Authors

Needing a History to Properly Enjoy

1 Comment

Patrick Kurp says he couldn’t have read Max Beerbohm at a young age, because he requires a personal depth or history to draw upon while reading. He notes, “In another small masterpiece from And Even Now, ‘The Golden Drugget,’ Beerbohm describes a rather drab, undistinguished inn near his home in Rapallo, overlooking the Gulf of Genoa, in Italy:

“By moonlight, too, it is negligible. Stars are rather unbecoming to it. But on a thoroughly dark night, when it is manifest as nothing but a strip of yellow light cast across the road from an ever-open door, great always is its magic for me. Is? I mean was. But then, I mean also will be. And so I cleave to the present tense–the nostalgic present, as grammarians might call it.”

Authors

How Lovecraft Has Influenced Too Many People

4 Comments

Does Lovecraft still matter? A new annotated volume argues in favor of this old horror writer. Lovecraft, who died five months before his 47th birthday, also “shrewdly created an American pantheon of horror,” Klinger said of the hardcore New Englander. “He was the first writer of supernatural literature to understand the psychological consequences of the generations of Puritanism and the warping of the human psyche that resulted.”

I always get a chuckle out of accusations that Puritans twisted our civilization. Where would America or the world be without the Puritans of England and its New World colonies? Nowhere. They would be unrecognizable to us, if we could see such an alternate history.

Speaking of Alt-history, Lars’ Death’s Doors is tons of fun. You should read it. For real. (via Prufrock)

Bookselling, Publishing

New Catholic Literature Prize

Leave a comment

The new George W. Hunt Prize, sponsored by America magazine and Yale University’s Saint Thomas More Chapel, will recognize a variety of accomplished literature from Roman Catholics. The judges appear to be looking for good, expressly Catholic works by authors who lead moral lives.

“We’re trying to promote new creative thinking,” Beloin told The Washington Post’s Ron Charles. “Catholic theology is a very wide umbrella — or at least it’s supposed to be.” The Hunt Prize will be awarded to an author who is “trying to write things that are true — to bring a fresh language to theology, to bring real creativity to intellectual life and Catholic imagination.” (via Literary Saloon)

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Lying With Memes,’ by Ori Pomerantz

1 Comment

Ori Pomerantz is a personal friend of mine, and of this blog. So my endorsement of his new e-book, Lying With Memes: Quick, Concise, and Wrong, might be a little suspect (I got a free review copy, by the way, so you can factor that in). But I thought it was a valuable and entertaining little book.

Memes, those short messages pasted on art, like digital posters or vertical bumper stickers, are part of my life, and probably of yours too, if you’re reading this blog. If you use a service like Facebook, you’ve probably laughed or done an arm pump on seeing some, and promptly shared them. Sometimes you learn later that they’re false or misleading, and feel embarrassed. You’ve probably also been angered by some memes, and they may have even sparked arguments and lost you friends.

Ori’s short book is an explanation of how memes are constructed (with how-to instructions), and also a plea for more rational, decent memes. He provides a simple short course in logic (something much needed in our time) and admits that the information he gives may be used or misused. “I hope you will use this knowledge for good,” he writes, “to identify when people try to cheat you, rather than for evil, to cheat people yourself.”

A quick read and not expensive. Recommended.

Uncategorized

Writing Courses Are Ruining Literature

2 Comments

A judge for the Noble Prize for Literature said professional writers suck and are dragging everyone down with them. Judge Horace Engdahl remarked, “Previously, writers would work as taxi drivers, clerks, secretaries and waiters to make a living. Samuel Beckett and many others lived like this. It was hard – but they fed themselves, from a literary perspective.”

They soaked in Parisian culture too, which I assume is important to the world of letters. Honestly I can’t tell if Engdahl is making a great point or a silly one. On the surface of it, he seems to be the voice of the establishment complaining that the establishment is cannibalizing itself.

Observer critic Robert McCrum said: “Engdahl’s bracing remarks reflect quite a lot of informal comment within some senior parts of the literary community, especially those grey cadres that are anti-American. At face value, these comments are an odd mixture of grumpy old man and Nordic romantic. I’m not sure that the author’s garret is the guarantor of excellence.”

Writing

Must All Sentences Be Short?

Leave a comment

Remaining in the deep pockets of the short-sentence lobby for years was enough incentive to prevent Roy Peter Clark from writing this piece in favor of the long-sentence opposition party.

“When I fight this anxiety,” he writes, “when I advise writers to ‘Fear not the long sentence,’ my encouragement inspires looks of alarm from teachers as if I were advocating taking all the garter snakes out of high school terrariums and replacing them with anacondas.”

Or a natural fear of powerful, short-sentence lobbyists, who might leave conveniently unedited documents on reporters’ desks which could embarrass their former supporters. Clark appears to have no fear, however, spilling the beans with items like this:

By my count, there are three main reasons to cast a long sentence:

  • To take a journey through a physical or emotional landscape.
  • To create a catalogue or inventory.
  • To build a mosaic of logic or evidence.
Uncategorized

Things Turn Out Best For Those Who Make the Best Out of the Way Things Turn Out

Leave a comment

This has made my day. In one of the books I edited this summer, the author attributed this quote to Coach John Wooden, “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” I searched for verification that Coach Wooden said it or came up with it himself, but could only find it widely attributed to him without citation. I found it attributed to Art Linkletter too, also without citation.

If I said known Wooden (1910-2010) was as old as Linkletter (1912-2010), I might have let it go, but I thought Linkletter was much older and consequently in a better position to have said something like this before the coach. So I kept looking, and finding nothing, asked The Quote Investigator to help. With his workload, I didn’t expect an answer right away, but in today’s email, I received word that he had posted his report:

(Great thanks to TygerBurning and Phil Wade whose inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Wade pointed to the 1979 citation and noted that Linkletter credited Wooden.)

Your desire to explore the genuine provenance of quotations is admirable. I appreciate your visiting and asking about an interesting saying.

Best wishes,

Garson O’Toole

When I wrote to QI, I told him I had found the quote attributed to Wooden without citation in Yes, You Can by Linkletter, so that ruled out one name, but that’s as much as I could discover. Seeing the final QI report, I don’t believe I could have found the answer.

In May 1965 an instance of this aphorism using the word “folks” was published in a newspaper column in Ada, Oklahoma together with miscellaneous sayings. No attribution was provided:

Things turn out best for folks who make the best of the way things turn out.

… In the following years, close variants of the adage were published in numerous newspapers. No individual was credited with the remark, and QI believes the statement should be labeled anonymous.

So chalk this one up to folk wisdom, friends.

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Automatic Ordering and Payment for Coffee Drinkers

Leave a comment

Pink metal clockwork robot maid - Naked Espresso BarHave you ever been waiting at a counter or restaurant, wondering why they haven’t taken your order or seated you for a few minutes? They look busy, so there must be other customers, but you’re the first one in line. Now the mobile-payment company, Square, is rolling out an coffee-buying app to allow more people to jump ahead of you in line without actually standing at the counter. Partnering with Blue Bottle Coffee, the Square app will allow coffee drinkers to place their order from their phone or tablet and pick it up within twenty-four hours. The store will receive the order and be warned when we approach the store so they can have your beverage ready when you walk in. No wait. No payment. No tip possibly. No personal interaction. All of that is handled online. So you could be standing at the counter for fifteen minutes while other customers walk in to pick up their orders.

Music

Bach’s Metaphors of Instrumentation in St. Matthew Passion

2 Comments

Barrymore Laurence Scherer writes about the beautiful oratorio, St. Matthew Passon by J.S. Bach:

For more tender contemplations Bach employs the softer veiled tone of the oboe d’amore, pitched a third below the oboe. In the soprano aria “I will give Thee my heart,” a soothing pair of oboes d’amore help suggest Christ’s loving relationship with mankind.

But Bach scores one of his most telling effects by eliminating certain instrumentation: Whenever Jesus sings his portions of the narrative, his bass voice is enveloped in a gleaming tissue of sustained triads played by two violins and viola, known as a “halo of strings.”

(via Prufrock)