Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it

[flemmings]

 Somewhere on ao3 is fanfic for Kipling's poem Tomlinson, in the same metre and rhyming scheme, which involves Satan/ St. Peter slash.

Sorry, didn't save the link. Found it while googling the poem in hopes of learning what the significance of Berkeley Square was. It seems that maybe Kipling was having a go at the arties of his time, but given how upscale the place has always been (Clive of India cut his throat there; Walpole and William Pitt the Younger and William Waldorf Astor lived there) it hardly sounds like a hotbed of conformist middle-class thinking.

Otherwise- I vaguely recall that when I read LotR in '02 my Ballantine copy of the middle volume gave up the ghost and I had to buy a new one. But I was sure I had vol. 3 intact. Only it's vanished as well, and of the original set only vol. 1 remains. I mean yes I have a duplicate RotK, but the typeface is tiny, and anyway I want my colourful covers back.

And of course, now that libraries have reopened for curbside pickup, two of my holds have come in. Am afraid to put RotK on hold while I read them in case I lose the momentum, but maybe I have to. Which of course is why I started a Kinsey Millhone mystery tonight.

Comments

[poliphilo]

Tomlinson is a wealthy man who has been isolated from the world by his money, has dabbled in the arts and only knows "real life" through books. He's an 1890s aesthete- of the kind Kipling was surrounded with when he first came to London- and didn't greatly admire. T.S. Eliot's Prufrock is a similar type. The difference is that Eliot was afraid he was Prufrock while Kipling was damn sure he wasn't Tomlinson.

[flemmings]

Thank you, that makes more sense. So Tomlinson isn't the aspiring middle-class clerk-type I was imagining but someone much more comfortable, who might actually have been in a position to do some good even without stirring himself unduly. Which raises another question: what class was Prufrock? Also well-off? Or did it matter less after the war?

Well yes, one can't imagine Kipling as a candidate for 'because thou art neither hot no cold', whatever else you may say about him.

[poliphilo]

I see Prufrock as someone who might have walked out of a Henry James novel- a wealthy, over-sophisticated, repressed Bostonian

[flemmings]

Ah, I see. Both well-off types who don't need to work, insulated from the real world. Thank you.

[cerberusia]

Found it!

Can't speak to the significance of Berkeley Square, unfortunately - my main association with it is the very catchy song about it.

[flemmings]

Thank you. I mean, given what else gets slashed (Pacman, and IIRC the number pi) it's not *that* unlikely, but it surpised me anyway.

Polophilo explains the setting in the previous comment.