344 From 1964 until her death: The information in these notes is mainly from Elisabeth Sussman and Fred Wasserman, Eva Hesse: Sculpture (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press; New York: The Jewish Museum, 2006) and Catherine de Zegher, ed., Eva Hesse Drawing (New York: The Drawing Center; New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2006).
347 “Do there exist many worlds”: Much of the information on Albertus Magnus is from Wikipedia and other Internet sources.
METROPOLIS/THE RUINS AT LUNA
Main sources for this section include: Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy Draft Notebook, edited by Mary A. Quinn, vol. IV, a Facsimile of Huntington Ms. HM 2177 (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1990); Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s 1819-1891 Huntington Notebook, edited by Mary A. Quinn, vol. VI, a Facsimile of Huntington Ms. HM 2176 (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1994); Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s 1821-1822 Huntington Notebook, edited by Mary A. Quinn, vol. VII, a Facsimile of Huntington Ms. HM 2111 (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1996); Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Prometheus Unbound Notebooks, edited by Neil Fraistat, vol. IX, a Facsimile of Bodleian Mss. Shelley E.1, E.2, E.3 (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1991); Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Hellas Notebook: Bodleian Ms. Shelley adds. E.7, edited by Donald H. Reiman and Michael J. Neth, vol. XVI (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1994); Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Homeric Hymns and Prometheus Drafts Notebook: Bodleian Ms. Shelley adds. E.12, edited by Nancy Moore Goslee, vol. XVIII (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1996).
The Letters of Mary Shelley, vols. 1-3, edited by Betty T. Bennett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980); Miranda Seymour, Mary Shelley (New York: Grove Press, 2000); Muriel Spark, Mary Shelley (New York: Sphere Books, Penguin Group, 1987); The Mary Shelley Reader, edited by Betty T. Bennett and Charles E. Robinson (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990); Mary Shelley and others, Lives of Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, vols. 1 and 2 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1841). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Frankenstein Notebooks, edited by Charles E. Robinson, Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley’s Manuscript Novel, 1816-17 (with alterations in the hand of Percy Bysshe Shelley), Parts One and Two (New York and London: Garland 1996). I have used various editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, including Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus (London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, 1818) annotated by Mary Shelley; Frankenstein, with an introduction by Diane Johnson (New York: Bantam, 2003); Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus, foreword by Walter James Miller (New York: Penguin, 2000). Also, Frankenstein File, compiled by David S. Miall, University of Alberta, www.ualberta.ca/∼dmiall/Shelleys/FRANKDOC.HTM . Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vols. 1 and 2, edited by Frederick L. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). The Journals of Mary Shelley, edited by Paul Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987).
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, edited by Anne Mellor and Noelle Chao (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007); Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Ralph M. Wardle (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979); Lyndall Gordon, Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: HarperCollins, 2005); Janet Todd, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2000).
Victor Erice’s film, The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973, was an inspiration.
353 “the tornadoed Atlantic of my being”: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.
356 two limestone eyes can’t close: Details of stone faces in New York City are based on photographs by John Yang, Over the Door (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995).
357 “like the last column”: Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener.”
362 I only ever wanted to be a continual experiment: The notion of Mary Wollstonecraft’s wanting to “be an experiment” is based on Virginia Woolf’s comment on Wollstonecraft’s life in The Common Reader (London: Hogarth Press, 1932).
365 “In France they have a dreadful jail”: This is adapted from Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories (Chapter 3, “The Treatment of Animals”).
365 “Loveliest of what I leave behind”: Fragment 1, Praxilla of Sicyon (ca. 450 B.C.), translated by Richmond Lattimore, Greek Lyrics (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960).
365 “We are not as hardy, free”: Diogenes (ca. 5 B.C.), translated by Guy Davenport, Seven Greeks (New York: New Directions, 1995).
365 “I have just completed a forty-two-day voyage”: From Xavier deMaistre, Voyage Around My Room (London: Hesperus Press, 2004).
372 “The Emperor Ling Ti”: This quotation and the one following are from C. A. S. Williams, Outlines of Chinese Symbolism & Art Motives (New York: Dover, 1976).
372 “Why is our fancy to be appalled”: Political pamphlet, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.
372 “although I hear people say ‘Moses meant this’”: From St. Augustine’s Confessions.
374 “Man has been changed into an artificial monster”: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, adapted by me.
374 “There are authors whose object”: Montaigne, Essays.
374 “A Robin Red breast in a Cage”: William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence.”
375 “Ivy grows best when wild”: Montaigne, Essays.
375 “Be very careful, in painting, to observe”: Leonardo da Vinci.
375 “Now I will tell you about the city of Kinsay”: Marco Polo, adapted by me.
379 “Isabelle de Montolieu”: Mary Wollstonecraft is known to have read works by this author.
379 “Personal size and mental sorrow”: Jane Austen, Persuasion.
379 “Caroline wrote the letter”: From Isabelle de Montolieu’s Caroline de Lichtfield, translated by Thomas Holcroft (London: Robinson, 1786). The quote has been altered by me.
379 “I was born in the year 1632”: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
380 “I… Robinson Crusoe”: Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
380 “Soundness of understanding”: William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (Dublin: printed for Luke White, 1793).
381 “Let us cast our eyes over the history”: Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
381 “David’s Deer”: Zhang Cizu, Rare Wild Animals.
381 “This want of tools”: Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
384 “The first use of zero”: This passage and the one following are partial quotes from David Ewing Duncan’s Calendar (New York: Avon, 1998).
387 “Curse on all laws but those which love has made”: Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1668–1744).
387 “Ideas are to the mind”: Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
387 “An infinite number of thoughts”: Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, slightly altered by me.
387 “Kue-lin-fu contains three very handsome bridges”: Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, altered by me.
387 “When thou cam’st first”: This is spoken by Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest Act 1, Sc. 2.
398 Recollection, he said, is a form of investigation: Aristotle, On Memory and Reminiscence.
402 Everything Will Be Taken Away: Adrian Piper, performance art, New York City, 2007
403 “This learning … cleare,… playne and open”: This quote and the following are from the OED entry for “fever.”
409 “There are many names for rice”: Various online sources.
409 “Nature is an infinite sphere”: Blaise Pascal, Pensées.
409 “But if our own Biography”: Thomas Carlyle, Essay on History, 1830, adapted by me.
417 “They say there is no straight line”: Leonardo da Vinci.
417 “Dictating his recollections”: This information is based on John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1999).
438 “A truth wastes away”: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs.
441 My Hideous Progeny: Web site http://home-1.worldonline.nl/∼hamberg/.
453 “Noble deer”: Friedrich Hölderlin, Hymns and Fragments, translated by Richard Sieburth (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984).
453 “What does it mean to speak”: This is from Richard Sieburth’s Introduction to Hölderlin, Hymns and Fragments, adapted by me.
453 “The Cha no yu”: Bayard Taylor, ed., Japan Illustrated (New York: Scribners, 1893).
453 “Nothing sets us upon a change of state”: John Locke as quoted by Godwin in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and amended by me.
454 “If you see something, say something”: MTA posters and official MTA Web site, 2007.
471 I flamed: Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Sc. 2.
483 “We possess nothing in the world”: Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge, 2002).
486 “May 01: Ten bodies found”: From Antiwar.com.
503 “An author, therefore, is a human being”: Mary Shelley on Alfieri, in Lives of Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal (1835–1837).
503 “So far as is known, Epictetus”: Frank N. Magill, ed., Masterpieces of World Philosophy in Summary Form (New York: Harper, 1961), adapted by me. The reference to More’s use of Utopia is adapted from the same source.
503 “If one is doubting, one exists”: Descartes.
503 “Diderot believed”: Magill, Masterpieces of World Philosophy.
508 “We identify ideas, trends, and innovations”: Adapted from the online site for Contagious Magazine.
516 If, as Giordano Bruno wrote: Giordano Bruno, Dialogues Concerning Cause, Principle, and One (1584).
519 “Secluded-Streamlet Pavilion”: Zhu Junzhen, The Art of Chinese Pavilions (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2002), adapted and added to by me.
519 “The biographical tradition, full of contradictions”: Mary Barnard, “A Footnote to the Translations,” in Sappho (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1958).
519 “But it must be stressed that metaphor”: Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed.
519 “With only coarse bread to eat”: Confucius.
519 “Can perplexity be stabilized?”: Maimonides from Magill, Masterpieces of World Philosophy, adapted by me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT WAS my great good fortune to have an uninterrupted year of writing as a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. My boundless and most heartfelt thanks to its director, Jean Strouse. To Drew Gilpin Faust, former dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and Judy Vichniac, its director, I also extend my warmest thanks for a fellowship year during which time this project began to take shape.
My gratitude, too, to Pamela Leo, Betsy Bradley, and Adrianna Nova of the Cullman Center; also to the Cullman fellows, especially Sharon Cameron, Clive Fisher, Jim Shapiro, and Will Eno.
Thanks also to Charles Carter, Laura O’Keefe, and David Smith of the New York Public Library, and to Daniel Dibbern Doucet, David Fischer, and Donald Reiman at the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle.
Christine Nelson, Inge Dupont, and John Bidwell at the Morgan Library arranged for me to read and study for one magical afternoon Mary Shelley’s annotated copy of the 1818 edition of Frankenstein.
Phyllis and Burtin Sheck, Jim Peck, Maia Peck, and Dr. David L. Mayer gave abidingly to this project in ways both practical and immeasurable.
Deborah Garrison, my editor at Knopf, has taken this work on the journey from manuscript to book with great grace, ingenuity, and care. To her and to her assistant, Caroline Zancan; to Maggie Hinders, who gave the monster’s unusual manuscript an especially beautiful design; to Victoria Pearson, production editor; and to everyone else who worked on this book at Knopf, I offer my most heartfelt thanks.
Short excerpts from the book appeared, sometimes in slightly different forms, in the following publications, to whose editors I also offer thanks: A Public Space, Bomb, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and TriQuarterly.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Laurie Sheck is the author of five books of poetry, including The Willow Grove, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Captivity. Her work appears widely in such journals as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Boston Review. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, Sheck has also been a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She is on the faculty of the MFA Writing Program at the New School and lives in New York City.
a cognizant original v5 release october 10 2010
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Laurie Sheck
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Grateful acknowledgment is made to The New York Times for permission to reprint excerpts from “A Conversation with Anne Foerst: Do Androids Dream? M.I.T Working on It” by Claudia Dreifus, copyright © 2000 by The New York Times. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of PARS International, on behalf of The New York Times and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copyright, redistribution, or retransmission of the material without express written permission is prohibited.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Sheck, Laurie.
A monster’s notes / by Laurie Sheck.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“This is a Borzoi book.”
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27238-6
1. Frankenstein (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Self-realization—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.H3917M66 2009
813′.54—dc22
2008055081
v3.0
Laurie Sheck Page 42