ABSTRACT
Changelings, centaurs, ogres, and elves may no longer inhabit the earth, but occasionally we run into their descendants: people so monstrous, incandescent, or freakishly themselves that only a quasi-supernatural description seems to do them justice. In the twentieth century they come in all shapes and sizes—from the obvious ghouls and werewolves (Rasputin, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Jeffrey Dahmer); to various midrank demigods and unicorn-people (T. E. Lawrence, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Che Guevara, Greta Garbo, Edith Sitwell, JFK, Maria Callas, Howard Hughes, Andy Warhol, Glenn Gould, the late Princess of Wales); down to minor bog sprites such as Eartha Kitt, Cher, or Quentin Crisp. (Such lists are infinitely expandable.) What links each of these disparate individuals is a singularity so tangible as to border on the uncanny. We register each as a unique assemblage of moral and psychic tics: and each, in turn, seems to connect us to some alternative world. We are deeply impressed when one of them weakens and dies.
