Mary T. Lewis writes, “At its most profound, and especially in [German painter Caspar David] Friedrich’s work, the motif of a view through an open window celebrated the utter subjectivity of the painter’s vision at the very threshold that divided his world and the realm of art from nature.” There’s an exhibit of Friedrich and his contemporaries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The articles has some nice pictures for those of us who aren’t planning to make it over to New York this year.
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Library Boycott of HarperCollins
There’s a movement among librarians and what I believe are to be called library advocates to boycott HarperCollins e-books because the publisher has stated it plans to release new e-books that will have distribution limitations. For Overdrive and other library e-readers, HarperCollins intends to publish new works that will permit only 26 check outs before expiring. They haven’t done it yet, but they still intend to.
Publishers Macmillan and Simon & Schuster don’t publish ebooks for libraries at all, but no boycott has been organized for them that I know of.
One librarian said, “Consumer market eBook vendors like Barnes & Noble and Amazon don’t let publishers get away with the amount of nonsense that we get stuck with through library eBook vendors. I fault the publishers for not realizing what a huge mistake they are making by not realizing that new formats are opportunities…”
In other library news, at least six Alabama libraries were severely damaged in the tornado storm we had last week. Three of them may be completely destroyed. Several more libraries are in badly damaged areas of the state, but no word has come from them yet.
A local history library just south of where I live took a good bit of damage. “Our genealogy and local history material was boxed up and stored at the temporary location,” the Dade County librarian said. That location lost some of its roof. The materials inside were soaked.
Three Thoughts For Aspiring Writers Of Speculative Fiction
- “If there are more proper nouns in your back cover text blurb than non-proper ones, you’re probably doing something wrong.”
- “Unspeakable evil probably doesn’t live in your mom’s basement.”
- “If your star-spanning galactic empire doesn’t have working cell phone technology, you may want to rethink things a bit.”
Biblical Words This Week
Anu Garg, the wordsmith behind Word of the Day, is doing biblical names turned words this week in honor of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Today’s word is Jonah. Other words will likely be Jezebel, Judas, and Jeremiah or Jeremiad.
Super Cool Photo, Interface of Library
“The largest indoor photo in the world as of March 2011” is of the Strahov Philosophical Library. This photo is allows you to pan 360 degrees and zoom in incredibly close. Note the “Show Details” link in the lower left corner. It will take you around the room a bit. It’s beautiful, and I’ve been looking at many very ugly photos lately, so this one is refreshing today.
N.D. Wilson Talks About Adapting "The Great Divorce" for Screen
N.D. Wilson is working on a screenplay for C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. He talks to Justin Taylor about it.
How do you take a set of episodes and turn them into a coherent story while being faithful and without ruffling too many feathers?
Oh, I’m not afraid to ruffle feathers. But any nervous fans out there should know that I’m as dog-loyal to Lewis and his vision as any writer could be. Where I’m adding and expanding and shaping, I am constantly trying to check myself against Lewis’ broader imagination as represented in his collected works—not simply this little volume.
I will admit that when I began the adaptation, I felt like I was jumping off a cliff into (hopefully deep) mysterious waters—you can never completely predict what will happen on impact. But now that I’ve impacted and finished the first draft of the script, I can say that (as a Lewis fan), I’m really, really happy with it. And from here, I hope it only gets better.
Myths, Urban Legends, and Untruths
Jared links to a list of Christian urban legends. These are things like the Eye of the Needle gate outside Jerusalem and a rope tied to the high priest when we goes into the Holy of Holies (in case he dies there). I’m most disappointed by this one: “Voltaire’s house is now owned by a Bible-printing publisher.” I thought that was true, at least, that it was true within 100 years of Voltaire’s death. Bum.
Discussion continues at Trevin Wax’s blog.
Liberal Journalism May Have New Spring
Three year old non-profit news organization ProPublica has won it’s second Pulitzer. That may be a sign of sunny days ahead for liberal journalism.
In Praise of the Pun
The Phantom Tollbooth opened up author Michael Chabon and infected his entire circulatory system. He says, “It was while reading The Phantom Tollbooth that I began to realize, not that I wanted to be a writer (that came a little later, at the mercy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), but something simpler: I had a crush on the English language, one that was every bit as intense, if less advanced, as that from which the augustly named author, Mr. Norton Juster, himself evidently suffered.” (via Books, Inq.)
Writing for Profit (And Maybe Fun)
Brevity comments on a New York Review of Books essay which criticizes memoir-writing. The complaint comes out: “Are you coming into the house of narrative through the back door because the back door is where the money is?” While Brevity gives its own argument against this complaint, I have to ask why a talented writer who can make money from a book shouldn’t try to? If it’s true that memoirs is just money-making non-fiction, why shouldn’t a good writer work on one? (via Books, Inq.)