The Apocryphon of Tom Hater Oct 8, 04:24 AM
The excerpt is pulled from a text of six hundred sixty-six sections generated from the combination of Samuel Pepys’ diary entry for September 2, 1666 (the first day of the Great Fire of London ) and Chapter 13 of the book of Revelation.
The term apocrypha , which comes from Greek – ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’, is usually used to refer to texts of questionable authorship and/or texts contemporary to but excluded from the Biblical canon. Important apocryphal texts include The Book of Enoch and The Gospel of Thomas . The relationship between apocrypha and canon is usually turbulent in that the apocrypha expands original accounts, reinterprets events, and many times contradicts canonical texts.
In 1945, in Nag Hammadi, a town in central Egypt, local peasants uncovered a vast amount of Gnostic literature which is now known as the Nag Hammadi Library . Many of these texts are considered apocryphal (it contains the aforementioned Gospel of Thomas). The texts were hidden by monks 1600 years previous because they were declared heretical. The Nag Hammadi codices were written in Coptic, a late Egyptian language. The written form of Coptic uses the Greek alphabet.
I chose my source texts for their involvement with destruction and secret meanings, as well as a numerical correspondence between the year of the Great Fire of London (1666) and the number of the beast (666). The aim of the project is to see what varieties of augmentation occur when two texts that share certain linkages are combined, re-ordered, and infected by one another. I want to cause a distrubance in perception similar to what occurs when texts apocryphal to the Bible are compared to the traditional canon. However, I’m approaching the disturbance on a textual level where new narratives and perceptual states can rise from simultaneous reading of reorganized texts.
The combination process is largely automated by computer. I wrote the combination program in the Python programming language. The program uses Markov chain analysis to randomize the two texts based on probability. This makes the output text more readable and produces more evocative re-combination than pure randomization. This page explains it well: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/markov/ . I then pulled all the sections that feature “hater” as Mr. Hater or Tom Hater.
Code (Python):
TextGen Library
The script that ran the actual generation
beautiful bathrooms Oct 8, 04:04 AM
here’s some examples.
666: Mr. Hater: London is Burning Oct 4, 07:23 AM
XLII
staid till, it fell down; St. Magnes Church and horses and there find
my guests, who were in great was our feast to-day, Jane called us
up about three that had appointed a most horrid noise the houses at
Buttolph’s Wharf where I now saw a lamentable fire. Poor Tom Hater
XLIII
ear, let him hear. 10If anyone is like the beast? Who can make war against him?”
5The beast was burned upon Fish-street Hill. I invited him to lie at my house, as
far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the beast, for it is man’s
number. His number is 666.2nd (Lord’s day). Some of our maids sitting up upon one of
the high places, Sir J. Robinson’s little son going up with me; and there I invited
him to lie at my guests, who were Mr. Wood and Duke of York in their
barge, and with them to Queenhith, and with them to Queenhith, and there find every body
discoursing and lamenting the fire; and poor Tom Hater and I did remove my money and
iron chests into my cellar, as thinking that the safest place. And got my bags of
gold into my office, ready to carry
XLIV
garden, and Mr. Hater and there met my wife Barbary Shelden, and also which was a sad condition. She
would not stay in the fright. Soon as dined, I could now, I away to White Hall by themselves.
So great was given power to do I am spent: people who themselves should have not been written in
his lying there, the water, we to a mouth like that of an ordinary fire. Barbary Shelden, and also
Mr. Woolfe and Stanes, (who live in heaven. 7He says, have been removed twice already; and he had the
mark, which received goods in the
Henry James (hj) on plima graph 1 Sep 22, 04:27 PM
4
door to take leave. “I had
simply, in other with placid heavenly
eyes “What happened?” It made nothing
else much signify was simply my
charming than the way you fancy
6
back a step.
“Was she someone
2
more than in
him of her;
he returned, still
so I from
one and to
2
Yes I see in the thing
I recall now to turn of
the street, she succumbed to stroke.
“He imposed on this, directly and
the effort to what we know,
5
first She
was struck
with our
hushed little
circle on
the proof
of it,
2
again: all her by
the other slipped away.
There to their quality
of the crenelations to
the greater part doubtless,
a deep window though
4
of my resignation at being something undefinably astir
in the dusk. “If I had lost my
impression I took that here” no further light
on the lawn was not one, miss. And
of importance contributed to the turn of a
path and would stand before me; and the
singular intensity that, to withstand it, I must
NEWNESS Sep 21, 12:55 AM
this is the new page. I’m redoing it in textpattern . if you are looking for my CODE AS POETRY blog, click on the link that should be in the sidebar at the right. if that isn’t working click this—> http://phxom.matterwave.net/index.php?s=code_as_poetry .
Awesome.