To the untried writer, John Milton says, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
To which the modern would-be writer replies, “Word up.”
Frank Wilson points out a good report on coffee consumption. Drinking a lot of coffee isn’t bad for you, according to this report, but usually people who drink a lot also have other habits which do promote bad health.
And it isn’t just the God-fearin’ folk [Philip Pullman] finds frightening—he duly recognizes the atheistic USSR as one of the most cruel and effective theocracies in history. In an essay in the Guardian, he explains that “the real division is not between those states that are secular, and therefore democratic, and those that are religious, and therefore totalitarian. . . . You don’t need a belief in God to have a theocracy.” It’s no coincidence that he often refers to the poseur-God who is murdered in his trilogy as “the Authority,” for it is the enforcement of any authority he despises more than God. His opinion of Catholics who take offense at his book? “Nitwits,” he says.
One is tempted to write a book with a main character named “Philip Pullman,” described with his background and vital statistics, then replace his personality with that of a power-hungry tyrant who kidnaps and slaughters children to further his own goals. Perhaps go so far as to make the literary “Philip Pullman” responsible for the enormity of pain and suffering in the world. If he objects, call him a nitwit for failing to see the deeper meaning in your work.
Peter Suderman blogs, “The difficulty with reading these days is not that there is too little being written, or that no one is doing it, or even that no one is doing it well. It’s that there’s too much to read, too much to process. We are not short for words. We are drowning in them.”
“Is writing short stories first a good way to start ‘breaking into’ writing novels?” Author S.L. Farrell tries to answer this one with many commenters joining in. Farrell says short stories and novels are different. “You don’t learn to play piano by learning to play guitar,” he says. (via Jason Sanford, who is blogging on sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery now)
The 1507 Waldseemuller map will go on display in the Library of Congress this month, but historians don’t understand it fully. The map was designed only thirteen years after Columbus landed on this side of the ocean, and modern scholars don’t know how the mapmakers knew enough to draw the land and oceans as accurately as they did.
TINFOIL HAT: So, why don’t we know how they could have designed this map? Could it be that someone doesn’t want us to know? Martians, or perhaps more likely, Brazilians?!?
“He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.”
Joe Holland blogs about why he “Can’t Stop Reading Thomas Boston,” a Scottish minister who wrote on covenant and reformed theology.
He ministers to my soul by consistently taking me to the only One who can satisfy my soul. This is why so much of the modern, cross-centered movement has latched onto Puritans like Boston. They and I have found in him a kindred spirit, a teacher, a pastor, a theologian, a man thoroughly captivated by Jesus Christ.
For my part, I heard a couple sermons from Kelly Kapic who has worked on books by John Owen, particularly Overcoming Sin and Temptation. The modern church needs to be revived with the teaching of these men for our better health.
Sherry offers a work by D. Gabriel Rossetti:
She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
At length the long-ungranted shade
Of weary eyelids overweigh’d
The pain nought else might yet relieve. . . .
Also, Frank Wilson offers a piece he wrote last year:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear
(Though winter’s scheduling an arctic flight).
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near. . . .
Words like these put me in the mood for a song. “Oh by golly, have a holly, jolly–” NOT THAT SONG. Something closer to the holiday will be better. Here’s part of one we sang tonight.
As with joyful steps they sped
To that lowly cradle bed,
There to bend the knee before
Him whom heaven and earth adore;
So may we with willing feet
Ever seek thy mercy-seat.…
Holy Jesus, ev’ry day
Keep us in the narrow way;
And, when earthly things are past,
Bring our ransomed souls at last
Where they need no star to guide,
Where no clouds thy glory hide.
Shawn Macomber records the skinny on a writers strike rally in Washington Square Park: big names and faces.
The Writers Guild strike is everywhere because when you go to one of their rallies you get to see Tony Soprano’s wife standing next to Joe Pantoliano on stage while Sopranos creator David Chase and Richard Belzer, holding a small dog to his cheek, look on. It’s because even if Tina Fey looks like she’s not into it, she’ll still pose for a photo with you and the guy who plays Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock. It’s because the ex-intern from The Office will nod at you if you smile at him as he leans nonchalantly against a tree. . . . . The gathered heard a thousand times this day how brilliantly writers are able to express themselves, yet, aside from one Daily Show personality and comedian extraordinaire, Colin Quinn, no one saw fit to let the writers speak for themselves. (“I want this to end so the Writers Guild can go back to doing what they do best,” Quinn ribbed. “Sending three giant envelopes of detailed health plan information out every week.”)