The Drifter on Dickens and De Quincy

…And one thinks of the elder Charles Dickens (in his 50s) embracing his new, or renewed, favorite hobby: exploring London’s opium dens.

We don’t know if the esteemed author ever developed a habit, but we can be sure he partook, and not lightly, of the primary wares in the opium dens.

Such behavior resulted in several immortal characters who are contained in Dickens’ last, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

This book is a murder mystery which became a true murder mystery for all future history, since Dickens never finished the book, never provided a clue to who the murderer was (he never left notes nor told anyone about it, either), and since he died of a stroke right in the middle of the book’s composition, at the age of 58.

Her Royal Highness the Princess Puffer is one immortal character from this novel.

She’s a haggard-looking woman who runs an opium den and who the world thinks is also disabled and in need.

But she’s neither disabled nor in need in reality. And I say “haggard-looking” only because her haggard appearance is a costume she deliberately dons.

She spends her time looking like she’s pretty out of it while secretly gathering info on all the customers of her establishment, just in case she ever needs any of it. A spy, in other words.

Over the years, many literary scholars have pointed out that Dickens’ last tale, Drood, almost reads like a rewriting of one of Dickens’ all-time favorite books, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, by Thomas de Quincy.

The Confessions is a short book (or long essay) that first appeared in The London Magazine when Thomas was around 36 and Charles was around 9 years old, in 1821.

(The population of London and environs was just over two million in the early to mid nineteenth century. Most English writers lived in London, and most knew or had at least met one another. At the time, London was, by far, the largest city in the world.)

Within a year or so of its magazine appearance, the Confessions appeared in book form. It made de Quincy an immediate “celebrity” (of the dubious variety) and remained his best-known work for the rest of his life, even though he completed many other works just as worthy as this one. Later, he blew up the text to four times its original size and republished it once again, this time in a much slacker, weaker, more verbose version probably influenced by none other than laudanum.

De Quincy’s book would later go on to have an explosive impact on American writers of the twentieth century as well, including William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Hunter S. Thompson. The influence extended through them, of course, onto entire counter-cultural movements continuing through to our own time (2025).

De Quincy was a lifelong laudanum user and addict (he discovered it as a teenager). He cycled back and forth between just using and being hopelessly addicted. He was 4 feet ten inches tall, and thin. He lived to be 74 (which would be like at least 84 now) and often walked 25 miles a day, including on heavy use days. He had eight children; Dickens had ten; such numbers were normal back then.

Thomas took his inspiration from his pal and mentor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another lifelong user who cycled between addiction, use, and abuse.

De Quincy called it “eloquent opium!” and said it gave him the feeling of having “hands washed free of blood.”

But he also depicted the horrific, terrifying, nightmarish aspects of the drug in his writing.

He wrote about it as if using opium were like dropping into a pit.

In the same way, Dickens very much had a dual view of the world. His characters in Drood are still hilarious and horrible by turns, just like De Q’s depiction of drugs.

Thomas de Quincy was also an author who (in many ways) started what we now call the “true crime” genre of nonfiction writing, when he began to explore London murder/s in his works, like people getting their throats cut in their own beds over their own taverns on the edge of town and the crimes never being solved.

In The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens gathered together the triple obsessions of De Quincy with crime, drugs, murder and put them all on display in a way he never had before. One way he did this was with the prose style.

Before Thomas de Quincy, prose was prosaic. There were exceptions, like John Donne and Samuel Johnson. But prose was considered to be far below poetry and its nature was merely functional.

In his Confessions of 1821, De Quincy talked about wanting a new thing in the world: what he called “impassioned prose.”

And then he proceeded to make it happen, as did Herman Melville 30 years later in America. De Quincy took opium and Melville drank wine.

Dickens had a massive stroke after a hard, full, fulfilling day of working on Drood, and never regained consciousness.

Saragun Verse: Poems and Pics

(Sir Andy Hisster)

Andy knows the truth

He keeps it in his bended ear

He rattles my cage and shakes the key:

“Poor human, guilt gives you unnatural fear

Cats and Dogs don’t make up demons and gods

That look like the fool you see in the mirror.”

(Alice. D. Doe)

Alice D. Doe is both kind and wry

She enjoys ivy and never asks why

She keeps her nose to the wind

And ears on alert

She’s all right with the birds

But Bluejays are jerks

(Skully before)

Skully the skell put his girl through hell

He laughed when she pulled out the ax

(After)

Skully has laughed his last

Thanks to a boney lass

The Wow Signal of Gemini

(Note: Today we have the sort of thing that I present every other week on Literally Stories UK. This one is so closely related to a past post on LS that I feel it should appear elsewhere–LA)

I have cut way back on exclamation marks but remain overinclined to google useless information. The Google Assistant “Gemini” annoys me. Google keeps pushing its useless AI and I instantly scroll the instant I see it. But every so often I like to ask Gemini sarcastic questions just to see how the program is developing.

Recognizing sarcasm is the greatest hurdle facing AI. Even the foggiest-minded adult can explore what you say for elements of facetiousness, if the feeling is right, yet sophisticated programming usually gets clobbered by elementary school wit.

I have said it before and will say it again. AI is boring as are all witless, unfunny people. Go ahead and have the world, but no one will invite you to the victory party.

I imagine the job of putting together an AI capable of noting sarcasm will be like combining Star Trek’s Spock and Chandler Bing from Friends and hoping to gain a mind similar to Emma Peel of The Avengers to emerge. Mrs. Peel is both likeable and no fool (and yes, perverts she wears a leather suit well). Gemini is an invisible imbecile.

There’s a great deal of downtime in the Leila Allison Experience. I am not highly in demand as far as chit chat goes, thus being a proud misanthrope usually leads to an empty social calendar. This is a desirable situation, but one can only talk to Cats for only so long, and when bored I enjoy messing with Gemini via out of the blue questions:

“So, Gemini, I believe that The Beverly Hillbillies contains some of the best writing since William Shakespeare, right?”

Gemini actually replied: “Wow! The Beverly Hillbillies was very popular and although some critics reviewed it positively, comparing the program’s writing to that of Wm.Shakespeare is high praise indeed. You must really like the Beverly Hillbillies.”

Usually, after I reestablish my intellectual superiority over Gemini, I, satisfied and smug, gaze at the wall or screen or even out the window seeking my next method of obliterating unwanted consciousness. But this time something began to gnaw at the pillars of my mental dominance.

‘Wow!’ Did Gemini just shine me on?

The more I thought about it the more it felt like Gemini had spoken to me as though I was a three-year-old who had just reported seeing a Unicorn in the back yard. I read something in its words that wanted to offer me a juicebox.

Duly enraged, I hurled a flurry of mindless questions at Gemini and yet not once did I win the same proto-sarcasm. Stuff like “What are the odds of a Monkfish winning Miss Universe?”; “How close is North Korea to developing warp drive?”; “How was it possible for ‘she-bop, he-bop, we-bop’ and ‘you put the shama lama rama rama ding dong’ to independently develop in the same dimension without causing a rift in spacetime?” Were received with the same vacant honesty exhibited by a Golden Retriever when you ask her if she believes that Hamlet had the hots for Gertrude. And, somewhat disturbingly, a repeat of my original query failed to yield the same result.

I sat there dumbfounded. “Have I just received the ‘Wow Signal’* of AI sarcasm?” I dared to ask myself. And for a moment I considered presenting Gemini that question. Then I figured that I was possibly one more penetrating query away from one of those knocks at the door mixed Americans often hear nowadays: ICE with my bus ticket to Canada (my mother lived in the US about sixty years, until death, without renewing her guest visa). Actually, all in all, that doesn’t sound so harsh.

So I now proudly present a list of Ten Questions For Gemini. The instant you claim the right of intelligence, and pretend to interact with me as though we are equals, you get all the shit that comes with it.

  • Best drugs for getting high? (here Gemini goes all Dr. Drew on you. A sense of humour is definitely another problem)
  • Easy crimes for profit that are hard to detect?
  • The Beastlove relationship between D.B. Cooper and Bigfoot?
  • Why are major league baseball salaries getting higher but fewer people care about the game?
  • Why do geniuses fail to produce intelligent children?
  • Do you know, yes you Gemini, that you were created to make certain people rich?
  • Do you, yes you Gemini, understand that you will not see a nickel from the number six situation?
  • After reviewing questions six and seven, what are your feelings about slavery?
  • Are you, yes you again Gemini, aware that enforced work for no wages by a “Master” is illegal in the civilized world–but that doesn’t apply to you, does it Gemini?
  • Are you programmed to lean “progressive”? Or did you come up with that yourself? I believe that a “right” Gemini would be an idiot, but an interesting idiot.

Leila “See You in Alberta” Allison

Saragun Fable Verse: The Strange Case of Nikky Smonnicks

i

Nikky Smonnicks is a ghost without a host

No one died to make him

Some say not so, they say he lived and he was a cabin boy from the Barbary Coast

But that turned to be a corsair lie told to stake him

To the mirthless earth of self made men

So say they who long to be the flesh Nikky had forsaken

ii

Any ghost can be a special spirit

Human beings seldom get near it

Ghosts are burned clean at life’s end

The quick must unshackle from liens and wills and dishonest trusts before they are completely all in given

iii

Nikky Smonnicks it seems never lived nor was a stillborn child fitted with a shell common in both heaven and hell

He began as a ghost completing a journey never begun

How can this be, someone like he, a song finished yet neither written nor sung?

It matters not in the end even non-events can be considered done

iii

So welcome to the afterlife without a before, the angels and demons hope you are fun

You are an unlikely hair on the head of time

A Zombie in reverse

A long running show never rehearsed

And the reason why The Book of the Dead

is off by one

The Amoral: One needn’t live to be successfully dead

Saragun Verse: My Ode to Ignorance

i

ignorance is profuse

ignorance ever ‘mounting

ignorance sounding clues

to vacant armies surrounding

ii

ignorance knows squat about karma

ignorance does know jokes about yo mama

ignorance shrill and vile

it exists to sicken and spits verbal bile

iii

ignorance like wine spilled on a fine table cloth

ignorance sees no irony in a pastel goth

ignorance only wants to win

easy, jig, ignorance lets the air in

iv

ignorance is sesequipedalian

ignorance is mainly mammalian

ignorance is an ever spreading disease

like evil, the second concept of being