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Welcome to the Ninth Edition of the IWAS Northwest Newsletter; our first digital edition to reach the World Wide Whatsit! While few of our stodgy members have yet dared the hazards of cyberspace, our devoted Librarian has taken it upon himself to deliver our little publication from the antique presses straight away into the modern age. (Seems none of the printers these days will touch our materials unless it's delivered on the dreaded "floppy" anyway!) Progress marches on... THIS ISSUE: A rare moment with Daniel S. Looker, once of Scotland Yard, on his unsuccessful ten-year investigation into the disappearance of noted Ashbless scholar Brendan Doyle. While only newsworthy to the poet's fans in a peripheral sense, some of the curious discoveries Mr. Looker has uncovered quite possibly shed further dim and murky threads of light on the darkness that surrounds historical accounts of William Ashbless, a relative cipher when it comes to historical fact from the Romantic Age. Those Ashbless scholars who may have attended one of Doyle's speaking engagements in the early 1980s might remember him as an insightful if not longwinded man of some education. It is speculated that Doyle's unpublished Life of William Ashbless (whose notes apparently vanished with him) may well have become the modern equivalent of the Bailey biography of the same name (published in the 1830s), currently the only credible reference on the poet's life. In Part One of our installment, Looker reveals some bizarre connections between history and modern day Ashbless activity. [Belated Editor's Note: we will promptly return to our usual focus on Ashbless' poetry and prose in forthcoming issues. Complaints by cranky members duly noted!] AND NEXT ISSUE: A scalding review of Rippling England Bleeds, the notorious rehash of L.A. "trash-poetry," from an outspoken critic of the modern Cahuenga poet. Or as reviewer Thomas Ripley refers to him: the "thief ostentatiously plagiarizing the great name of William Ashbless. Get a life, man!" AT THE NEXT LOCAL IWAS MEETING: Poetry readings from Ashbless' Antlered Man Dangles, and a word or two of note from Coleridge scholar Kyle Keeling, discussing the possible "opium connection" between Coleridge and Ashbless. Be there Saturday! Till next time, happy sojourns, happy sonnets. Gabe Rothchild
R A R E E D I T I O N S S O U G H T We are actively seeking rare collectors' editions of The Complete Twelve Hours of the Night, an IWAS-sponsored anthology printed in 1985, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of William Ashbless. Many of our editions were lost to the dreaded '96 fire in the Maiden's Prayer Bar and Grill, and so our collectors now seek to replace their lost editions. Any owners willing to part with their copies of this treasured (and
now ever-so-hard-to-find) volume are encouraged to contact
our branch for a fair bid!
A S H B L E S S S I G H T I N G S While it is not IWAS "official position" to report on the modern poet calling himself William Ashbless, some members who have developed a taste for the poet's work (and other Cahuenga contemporaries) are now actively seeking any fragments of poetry still available or perhaps resurfacing as they have in past years. [Of particular interest: "Snow Dog Travails" or the "Homunculi Postscripts."] We have also begun compiling a sightings list for the vanished poet
(much like Elvis!). Please direct any reports to our Ashbless
Sightings Group.
J O I N I N G I W A S Share an interest in obscure 19th century poetry? Or perhaps the more well-known works of Keats, Shelley, and Byron...and are looking for something new? Discover William Ashbless! Attend a poetry reading/discussion group in your area! No IWAS chapter near you? Start one!
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A Ten-Year Search Turns Up Only More Mysteries Regarding the Disappearance of Noted Ashbless Scholar Brendan Doyle LONDON, ENGLAND (AF) - Although investigator Daniel S. Looker retired from the ranks of Scotland Yard in 1993, he left some loose ends. One of those dangling mysteries is a man named Brendan Doyle, a ten-year old missing persons case inexplicably tangled up in the history of the Romantic Poets, including such luminary figures as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and less-known authors like William Ashbless. Prior to his disappearance, Doyle was a soon-to-be-tenured English professor at the University of California at Fullerton, apparently caught in the publish-or-perish tract. He had one unsuccessful literary biography on Samuel Taylor Coleridge published in 1981 and a small series of articles and reviews for a number of literary and academic publications. He disappeared while researching the elusive 1800s poet/author William Ashbless, whose most famous works include The Twelve Hours of the Night and the seminal London Accounts, a dubious trilogy detailing "Philosophers, Scientists, and Madmen" from the poets age, in some cases apparently taken from striking first-person accounts. [Editors' Note: Without exception, we might add, the three categories seem to overlap.] Doyle left no survivors; his wife, Rebecca, was killed years earlier in a motorcycle accident in Los Angeles. Colleagues from the university sponsored the initial investigation by British police, a search that quickly involved the finest from Scotland Yard, once billionaire J. Cochran Darrow and Darrow International Research Enterprises (DIRE) were linked to the disappearance. DIRE had dropped off the Wall Street map at some time in the late 1970s, after nearly fifty years of pioneering research in space and oceanic technology and untold billions in liquid assets. Its market-value plummeted with its founder's health after Darrow was diagnosed with cancer in 1976. The billionaire funneled his fortune and the vast resources of his company into seeking a cure, initially a boon to the struggling medical industry, soon a turn to the esoteric and eventually the pages of the National Enquirer. Darrow's ticking clock eventually led him to UFOs and the occult, and almost fatally to impeachment from the company's Board of Directors and a permanent residence in a state-sponsored psychiatric hospital. But whether through the power of wealth or charm, Darrow avoided both deterrents, and eventually disappeared, along with several staff members and professor Brendan Doyle, on a cold London night in 1983. The disappearances were not reported until almost a week later, and by the time investigators arrived in Kensington little was left of the empty lot purchased by Darrow Enterprises weeks before. Excavation crews found nothing buried there, and whatever clandestine meeting occurred there between Darrow and Doyle (and any other party), very few clues were left behind. The investigation was officially closed in 1993, ten-years after it began, with the retirement of noted investigator Dan Looker. Looker's own report on the subject remained inconclusive, but Scotland Yard's official closure on the matter was this: "Evidence points to the conclusion that the abductions were drug-related, and likely the work of a cult-motivated ritual killing. The bodies were evidently cremated and probably dispersed in the waters of the Thames." Looker privately told a newspaper reporter only days later that the official report was "unglorified hogwash." Until this time, however, Looker has had no more words for the press. This, Looker's first interview in almost five years, is an exclusive and baffling telling of some of the lesser-known aspects of the unsolved case. IWAS: What do you believe happened? DANIEL S. LOOKER: Something bonkers. That's all that's certain. There was nothing...normal...about this one. IWAS: Was it in fact drug-related? Or possibly a cult ritual killing, as the Yard suggested in their closing report? DSL: Vast oversimplification. Yes, there were definitely drugs involved. And not even the narcotics were what we'd call "normal." Darrow and his DIRE boys were monkeying 'round in a whole bloody bonkers strain of biochemical tinkerin', some amount of which was surely supplied by Darrow at his little "dinner party" on the night of the disappearances. IWAS: And the cult thing? (continues above) |
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DSL: Well, there was certainly evidence of a fire...Or something like a fire...in that lot near Kensington. The lot Darrow bought and leveled. We found wooden fragments, charred. The bodies might have been removed after being burned. IWAS: But you don't think so. I can tell that. DSL: (frowning) Bloody mess, really. The crime scene, if that's what it was. Cleanly wrapped up, by the time we got there. I had a sample run up, and my lab boys told me it wasn't a normal fire that charred the wood. It was either too hot, maybe not a fire at all. Radioactive gobbledegook and muckity-muck. And there were no human samples among the ashes. So I don't quite buy it. Too easy. I'd say it was a smoke-screen. IWAS: What do you believe happened in that field? DSL: I don't think the answers are even in that field. Maybe they were a week before we got there. But by the time we saw it, I think the answers were miles away from there. IWAS: Why was the investigation so difficult? DSL: Well, of course the investigation centered more or less on Darrow. Especially at first. Not to belittle the English professor, but, well, he's a little English professor. 'Sides a couple of bloody geeks in California, nobody much noticed him missing. And DIRE was a locked box. In a way it was puzzling to me how little Darrow was actually missed, him being so big in news ten years earlier. Almost like he, or somebody else, made him ready to disappear. Lots of it was bloody strange. IWAS: Like what? DSL: Darrow's financials, for example. Very hard to trace the particulars. Some very strange law in the statutes and termination clauses. Some weird requirements for the Board of Directors, and especially the estate. I'm no bloody lawyer, but the Darrow will--what happened to his money, estate, company--was a very bizarre piece of work; I've had some legal experts check it out. IWAS: And? DSL: Most of them think he was a loon. Certifiable. Of course, there's plenty of support from inside and outside the organization to back that notion. They shoulda locked him up. He had some of the damnedest R&D projects funded. Scientists were an odd lot too. He had this one project involved radio-telemetry and astral-proje-- IWAS: Do you at least suspect foul play? DSL: I suspect foul play, lunacy, lots of bloody bonkers stuff. I've chased this case across half of the United States, down through parts of India and Egypt, not to mention all over England, and it only got weirder and bloody weirder. Darrow and his psychics, fish guts and cult rituals, journeys to the bloody center of the earth!...bloody insanity left and right. Not to mention the fact that the case gained more and more disappearances the further it went. Including one old guy named William Ashbless! IWAS: You must mean the California Cahuenga poet. DSL: Righto. The thing is...the more you look into what Doyle was researching, the more coincidences keep coming up. Including relatively ancient references as well as modern ones. This recent-day Ashbless vanished in '64, but new poems keep resurfacing ever ten years or so, published from obscure presses with only a handful of dedicated readers. While investigating Doyle in '83 and '84 I made a number of trips to California and Nevada, where I eventually ran into stories of this new Ashbless character and a hell of a lot more bloody weirdness than that! And once you start digging through the damn works of the original Ashbless--the books more so than the damned cryptic poetry--the coincidences get bloody out of control. A lot of the lunacy Darrow was researching is given credible support by the lunatics in Ashbless' Account of London Madmen. I wouldn't have been a bit surprised to see a copy in Darrow's study marked up in highlighter pen. IWAS: You seem a bit obsessed by all this? DSL: Hell, I've chased ghosts of William Ashbless across half
the globe. I'm about half-convinced the man doesn't exist. Never existed!
Neither of the bloody bastards!
We will continue with PART TWO of our Interview with Daniel Looker next month, as he discusses further ties between the disappearance of Brendan Doyle and the modern impostor calling himself William Ashbless, including the "strange support" of the case by a bone-fide IWAS founding member, Dr. William Hastings (L.A. Chapter). See you then! |