through the mask that he presents the world, is so devastating to the narcissist that it can cause mental and physical breakdowns. One sees this pattern over and over in Bailey’s life of Roth, who is often described on the edge of suicide or a severe mental breakdown. The two most obvious cases are Roth’s ex-wives, Margaret Martinson and Claire Bloom, each of whom violated the implicit contract made with their husband, that is, never to reveal to the public any of his egregious acts. Miller committed the same offense. The challenge for the biographer of a narcissist is to see his subject in all of his guises and permutations. The result will likely not be pretty, since the narcissist’s every friendship is transactional and the image he presents with one friend or acquaintance likely contradicts the image he presents with other persons. And if the biographer is writing about a living subject and happens to know that living subject, the biographer’s tricky situation is to reveal the totality of the subject’s often monstrous behavior without the subject grasping his achievement until it is too late for the subject to stop him. In theory, Bailey had a remarkable opportunity to thread this moving needle since his...

This paper explores the interplay between global surfing masculinities, the colonial/feminising touristic order and local cultural norms in the Philippines through an analysis of surfing masculinities and the Visayan hierarchical ordering principal sipog (supog/ulaw), or shyness/modesty/shame/embarrassment. The touristic order constructs tropical tourism destinations as effeminate, a process which marginalises, excludes or emasculates local men. However, through adherence to the masculine modes of modern surf culture, Filipino surfers on Siargao Island find a viable pathway through which to assert dominance and resist and reject the touristic order. Yet, while local men who surf on Siargao Island assert dominance and control in surfing spaces, outside these spaces their subjectivities are complicated by overarching social and class hierarchies, global inequalities and local cultural norms (sipog). In tourist spaces, their behaviours tend more towards shyness, modesty and deference.

The Tree Of Life: metaphysics vs. metaphor

Intraspecific morphological variation is a relatively common pattern among lizards, where several selective factors have been suggested as responsible for this phenomenon. For instance, geographic variation could result from natural selection along with historical processes, whereas sexual dimorphism has usually been attributed to sexual selection, natural selection, and niche segregation. Liolaemus wiegmannii is a diurnal lizard distributed in the center, center-east and north-west of Argentina, as well as on the shores of south-west and south Uruguay. Information about morphological variation in this species is almost entirely limited to differences in mid-body scales between populations in the north and center of Argentina and some sex-based morphometric variation. Herein, we studied the geographic and sexual morphological variation of Liolaemus wiegmannii from Uruguay to test the hypothesis of morphological isolation by distance and morphological structuring by geographic barriers (rivers), as well as exploring the occurrence of sexual dimorphism in morphometry and lepidosis. Neither geographic distance nor rivers seem to play an important structuring role on the external morphology of Liolaemus wiegmannii in Uruguay. Multiple multivariate analyses support the hypothesis that most of the external morphological variation is probably due to sexual dimorphism. Natural and sexual selection acting on females and males, respectively, are the most plausible mechanisms underlying the dimorphism observed in this species.

Victorian women poets represent poetry as a humanizing agent in a society where economic and social hierarchies are increasingly being defined in terms of scientific explanations of the natural world. Nature is a topos women poets invoke to represent and analyse a cluster of ethical concerns such as the nature of violence between individuals and nations, economic exploitation, moral degeneration, and the transformative powers of the poetic imagination. The work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Augusta Webster, Dora Greenwell and Mathilde Blind provides a rich and complex textual field for examining the representation of these issues in women’s poetry written between 1830 and 1890. Rossetti, Webster and Greenwell were contemporaries and correspondents who defined their work in differing ways against Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Blind, who began her publishing career in the 1870s, also defines her work explicitly in relation to Barrett Browning, but also circulated in the same intellectual milieu as Rossetti. The selection of these poets has been guided as much by their difference from one another as by their similarities, as part of a more general attempt to complicate and diversify the critical category of the woman poet.

Historians have extensively explored conflicts and reconciliation between labor and management, but have hardly considered how class hierarchy took shape and persisted. This article explores the birth of class hierarchy through the lens of the Tokyo Worker School. While education bureaucrats created this school as a training ground for skilled workers, the school's educators helped their students join white-collar positions and avoid the stigma against manual labor. By tracing this process, I explain how the aspirations of educators and students alike consolidated class hierarchy and explore why the collar line persisted despite the ascent of hitherto under-valued professions, such as engineering.

Indexing a class hierarchy, in order to efficiently search or update the objects of a class according to a (range of) value(s) of an attribute, impacts OODB performance heavily. For this indexing problem, most systems use the class hierarchy index (CH) technique of [15] implemented using B + -trees. Other techniques, such as those of [14, 18,31], can lead to improved average-case performance but involve the implementation of new data-structures. As a special form of external dynamic two-dimensional range searching, this OODB indexing problem is solvable within reasonable worst-case bounds [12]. Based on this insight, we have developed a technique, called indexing by class-division (CD), which we believe can be used as a practical alternative to CH. We present an optimized implementation and experimental validation of CD's average-case performance. The main advantages of the CD technique are: (1) CD is an extension of CH that provides a significant speed-up over CH for a wide spectrum of range queries--this speed-up is at least linear in the number of classes queried for uniform data and larger otherwise; and (2) CD queries, updates and concurrent use are implementable using existing B + -tree technology. The basic idea of class-division involves a time-space tradeoff and CD requires some space and update overhead in comparison to CH. In practice, this overhead is a small factor (2 to 3) and, in worst-case, is bounded by the depth of the hierarchy and the logarithm of its size.

Indexing a class hierarchy, in order to efficiently search or update the objects of a class according to a (range of) value(s) of an attribute, impacts OODB performance heavily. For this indexing problem, most systems use the class hierarchy index (CH) technique of [15] implemented using B+-trees. Other techniques, such as those of [14, 18,31], can lead to improved average-case performance but involve the implementation of new data-structures. As a special form of external dynamic two-dimensional range searching, this OODB indexing problem is solvable within reasonable worst-case bounds [12]. Based on this insight, we have developed a technique, called indexing by class-division (CD), which we believe can be used as a practical alternative to CH. We present an optimized implementation and experimental validation of CD's average-case performance. The main advantages of the CD technique are: (1) CD is an extension of CH that provides a significant speed-up over CH for a wide spectrum of range queries--this speed-up is at least linear in the number of classes queried for uniform data and larger otherwise; and (2) CD queries, updates and concurrent use are implementable using existing B+-tree technology. The basic idea of class-division involves a time-space tradeoff and CD requires some space and update overhead in comparison to CH. In practice, this overhead is a small factor (2 to 3) and, in worst-case, is bounded by the depth of the hierarchy and the logarithm of its size.

Too much of anything is bad for health. In recent years we have been familiar with “Binge”. It may be in the case of eating, drinking, or watching movies. Generation Z is very much affected by this way of living. This habit comes from indulgence. These indulgences come mainly from heredity factors, psychological conditions, dieting, peer pressure, etc. Studies show that some important features can be shared, including personality and emotional features such as neuroticism and urgency. Excessive indulgence can lead to physical and mental breakdowns. Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is an effective specialty treatment for different disorders that leads to a healthy life. A continuous effort to identify the consequences of binge behaviours will also aid the development of the research field. We have to build a society free from excessive indulgence.

H T ISTORIANS have long believed that John Adams was given at times to irrational behavior that could only be attributed to emotional instability. Several of his contemporaries reached the same conclusion. His secretary of war, James McHenry, once called him actually insane. Theodore Sedgwick, a Federalist senator from Massachusetts, said the president has his passions that were derived from a half frantic mind. Rumors circulated in the capital in 1799 that Adams was mentally unbalanced and prone to lose control and that he was given to dashing and trampling his wig on the floor.1 The most famous allegations of Adams's instability were made by Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton. During the late stages of the War of Independence, Franklin told Congress that Adams is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes and in some things [he is] absolutely out of his senses.2 In i8oo, Hamilton publicly denounced Adams, asserting that his eccentric tendencies often destroyed his judgment; Adams has certain fixed points of character, Hamilton added darkly, that deprive him of self command and produce very outrageous behaviour.3 Although more kind, several students of Adams have contended that he suffered one or more physical or mental breakdowns. Both Charles Francis Adams, his grandson and first biographer, and Gilbert Chinard, his first important twentieth-century biographer, concluded that he almost broke down in 1771 under an arduous workload and the emotional fatigue of his

This article examines the contradictory representation of female space in Simone de Beauvoir's 1940s fiction. While Beauvoir generally supports Virginia Woolf's “room of one's own” as an ideal environment for women seeking intellectual independence, her fictional rooms are frequently spaces of claustrophobic imprisonment in which women suffer physical or mental breakdowns. This ambiguity in Beauvoir's wartime writings is intimately related, I suggest, to her changing conceptions of the self–other relation in this period.

This chapter aims to examine the alterations that took place in British political theatre from the 1950s to the 2000s in view of the class and racial changes that have emerged as bases of the social hierarchy. In this context, it attempts to reveal how social stratification in Britain has transformed in the axes of class, race, and culture respectively with economic, political, social, and artistic aspects by weaving around John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956), David Edgar’s Our Own People (1977), and David Hare’s A Map of the World (1983), with the lens of theoretical readings of Marxist dialectical materialism, class hierarchy, racism, and kulturkampf.

Irmgard Keun was an acclaimed and popular novelist in Germany during the final years of the Weimar Republic (1918–33), whose works reached an international audience in the 1930s and 1940s. Known for their irreverent humour and their naïve yet canny female narrators, Keun’s novels captured the precariousness of life in late Weimar Germany. Blacklisted by the National Socialists (commonly known as the Nazis) in 1933, she went into exile in 1936 and continued to write novels that cast a critical eye on the petit-bourgeois milieu and its submission to fascist barbarism. Keun returned to Germany in 1940, but her post-war life was marked by financial hardship, alcohol abuse, and mental and physical breakdowns.