#Wolf in white van

[theoutcastrogue]

[From a 2014 article by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. He's talking about how a random spam email ended up inspiring a part of his book Wolf in White Van. Later, in 2020, the album Getting Into Knives came out, and I think it inspired its artwork too.]

"It took years for me to be able to just reflexively delete spam, or filter it so that I never see it at all. I blame the spammers for this; the quality of their work took a sharp nosedive at some point. But during whatever period of the internet’s growth you’d call the early 2000s, it seemed like you’d still get some winners: things that had been typed up by a person, sent out to a bunch of email addresses they’d bought or rented for 5 or 10 bucks from the only guy who was ever going to make any money in this particular exchange. Most of them went directly, if manually, into the trash; but once in a while, there’d be one that seemed to earn, at the very least, the minute it’d take me to read it.

The one I’m remembering here was subject-lined SUPPLY OF KNIVES. [...] The subject line opened on an all-caps email that boasted, in ornate, antiquated English appealing to the reader’s more refined sensibilities, about the high quality of the knives on offer at an external website. You shouldn’t click on links in spam email. I live my life on the razor’s edge! I clicked the link.

I want to tell you about these knives: They were beautiful. They were weird. They had elaborate designs in the handles, moons or stars of wolf heads, and special grips, and a variety of points. They were made from metals whose pedigrees were described lovingly, and had been struck — smithed? wrought? — via processes I knew absolutely nothing about, but that sounded fantastic, difficult, arcane. It’s the joy of specialized language: When you’re an outsider to it, it can’t help but sound cool.

Of course this is the whole idea of any operation like this. SUPPLY OF KNIVES could well have been, and probably was, a company in Ohio who’d stumbled across an old warehouse full of knives, and knew enough about sales to describe these things in the most exotic terms they could find. I’m pretty immune to pitches: Who likes to feel like he’s being pitched? But somebody involved with SUPPLY OF KNIVES had had just enough authorial flair — that, or true faith — to caption each knife’s mysterious, blurry accompanying JPEG with a description whose constant recourse to specialized vocabularies seemed to say, “You’re not even reading this unless you already know about this sort of thing. Let us therefore speak like the fellow travelers we are.”

It was like a trade catalog for roadside bandits in need of knives.

I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that when I was a child the life of the roadside bandit seemed like a pretty romantic way to go. I looked at all these knives and read the descriptions and was just generally delighted about the whole thing, so I saved the email in a “memorable spam” folder I used to keep that had maybe two other emails in it. A few years later, Apple came out with this robotic-arm-screen iMac you never see any more, and we were long overdue for a new computer so we got that; and then, after a while, I got myself a laptop, because I was traveling all the time, and eventually both the old iMacs ended up in the basement, and they were both asleep but alive until fairly recently, as far as I knew.

But when I went to check for the email, it was gone. The old blue iMac is dead, bricked, lifeless. Searches on the term “supply of knives” on this laptop and on good old robot-arm-screen find nothing. The backup CD for the blue iMac drive is probably in a drawer around here somewhere, but that’s like saying, “The coin I had in my swim trunks’ pocket is probably somewhere in the ocean.” There is no SUPPLY OF KNIVES. There’s only the memory."

[source]

And this is the wonderful cover art of Getting Into Knives. Back cover and promo material below. Note that "Knives International" and "Knives Wordwide" are not real companies, they appear to be a callback to that elusive spam email.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[vernalloy]

It’s disability pride month and that means it’s time for me to talk about Wolf In White Van again.

For all its storytelling, what really jumps out to me is the lack of proper endpoints. The people in the movies and books and rock albums are doomed. But for Sean, he didn’t end up where he was meant to. For the theme of being lost in violent fiction in childhood, to him, the only way forward is to repeat it— where fiction bleeds into reality, reality lies bleeding on the floor.

And then he survives.

Wolf in White Van is told in reverse chronological order, so when things end, we know how they end, and that sucks all the dramatic tension out of the story. Lance and Carrie’s trial leads to nothing for anyone. Sean’s suicide attempt doesn’t kill him, and there was no concrete rationale behind it. Not that Sean could see, looking back, anyway. Perfectly normal parents, perfectly normal life.

Nothing has a highest point of tension and then resolves to never have a significant problem again. In real life, people come out of the climax wounded, and the story keeps dragging on.

Try as you might to weave your loose ends into a coherent narrative with an appropriate end, an explanation for all your broken bits and a fate you find comfort in, you never will. You will never breach the Trace, only rest your hands against its cold inner walls.

[strategicfalsehoods]

This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen.

John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

[toothpuulp]

I told her I thought God was just your dad. Like when you grew up and weren't afraid of your dad anymore you got God instead, and you could make him whatever you wanted.

— Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle

[booksandtreesplease]

Moment of calm

[livenudebigfoot]

Maybe it's just because I'm mostly a fantasy and thriller reader with very little experience of books that are straight dramas, tragedies, and tearjerkers, but John Darnielle does heart-rending, unresolvable grief like nobody else. It's a genuine gift. And that gift is really clearing my sinuses rn.

[meydia]

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle is the best description of childhood emotional neglect I’ve ever read. When I picked it up and powered through it it made me feel extremely discomfited how much I related to the main character and why he did what he did, for supposedly no reason… just like some odd thoughts I had at a very young age… and now to have the vocabulary for it is very strange, and to know exactly why I related is interesting to say the least. I also turned to addictive media behaviour and boredom is still my worst enemy. It’s a lot

[malaisequotes]

“This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody's doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen.”

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

[isbergillustration]

Head North

[yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere]

. https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/749330404739334144?source=share

https://x.com/ThisIsGSage23/status/1827007380359381105

https://x.com/lfcsabrina/status/1685987188968996864

yeah♥

. https://x.com/faheysversion/status/1697612080231170558  & https://x.com/faheysversion/status/1698338126261830137

https://twitter.com/ThisIsGSage23/status/1642939607770710041?s=20

https://twitter.com/crcwsss/status/1644713449182642181?s=20

♥

https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/737760005188681728/yeah

https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/740830916723769344/this-post-wesper-and-firsprince-together-my-4?source=share

[wylanslcve]

WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO POST THESE ON THE SAME DAY AS IF MY HEART CAN HANDLE IT

[vernalloy]

[ID: Digital bust of Sean Phillips from Wolf In White Van. It’s done messily, with shaky thick black outlines. He is depicted as a white man with short, dark blonde hair. He’s facing slightly to the left, looking to the right, and smiling. He has scarring on his chin and left cheek. There’s a small bullet wound next to his nose on the left. His eyelid and lip droop on that side, and his ear is damaged. He has a saddle nose as well. He wears a blue-grey shirt. End ID.]

[spiderwebx]

Clueless (1995)

Gossip Girl (2007 - 2012)

Scarface (1983)

White Chicks (2004)

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Legally Blonde (2001)

Pretty Little Liars (2010 - 2017)

H2O: Just Add Water (2006 - 2010)

[toothpuulp]

finished wolf in white van last night. inevitability my beloved

[chicinsilk]

Harper's Bazaar November 1954

Jean Patchett in a luxurious Jasmine EMBA white mink coat by Ritter Bros., turquoise and diamond jewelry by Van Cleef & Arpels.

Jean Patchett dans un luxueux manteau de vison blanc Jasmine EMBA de Ritter Bros., bijoux turquoise et diamants de Van Cleef & Arpels.

Photo de Louise Dahl-Wolfe