I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated (20 page)

115.
sweet-flags
-
Acorus calamus
, also known as “calamus”; lofty wetland perennial, used in fragrance-making and archaic medicine; native to areas in various continents, incl. the northern
US
and southern Canada.

116.
eats its
- Poss. from article “James Russell Lowell,”
Southern Review
, Oct 1875 (no author given but employs editorial “we”):
It may be as a cause, or it may be as an effect; but falseness of expression, and falseness in principle, are indissolubly associated. Like sentimentality in feeling, cant in religion, affectation in manner, it is sure to be a superficial malady, which is either a sure indication of the unsoundness within, or else, after a time, it eats its way inward, poisoning, finally, the very springs of life.
All previous uses the ed. has located relate literally to fungi, larvae, etc.

117.
L’Envoi
- From older French poetry, in which a brief separate line or verse at the end states the theme or dedicates the piece to a specific person.

- COMING
SOON -

Mary MacLane - a 19-year-old diarist from the early 20th century, still influential today - was the first of the modern media personalities. Now, her whole story is being told in a series of books from a California publisher.

A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life: The Lives, Times, and Influence of Mary MacLane
, to be released in late 2014, is the first complete study of MacLane’s life, career, and influence. It tells the inside story of how she went from a 19-year-old girl in Butte, Montana writing in her diary - to a media personality heatedly discussed in London, Paris, and Sydney. Co-author Chiara di Benedetto, linguist and historian, says: “Mary MacLane’s impact is not just historical. Though she became famous (or infamous) in her day, she was not well-understood by her own society. Her writing anticipated the sophisticated self-knowledge and wry brand of social criticism that would emerge only after the First World War and the rise of modernism. Her forays into surrealism and metaphysical imagery, free expressions of unconventional sexuality, and many subtle layers of play and self-mockery put her beyond the understanding of her contemporaries - and make her fascinating and fresh to those newly discovering her today. We still feel a sense of shock and recognition at a young woman exposing herself at the deepest levels, with such uncanny insight into herself and into human nature. Mary MacLane’s work feels current and relevant to today’s readers.”

Though never collected until recent Petrarca Press anthology
Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader
, her work is quoted across the Internet and in popular and academic books and is being used in plays and video projects in Germany, New York, and Australia. During her lifetime she was puzzled over by Mark Twain, inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald, and influenced Gertrude Stein. Her controversial self-written, self-starring silent movie was banned in some US states - and was playing a year and half later in Tasmania. On her death, the
N.Y. Times
wrote “Mary MacLane’s first book was the first of the confessional diaries in this country” and called it “a sensation,” and
The Chicagoan
, one of the Jazz Age’s leading magazines, called her “the first of the self-expressionists, and also the first of the Flappers.”

A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life: The Lives, Times, and Influence of Mary MacLane
tells her whole, extraordinary story for the first time. It will be released in late 2014 by
Petrarca Press
.

Join us on
Facebook
and
Twitter
for news and exclusive previews, and rediscover classic literature’s great performance artist, the last century’s first blogger - at the Mary MacLane website:
www.marymaclane.com

- PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS EDITION -

“From now on it must take a prominent place in any discussions of American women’s writing and the literature of the West.” - Dr. Peter
Donahue
, Oklahoma State University

“A Girl Wonder” -
Harper’s
(two page-exclusive spread)

“A pioneering newswoman and later a silent-screen star, considered the veritable spirit of the iconoclastic Twenties, ‘the Joan of Arc of the Red-Hot Mamas.’ ‘How did it happen,’ declared one of her eulogists, ‘that a revolution in manners started, or seemed to start, with an unruly young woman who couldn’t bear the sight of the toothbrushes hanging up in the family bathroom at Butte, Montana?’” - Robert Taylor, Chief
Critic
,
Boston Globe

*

- PRAISE FOR
MARY MACLANE
-

“She comes off the page quivering with life. Moving.” -
London Times
(1981 retrospect)

“Mary MacLane, 1902’s Racy, Angsty Teenage Diarist, wrote long before provocative, confessional writing was a genre of its own. Her diaries ignited a national uproar, ushering in a new era for women’s voices. Her elegant, ambitious embrace of full-disclosure had opened a door to what was possible for women.” -
The Atlantic
, March 2013

“Mary MacLane’s first book was the first of the confessional diaries ever written in this country, and it was a sensation.” -
N.Y. Times
(editorial)

“She had a short but fiery life of writing and misadventure, and her writing was a template for the confessional memoirs that have become ubiquitous.” -
The
New Yorker
, March 2013

“One of the most fascinatingly self-involved personalities of the 20th century.” -
The Age
(Nov. 2011
feature
article)

“Miss MacLane stands as the greatest sensationalist of a sensational day … She dares to tell to all the world what most people try to keep profoundly guarded … She stands for truth and dares the courage of her convictions.” - From hundreds of letters-to-the-editor on her first book

“In a pre-soundbite age she already knew how to draw blood in one direct sentence. Mary MacLane - who openly resisted the idea that she was like everyone else, of her time or any other - lived the dream, as we say nowadays, and the sun of the wide, bright world has come to shine on her again.” -
The Awl
, March 2013

*

Michael R. Brown
is the foremost MacLane researcher in the world today. He published the acclaimed MacLane anthology
Tender Darkness
and more recently authored the well-reviewed experimental memoir
She and I: A Fugue
. He is completing the first book ever on MacLane’s life, career, and influence for publication in late 2014. He lives in Northern California.

*

By the Editor:

Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology
(with Elisabeth Pruitt)

She and I: A Fugue
(Petrarca Press)

His website:
http://www.fuguewriter.com

*

Coming in late 2014:

A Quite Unusual Intensity of Life: The Lives, Works and Influence of Mary MacLane
(with Chiara di Benedetto)

*

http://www.marymaclane.com