They weren’t his people, and they wanted to make sure he knew that. Or maybe they were afraid of him, though they wouldn’t have admitted it. Alan Jacobs has written a story about a childhood experience in Birmingham in which he and his friends picked up stones to assault a black boy who walked through their neighborhood. Alan didn’t throw a stone or yell at this Other Person, but he did stand with his friends as the boy’s enemy.
All posts by Phil
It Isn't Just Useful, It's Jack Handey
Jack Handey is the gifted comic writer behind SNL’s “Deep Thoughts,” which ran in the 90s. He appears to be the closest embodiment of the comic ideal most comedians have ever known. NY Times Writer Don Kois quotes Maria Semple, another comic writer, on what’s so great about Handey.
“There is purity to his comedy,” Semple told Kois. “His references are all grandmas and Martians and cowboys. It’s so completely free from topical references and pop culture that I feel like everyone who’s gonna make a Honey Boo Boo joke should do some penance and read Jack Handey.”
She said Handey writes real jokes, not just junk that “smells like a joke, but there’s no actual joke there.”
Handey had a license plate made for his famous SNL skit series: DEEPTHT. He would have it on his car today had his brother-in-law not asked him while he was mounting it, “Why does your license plate say ‘Deep Throat’?” Now it reads DPTHOTS. (via S.D. Smith)
Debut Mystery Author Revealed as Veteran Writer
The Cuckoo’s Calling, which Publishers Weekly described as “[combining] a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime…A stellar debut,” has the name Robert Galbraith on the cover, but is actually the work of veteran author J.K. Rowling. She published it with Mulholland Books under that pseudonym with the supposition that readers believe it was a pseudonym “for a retired British military investigator.” Now that it is being reprinted, the publisher has let the cat out of the bag.
Rowling says she enjoyed writing as Robert Galbraith and receiving criticism untainted by her past success. Of course, the book has sold out with this news. Perhaps some critics will tell us they suspected something like this all along.
The 2013 storySouth Million Writers Award
The 10th Annual storySouth Million Writers Award for short stories is now open. You may nominate stories you consider worthy from among those first published online, which doesn’t not mean self-published, but published in an online magazine or site with an editorial process. Nominations will be taken until August 3.
Book Marketing Myths
Author Joanna Penn says, “Marketing is sharing what you love with people who will appreciate hearing about it.” She has a new book on marketing books and in this article describes five points authors and would-be authors need to forget.
The Cross Is Not Comfortable, Cool, Trendy
“The world will always laugh at the gospel of the cross. . . . The theology that teaches men are sinners before God and need a sacrifice to die and atone for their sins is deemed primitive in our culture,” observes John P. Sartelle, a senior minister of Tates Creek Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. In his essay in Tabletalk, April 2009, he offers this challenge:
“Many of us evangelicals deny that we know Jesus by taking the emphasis away from the cross as we speak to His disciples and present our gospel to the world: ‘Follow Jesus: He will straighten out your marriage. Follow Jesus: He will make you better parents. Follow Jesus: He will make you financially solvent. Follow Jesus: He will enrich your relationships.’ Now, that is a Jesus who is easy to like and easy to follow. It is easy to stand in the world and be proud of that Jesus. To attract the world we say, ‘Come, drink coffee and hang out with Jesus. Be comfortable with Him. Kick back with Him. He is anti-institutional. He is anti-authority. Living with Him is a cool ride.’
“Dear reader, if we would recapture the gospel we must return to the ignominious cross. ‘For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured’ (Hebrews 13:11-13).”
We might keep this in mind as we pray for other’s salvation and discipleship in Christ. The gospel is the hope we all stumble over or break ourselves on. May the Lord have mercy on us and those near us.
On Writing in Books
Joel Miller is encouraging his readers to write in their books, especially the nonfiction. It will help their memory. It will be personally revelatory. It will lead to original verbages. And stuff.
I agree, and I’d like to thank my college English professor, Richard Cornelius, for encouraging me to go easy on these markings. A simple star, check, or v-mark in the margin is better than underlining a few lines. Using a notebook is probably better than writing comments in the margins too, but I don’t usually argue with writers in the margins of their books.
What marks do you make in your books?
The Unused Score for 2001
Perhaps Alex North’s musical score for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t right for the movie, but that doesn’t change the fact that North put everything he had into that score, working with the belief that it would be used. But Kubrick never intended to use it. He wanted the public domain music he selected himself for the temp track.
North’s daughter-in-law, Abby North, writes, “As all composers know, directors fall in love with temp tracks. It is often next to impossible for even the most talented and skilled composer to replace the temp tracks with new music cues that elicit the same feelings initially felt with the temp tracks. Unfortunately for Alex, Stanley Kubrick loved the grandeur of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and the “poetry of motion” of Johan Strauss’s The Blue Danube in the context of 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
For a bit of context, see this piece on Kubrick’s use of European music in The Shining. “[A]lmost the entire score is made up of music by the best European composers of Kubrick’s time,” writes Hope Lies, Béla Bartók’s music in particular.
Are Evangelicals Too Political?
Some are saying evangelical Christians should realize they have been defeated in recent political skirmishes and shut up. They’ve been too political for too long, they say. But Out of Ur says his experience hasn’t been dominated by politics.
“Given the lack of politics in my evangelical church experience, why do 75% of young non-Christians say evangelicals are ‘too political’? … Either my church engagement is wildly outside the norm, or perhaps evangelicals aren’t as devoted to political social engineering as the outside culture seems to believe we are.”
Even NPR’s Ira Glass thinks “what Christians really are is not being documented by the press.” But perception is deemed reality by most, if not all, of us, so how do we counter a politicized perception of who we are? (via Trevin Wax)
Communists: Free Association Must End
Peter Leithart points out a book on Soviet history, noting that the communists opposed free association more than free markets. They wanted to crush individual will power, stop curiosity, and if possible, outlaw independent thinking.
“It was not enough that an individual be open to the new regime or hostile to the old. The person who did not make an outright, preemptive demonstration of his servility might cause you trouble later on,” Leithart quotes from a review of the book.
The People must be greater than the sum of its persons.