Book Riot talks short stories and recommends 20 collections.
Speaking short shorts, which are shorter than short stories, Loren has been posting several both for reading and listening on his blog. “Saint Georgette” is just beautiful, but scroll down to see more.
I don’t have anything on my mind tonight, so I’ll fall back on a YouTube video. This clip captures a definitive moment in the career of Sissel Kyrkjebø (the Greatest Singer in the World). It was 1986, and she was selected to sing an “interval” number during the Eurovision Song Contest, which is a big deal over there every year. She dressed in the traditional bunad (folk costume) of her home city, Bergen, and sang Bergen’s official anthem, “Jeg Tok Min Nystemte Cithar i Hende” (“I Took My Newly Tuned Zither in Hand”). This was her first introduction to a wider European public, though she was already pretty famous in Norway. I think you’ll understand why she was a hit.
Have a good weekend.
“Know what you’re trying to say,” and nine other tips for good writing. It’s certainly not an exhaustive list. (via Tim Challies)
A postcard (“Yes, we love this land!”) promoting the 1905 independence referendum in Norway.
What could be more appropriate, as a commemoration of Syttende Mai, Norway’s glorious Constitution Day, than to publish a short excerpt from a classic work of Norwegian-American literature? I refer, of course, to Troll Valley by Lars Walker, which you can purchase right here, for Kindle (you Nook readers can find it at Barnes & Noble too).
There was much news from Norway in those years. Bestefar [Grandfather] had gotten a rene (pure) Norwegian flag (the plain one on the red field, instead of the “herring salad” one with the Swedish colors quartered in the upper left-hand corner), and we flew it proudly, side-by-side with the Stars and Stripes, in those days in the summer of 1905 when the Storting dissolved the Union with Sweden and the people voted for independence, and everyone held their breath wondering whether King Oscar would contest the results with force. Bestefar got misty-eyed as he handled the bunting. King Haakon VI of Norway was crowned in June 1906 (the Swedes having decided Norway wasn’t worth the unpleasantness, all said and done) and Bestefar went for a long walk after he set the flags out that day. That was also the year Roald Amundsen discovered the Northwest Passage.
Gratulerer med dagen, Norske venner!
Emily January talks about feeling guilty when a friend recommends and gushes over a book she doesn’t want to read. “I’m known for being the “reader,” so I should be able to digest anything, right? Well, unfortunately the fact that I read a lot has also refined my tastes. I find that many of the books I have swallowed are not books that other people attempt to swallow.”
What makes a great story? For legendary filmmaker Ken Burns, the answer is both complicated and personal. In this short documentary about the craft of storytelling, he explains his lifelong mission to wake the dead. Recently featured on The Atlantic. (http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/05/ken-burns-on-story/257165/)
Directed by Tom Mason and Sarah Klein
Music by Ryan Sayward Whittier
Animation by Elliot Cowan
What did I say about researchers? Kevin Holtsberry points to an amazingly unqualified study by National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and AARP that we should drink coffee. “We think our study provides some reassurance that (drinking coffee) may not increase their risk of death,” says one researcher. Of course, he meant death from various specific diseases within a certain timeframe. But, you know, details.
Mark Twain. Photo: Library of Congress
For example, he [William Godwin] was opposed to marriage. He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, but applying the principle in his own family; the matter took a different and surprising aspect then.
A few days back I posted a link to an article on the shameful domestic behavior of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. One of our commenters, “Habakkuk 21,” pointed me to Mark Twain’s essay, In Defence of Harriet Shelley. I downloaded it for my Kindle, and it made interesting reading.
As I’ve said before, I have ambivalent feelings about Mark Twain. I yield to no one in my admiration for his gifts as a novelist and humorist. He was one of the greats, and he’s given me plenty of good laughs. I like him less as a man, and when he gets on his Skeptical hobbyhorse he irritates me. On top of that, many of my generation saw Hal Holbrook (at least on TV) doing his Mark Twain show, in which he cherrypicked Twain’s writings to give the impression that he was essentially a man of the ’70s—the 1970s—born before his time.
But in In Defence of Harriet Shelley we see another Mark Twain—the Victorian middle class gentleman, the devoted husband and father, for whom nothing could be more vile than a man who abandoned his family. I expected a little more wit in this essay than is actually to be found here. The primary tone is withering scorn. It appears that Twain had little intention of entertaining the reader in this piece. He was morally outraged, and it’s the outrage that comes through.
I like Mark Twain a little better as a man, after reading A Defence of Harriet Shelley. It’s hardly a classic of Twain’s work, but it’s kind of nice having him as an ally for a change.
I know scientists of all stripes choose to study things that may seem obvious to us in order to thoroughly understand why they happen, but somehow this one seems like a high school science fair project. A researcher “suspects novels can sometimes be life-changing.” Yes. Yes, they can be.
In other research news, people will judge a body by his facial hair. An online poll shows the soul patch and chinstrap beard are the most offensive.
I finally streamed Adaptation on Netflix, and now I’m going to talk about it. Adaptation is one of those movies they tell writers they need to see, and indeed it has much to say about writing and the creative process, not to mention the movie business. But I’m not sure I consider the film a success.
Adaptation, released in 2002, is based (in a sense) on a book called The Orchid Thief, by journalist Susan Orlean (played here by Meryl Streep). The book, about an orchid poacher in Louisiana, was apparently very well received by the right sort of people. Some Hollywood idiot acquired the movie rights, in spite of the fact that the story is basically a think piece in which nothing much happens. The job of adapting this non-story for film fell upon Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicholas Cage), who had previously made a splash with the script for a very strange movie called Being John Malkovich.
The movie starts with Kaufman verbalizing his determination not to vulgarize the purity of the book by adding extraneous elements like a romance or action scenes. Which is essentially an impossible task, and he knows it in his heart (his interior dialogue, presented in voice-over, is frighteningly similar to my own, I might add). Gradually he hits on the idea of focusing the script on his own struggle to write it, and what we see on the screen is that story. But adapted. By the addition of romance and action scenes.
For someone interested in writing, there’s considerable interest in watching each script writing principle Kaufman discusses (with a fictional twin brother, Donald) appear before our eyes. Donald is writing a thriller script, and he talks about fooling the audience by making one character seem like two—precisely what Kaufman is doing. The action picks up—absurdly—as the script becomes entirely Donald’s kind of story.
It’s certainly a fascinating film, worth seeing more than once, and I’m sure it deserved all the accolades and prizes it received. But in my personal view, a movie fails if you have to go to Wikipedia to find out how to feel about what you just saw.
Cautions for language, brief nudity, sex and violence.