Author Philip Roth received the Man Booker International Award for Fiction today. The Financial Times of the United Kingdom reports Roth has won every important American fiction award during his 50-year career.
Now, he tells the Times he has “wised up” and stopped reading fiction. No further explanation.
I thought it a nuisance that I’d had a fairly energetic (by my standards) weekend planned, not after, but just before, the day of my liberation from my hand splint. It was irritating in the sense that I kept thinking how much easier all of this would have been if delayed a day or two. But I also thought there was some benefit in spending the last two days of bondage busy, rather than sitting around wishing the time away.
(The splint is gone now, by the way. Free at last! Oh the joy of having ten (OK, nine—one needs a little work) fingers to use again!)
Saturday I did a lecture for a Sons of Norway lodge in Minneapolis. They were an excellent, attentive audience, they paid me a nice honorarium, and they bought books way out of proportion to their numbers. That’s pretty much my definition of a good lecture day.
Sunday was Svenskarnasdag (Swedish Day) at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. I brought the minimum of my equipment, and sat trying to sell books all day, letting others (mostly younger) do the fighting. Which is probably as it should be. The weather was iffy and the crowds thin, but I got my RDA of Vitamin D from the sunshine that came and went.
A friend who owns a big, powerful PC let me load up my book trailer movie project on his machine. It was exhilarating to finally run it in on something that could handle the file sizes, rather than my laptop. On the downside, better equipment made several problems apparent. My big challenge is sound. I’m fairly certain I should have done the project in some other program than Windows Live Movie Maker (even the old Windows Movie Maker), because I could really use some functionalities this stripped down software lacks. I’m reluctant to start from scratch again, though.
I think I could fix it up with recordings and overdubs. But that’s a further problem. Using the mike I’ve got, I have to be right on top of it to get a decent sound level, and that generates popping and wind noise.
Anybody know any cheap cheats for making a filter at home? I’m really not able to spring for a professional microphone at this point in my career.
We know you’re fascinated with introverts, the quiet, cool individuals who rarely speak but to criticism your latest idea. Here are ten myths about them. (via Trevin Wax)
A little late in the day (it’s almost tomorrow in Norway as I write), but today is Sissel Kyrkjebø’s birthday. Here she is doing a modern arrangement of a Norwegian bridal march. I think you’ll understand the words. I heard her do the same number the first time I saw her in concert in Minot (pray for Minot!). Her hair was about the same length then, the longest it’s been since the early ’90s, so this must have been broadcast around the same time.
At the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse site, an outstanding article by Anthony Esolen on the importance of marriage, and the poverty of the sexual revolution.
Have a good weekend. My splint comes off Monday morning!
China apparently has many shiny new vacant houses. No buyers, just houses, apartments, skyscapers, and empty parks.
Five Ways to Fail at Design, from Harvard Business Review’s Failure Issue.
The May/June issue of Writer’s Digest Magazine includes an article on “How To Build Suspense With Backstory,” by Romance writer Leigh Michaels. I liked this bit:
The suspense we’re discussing here doesn’t necessarily involve the characters being in peril; it’s created whenever there’s something the reader wants to know. Will Joe kiss Brenda? Will Sally give in to Brad’s demand that she work for him? Will Jared answer Katherine’s question or dodge it?
Whenever you cause readers to be curious about what comes next, you’re creating suspense. Suspense rises naturally from good writing—it’s not a spice to be added separately.
A local Christian college president has resigned after news that he plagiarized a chapter of his book. The Board of Directors did not ask him to step down. He took that on himself. Perhaps it’s an honorable move, but his explanation leaves me with doubt. He said he did not understand copyright laws at the time, and that it was “a major academic mistake.” The minister whose work was copied is quoted saying, “He told me that he had read my book in college, liked it, and was under the impression that I had passed away or that it was no longer in print when he used it.”
The former president said he tried to give proper credit to the minister in most recent editions by adding the minister’s photo and contact information to the front of the book. “There was not a cover up,” he said, “and I was planning on re-writing that section of the book anyway.”
How does any of this justify taking someone else’s published words as your own?
I’ve used the picture above before in this space. It’s me at Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota, a couple years back. If I read the news correctly, the spot where I’m sitting in this photo may be now, and almost certainly soon will be, under water.
I’m praying for the people of Minot, and solicit your prayers as well.
My friend Darwin Garrison has published a couple story-length e-books for Kindle, which you can download here for a buck. Skipping Stones is a science fiction tale of love, cyborgs, and rocket racing. Black Feather, Bright Heart is a fantasy about a woman with strange powers, fighting to protect a peaceful village.
They are stories with engaging plots and interesting characters. Darwin hasn’t perfected his full wordsmithing skills yet (at one point he slips on the old “flaunt vs. flout” banana peel), but the stories are definitely worth reading. Darwin is a Christian, but wisely leaves his theology implicit.
The New Criterion published George Green’s poem, “Rose Poe.” I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s a vignette perhaps. Here’s the open:
Rose Poe was homeless after Richmond fell,
abandoned by the millionaire MacKenzies,
whose ward she’d been for over fifty years.
She spent her days down at the railroad depot
trying to sell some faded photographs
of her unhappy brother, Edgar Allan,
now long deceased, the author of “The Raven.”
…