Poetry, Reading

How Do You Find the Good Stuff?

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Laura Miller of Salon.com says if the predictions of a wonderful world of self-publishing materialize, average readers will have a very large pile of poor writing to weed through. She describes reading The Slush Pile, that growing mound of unsolicited manuscripts that some publishers assign to an editorial peon.

Miller writes that we on the outside of publishing should fear what we don’t know: “Civilians who kvetch about the bad writing of Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer or any other hugely popular but critically disdained novelist can talk as much trash as they want about the supposedly low standards of traditional publishing. They haven’t seen the vast majority of what didn’t get published . . .”

In a world where any manuscript can be published and placed with online retailers, readers will suffer. Reading bad writing can hurt. “[I]nstead of picking up every new manuscript with an open mind and a tiny nibbling hope, you learn to expect the worst. Because almost every time, the worst is exactly what you’ll get.”

Fiction

Great Divorce to be filmed

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The Thinklings report that there’s a deal to film C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. The people who made “The Stoning of Soraya M.” are part of the project. The links are a rabbit hunt, so I’ll just link to their post.

I have a hard time thinking of a more naturally un-cinematic novel than The Great Divorce.

But they have my good wishes.

Authors

Interview on The Secret of Kells.

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Jeffrey Overstreet writes, “I finally saw The Secret of Kells. Wow. I haven’t been so hypnotized and enthralled by animation in a very long time. It’s remarkable how, in this era of increasingly lifelike digital animation and 3D, something that seems handmade can still work the most powerful magic.”
He interviews critic Steven D. Greydanus, because he’s troubled by the film. “Had I just watched a film about The Book of Kells that never once acknowledged what is written on the book’s pages?”
book of kells

Fiction, Reviews

Book Review: Hollywood Witches, by Thomas M. Sipos

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For the record, I received a copy of Thomas M. Sipos’ comic horror novel Hollywood Witches by way of S. T. Karnick of the American Culture, for review purposes.

I love a good Hollywood story. The town’s like an old trollop with a million tales to tell, proud of her very corruption. Not for nothing is the Hollywood fable a traditional setting for morality tales (a triumph of hypocrisy in itself).

Thomas M. Sipos’ novel shows considerable promise and delivers a number of laughs, but gets weighed down by its lack of narrative discipline.

The chief eponymous witch of the story is Diana Däagen, a figure of satire, gargantuan in her vices and terrifying in her lack of self-awareness. A failed actress, she now works as “development executive” in a movie studio. She believes herself intensely spiritual and full of love for all humankind, but that doesn’t prevent her from treating her underlings like dirt, using black magic to thwart or kill her enemies, and planning to murder thousands of people at once—all for enlightened, politically correct purposes, of course.

There is no subtlety in Diana’s character. If you like characters in novels, even bad characters, to have sympathetic sides, you won’t find one here. Diana is pure black-hat witch, evil all through.

But of course she’s a Hollywood production executive, so that doesn’t strain credibility much. Continue reading Book Review: Hollywood Witches, by Thomas M. Sipos →

Fiction

Sad Kids' Movies

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Time has a list of 10 saddest kids’ movies, in light of the minor-key note played by Toy Story 3. If you start with Bambi, you can click through the list to see trailers, clips, and explanations.
We watched Toy Story 3 over the weekend and loved it. It gets intense at the end, and two of my girls didn’t like that part, but overall it was a great story. All three Toy Story movies are good and funny. The latest edition is great tale of loyalty and purpose, and it’s moving because I’m sure viewers want to have real friends who are faithful like the toys are.

Religion

Truth-telling is, like, so legalistic

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Over at Townhall Magazine, Prof. Mike Adams tears into Don Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz:

The only problem with this story is that it isn’t true. Oddly, Don came back to visit that Christian camp just a few years ago. When he did, he was confronted with his very public and untruthful account his time at Summit Ministries.

In response, Don just said it wasn’t a big deal. He fabricated the story just to make a point. He was confronted privately but was unrepentant, which was not too surprising. Remember that Don thinks Christianity is not about rules. It’s about a relationship with God.

Authors, Fiction

Austerity in the Shire

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Our friend Dale Nelson has sent me the text of an article he wrote for the Tolkien ‘zine, Beyond Bree. I know of no way for you to get it without subscribing, but I can quote a bit here (I hope), and point you to his source material, the book Austerity Britain, by David Kynaston.

Everybody knows that hobbits love to eat good food. Tolkien’s attention to butter, bread, strawberries, potatoes, and other good things has bothered some readers. It isn’t just that hobbits display a childish greediness, but that the author seems mostly to approve of their passion for food. Moreover, some readers may feel that Tolkien makes too much of other creature comforts, such as hot baths, tobacco, and comfortable beds….

Kynaston’s book, drawing on diaries, letters, Mass Observation interviews, and other documents, superbly evokes the dismal condition of postwar Britain (1945-1951). This is the period in which Tolkien was finishing the writing of The Lord of the Rings…. The postwar austerity period became so grim that, in spring 1948, “as many as 42 percent of people wanted to emigrate, compared with 19 percent immediately after the war” (p. 249). I don’t suggest that this is the reason that departure (from the Shire; from Middle-earth itself) is such an important theme of LOTR, but I do think the theme would have a poignancy for Tolkien and his fellow citizens that readers today, especially Americans, would not suspect….

Reading Austerity Britain may prompt Tolkien’s readers to reconsider before criticizing or mocking his celebration of the creature comforts that were in such short supply while The Lord of the Rings was being written. And although the Shire is restored by the book’s end, I now see that LOTR is a book about emigration—think of the Elves’ departure, but especially of Frodo’s, at the Grey Havens. I will always think of The Lord of the Rings, hereafter, as an “austerity” book.

Authors, Fiction, Writing

Disposable Mailer

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Algis Valiunas at Commentary writes on the legacy of Norman Mailer.

Capote showed Mailer the way by sympathetically detailing the character of one of the murderers, who like Gilmore seemed fated to suffer and inflict hell on earth; but Capote also did what Mailer did not, which was to portray the victims in their appealing humanity, to render the full horror of their final moments, and to emphasize what was lost by their deaths. With the rapt intensity of a man staring into a cobra’s eyes, Mailer gazes into and cannot look away from human malignancy, which seems the most riveting subject a writer can have and which he congratulates himself for searching so boldly again and again. If only he did not love it so.

I just wish Valiunas would stop holding back, and tell us what he really thinks of Mailer.

Caution for disturbing subject matter.

Tip: The Paragraph Farmer.