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Lovers of books, especially Patrick O’Brian’s books, movies, comics, poetry, criticism, autobiographical writing chat, a bit of fiction, a bit of poetry, and toasted cheese will likely like this sort of thing.

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Who am I?

Joshua Corey is a poet, critic, translator and novelist whose most recent books include How Long Is Now, a novel; Hannah and the Master, a metapoetic masque on the love affair between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, and The Transcendental Circuit: Otherworlds of Poetry, a collection of critical writings. He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his family and teaches English at Lake Forest College.

What is a rarebit fiend?

My obscure title is taken from Windsor McCay’s turn-of-the-century comic strip—an adult variation on the theme of his better-known work Little Nemo in Slumberland.

And what exactly is rarebit?

Welsh rarebit is a form of toasted cheese, the favorite snack of my favorite literary characters, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. It’s usually prepared for them by this guy:

That’s all you need to know.