If the world is destroyed in the course of this century, I think it will be because of nasty characters like the Lost Angel based Reviewer, Bob - spelled backwards ;-(
Most nights I go for a drive
To the highest place I can find.
I’m standing on a cliff with gooseflesh
Watching the wind rip the leaves from the trees.
Death defying
Every breath
Death defying.
Soon we will all be back in the yard
Behind the wall, living hard
Dreaming of cool rivers and tall grass.
Bob wanted to be a good man, but he failed. Each generation must be alert to the dangers that threaten democracy as directly as each human who wishes to be good must learn how to survive in the labyrinths of envy, greed, and the confusions of moral judgment River guard
To me, a novel is made up; it is a fiction. But it's the paradox of being unreal and real at the same time that interests me
Scott Fitzgerald talked about the importance of being able to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time. It's a very child-like way to be as well. Even as grown-ups we go to a magic show and we can be impressed by the illusion and we don't want to know how the trick is done. That's what novels are like:
The key word for me here is not 'Fun'. The concept of fun is well understood, I should think, after many years of games and many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of releases. There are theories of fun, analyses of fun, examinations of the fun of one aspect of a game or another, and whole schema devoted to separating out different kinds of fun.
Meaning is an interesting concept, in both positive and negative, because it suggests purpose or exclusion. Saying that a product is meant to be a certain way can implicitly imply that it is not meant to be another way. Big Macs are meant to be tasty pleasures, they are not meant to be nutrition supplements, for example. They are designed with that intent.
There are four types of students (lit., among those who sit before the Sages) -- a sponge, a funnel, a strainer, and a sifter. The sponge absorbs everything. The funnel brings in on this [side] and brings out on the other. The strainer lets out the wine and retains the lees. The sieve lets out the flour dust and retains the fine flour.
Crushed Yet Conquering: A Story of Constance and Bohemia - Evangelical historical novel about Sage John Hus
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Dying for Water in Somalia's Drought
I'm not entirely sure that it's rational (actually, I'm pretty sure that it's not entirely rational), but nothing offends me more deeply than the idea of deliberately depriving someone of access to water.
Water binds us all together; it permeates us; it balances us; it is the solvent in which the world's biosystems and ecosystems and weather and geography have formed and thrived. It is the most elemental of substances, in chemical terms the simplest non-gas with which we have any regular contact.
Water is not property, at least not for long. It flows away, it evaporates, it passes through us. Too much is as bad as too little, but both are usually temporary. When it goes away, it comes back; when it overwhelms us, it drains away.
To be fluent in the language of The Singing Fish is to be confident in its folklore. In the collection’s bellwether piece, “What The River Told Us To Do,” we are provided exactly what we need in order to take on the anima mundi:
Us brothers said some words back to our father, words such as ‘moon’ and ‘mud’ and ‘river’ and ‘fish,’ but even these words, words that were the world to us brothers, these were sounds that our father did not hear.
Us brothers sometimes have this thing between us. Sometimes we say what it is the other brother is or has been thinking.”
Live & become and Water
• Cold War on Water [Fibonacci Poems Multiply on the Web After Blog's Invitation In balance with this life, this death ; I’ve run across a number of new (or previously unknown to me) bookseller blogs in the last few weeks. So I’ve put together a list. It is a truth universally acknowledged that books, kept for too long, become precious Out back to the back of our back yard ; The Believer compares the paradoxical obituaries of Susan Sontag]
• · Wendy Strothman did the damnedest thing a few years ago. She crossed the street from publisher to literary agent. She went from 250 employees to two. She traded a big office and expense account as head of the trade and reference division of Houghton Mifflin -- the one that puts everything from Curious George to Philip Roth into bookstores -- for a tiny nest near Faneuil Hall. A new chapter :Ex-executive takes title role in smaller venue ; a whiff of old books with your coffee Atmosphere and community are among the perks for the local novelists who use coffee shops as their personal literary salons Lattes and laptops ; The growth of the Internet presents challenges to knowledge transfer; such knowledge is formed contextually and dialogically, a negotiated discursive construct that is created between people. Performative social science
• · · Every time the Bush administration decides that they have the right to mistreat foreigners in certain ways, they eventually get around to claiming the right to treat American citizens that way. Thought for the day ; Why do writers take noms de plume? the Guardian muses on assumed writers and pen names What's in a pseudonym?
• · · · For reasons I cannot fathom, Cold River hasn't had any coverage in Australia. But its feet remain solidly planted on the Amazon River I’ll eat my Speedo cap if there is a single Cold River on any Australian bookshop shelves ;-) Tooting Our Own Horn Stranger and Stranger Still ; The myth of morning - The morning makes us The trouble is, when you’re not anything; You think you could be all kinds of things; And then you choose. And then you are one thing; And nothing else is you--the other things; You could have been aren’t yours to keep or say. The Other Side of Media Dragon: How Dry I Am: Not for nothing he's not called Jozef ; In the old days, the Voice used to write about important, political stuff—now it’s about spoiled, rich guys picking up girls. Bah One Review of Cold River for Those Who Have Read It; One Review For Those Who Haven't .... American literature however is Big in Australia
• · · · · Coming up with a great title sometimes means well-worn cliches Say that again? Books recycle titles; Recycled rejections: ohn Howard's children's book, The Key to Chintak, garnered so many of these identikit responses that he suspected the editors and agents weren't even bothering to turn the title page. So he sent in a new manuscript, The Tin Drum, not his own words this time but extracts from a washing-machine manual. After a delay the replies started to arrive. You've guessed it: 'Thank you for your submission, which I read and enjoyed. Unfortunately…' Believing Your Own Hype and Book Power List Fuckwittery Thank you for your submission, which I read and enjoyed. Unfortunately I don't feel it is quite right for us.' Coetzee throws book at unis
• · · · · · Television Sydney is the first permanent free-to-air television channel to launch in Sydney in more than 25 years. Books make a brief but welcome return to television on The Watershed, a six-part series … the half-hour programs feature inteviews and readings The first show is on TV Sydney - Channel 31 on most sets - at 8pm on Wednesday and repeated at 2pm next Sunday.” Television Sydney ; The One That Got Away: "Could a 300-page fish story, a sort of journalist's 'Moby-Dick,' engage a reviewer and enthusiast of other sports whose fishing life may have stopped at the cork-and-sinker stage? The answer is yes. Raines is a superb writer of narrative Raines' book: Few memoirs are so splendidly articulated
