Author Alexander Chee has 100 observations on writing a novel.
“8. It is like having imaginary friends that are the length of city blocks. The pages you write are like fingerprinting them, done to prove to strangers they exist.
9. Reading a novel successfully is then the miracle of being shown such a fingerprint and being able to guess the face, the way she walks, the times she fell in love incorrectly or to bad result, etc.”
There are 100 such things. (via Jane Friedman)
It feels like spring. It looks like spring.
Which makes me confident we’ve got at least one more big snowstorm coming.
I’ll let you know.
One more Irish song, you say? Well, if you insist.
This isn’t the greatest video, and it’s got a big slug of dead air at the end, but I couldn’t find one I really liked. Beautiful song. There’s a romantic back story, complete with class differences, Protestant-Catholic enmity, and parental opposition…
One night beneath the pale, silvery moon William asked Mary to marry him. However, William’s family disapproved of him seeing Mary, the broguemaker’s daughter who lived in a small peasant house in the middle of town. Whilst Mary loved William, she knew that their union could never be, as it would force him to turn his back on his family and he would begin to regret the day he’d ever met her. She declined his offer of marriage.
…but it seems to me just about three inches too romantic to be true. Wikipedia attributes the words to C. (or E.) Mordaunt Spencer and the music to Charles William Glover.
Anyway, it’s an Irish love song, and (as Phil could have told us) it’s sad as all the world’s tears.
Have a good weekend.
A designer has worked up a typography video of Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Chicago.” There’s a small promo at the beginning.
St. Patrick’s Day draws to a close, but I shall honor the saint one last time with the highest compliment I can pay—that is, an Irish melody sung by the world’s greatest Norwegian singer, Sissel Kyrkjebø. The song, of course, is You Raise Me Up, but the melody is Danny Boy. Or Londonderry Air, if you prefer. Or Derry Air, if you’re a strong Fenian.
To Norwegians, it’s the day following St. Patrick’s Day that’s the important one. We call that, Angrep Irland Fordi Alle de Irsk Er For Bakrust Å Motstådagen (Raid Ireland Because All the Irish Are Too Hung Over To Resist Day).
A Facebook friend posted an Irish blessing today, and it seemed oddly familiar to me. Then I remembered. I wrote it. I made it up one St. Patrick’s Day years agone, on Baen Books’ discussion board, when I used to hang out there. It goes like this:
“May you ever have bread on your table, and more bacon than bread, and more beer than bacon. And may you have need of none of it, having eaten and drunk your fill at your enemies’ wakes.”
Father Aillil is always at my elbow.
Mark Steyn delivers a bouquet to that much-maligned musical genre, the American Irish song, here.
“I am trying,” Chauncey Olcott once said, “to help the world along with the genius of Ireland. That little island has much to teach, and if people will but listen, they cannot fail to be impressed and improved. The fortunes of war, the mischances of statesmanship, and the awful curse of poverty have combined to keep the world in ignorance of everything Irish, excepting its suffering, hopes, songs and dauntless courage. Yet these are a very small part of the Irish character as an entity. At an early period they realized the vital importance of exercise, sunlight, fresh air, and water as the conditions precedent of all health and happiness. They cultivated the horse and dog; they excelled in the chase; they were proficient in falconry, and they had many Izaak Waltons before that immortal angler was born… For grace and vigor nothing could be better than the old-fashioned game of handball, while in putting the stone and throwing the hammer the Irish still hold the championship. In music and song their genius is well known; nevertheless, it is greater than the public is aware. From the earliest years, the singer has been the honored member of the community, and in ancient days ranked with the great nobles in the courts of the Milesian kings.”
And finally, in a note appropriate for the day’s Catholic associations, Vox Day opens a window and throws some light on real world comparisons between child abuse by Catholic priests and child abuse by government caretakers.
This doesn’t excuse what the pedophile priests did nor does it excuse the diabolical decision of the Vatican to permit homosexuals to join the priesthood in the first place. They eminently deserve whatever punishment they receive, in both this world and the next. But it puts the scale of their evil deeds into the proper statistical perspective. And while one could argue that physical beatings and psychological abuse are not as bad as sexual abuse and should be omitted from the comparison, one also has to keep in mind that none of the crimes committed by the priests rose to the lethal level either.
Tip: Chad at Fraters Libertas.
Here’s one Patrick may have enjoyed more than the previous song.
Christ’s is the Seed
Christ’s is the Harvest
Into God’s barn
May we be brought.
While in choir practice last night, it occurred to me (and I think others have said it before) that Patrick would want us to remember a day in his honor by honoring the Lord God who drove the darkness out of Ireland. So here’s an Irish hymn: ‘Mo Ghrá’sa, Mo Dhia’ (My Love, My God)
Michael Palin, formerly of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, pretty much ruined the term “ripping yarn” with a satirical TV series he did, years back. In spite of him, though, there is such a thing as a ripping yarn, and The People Of The Mist
As I read The People of the Mist, the thought that kept recurring to me was, “Why hasn’t this book ever been made into a movie?” The author’s most famous work, King Solomon’s Mines, has been filmed numerous times, but TPOTM contains pretty much all the elements that made KSM so exciting, with the addition of a girl in the original story (movie versions of KSM generally insert one). Not only that, her relationship with the hero is one of those love/hate, “you make me so mad I could kiss you” affairs that filmmakers love. Plus there’s spectacle aplenty. Continue reading The People Of the Mist, by H. Rider Haggard
Prithee, I beg your attention a moment. I did not slur all Irish folk music as being pulled from the sad sack. I believe I said that only of Irish love songs. Give a listen to this drinking song, which for the record is not a love song:
Faith, and since it’s an Irish mood we’re in, here’s my personal favourite Irish musical group, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, doing “The Whistling Gypsy Rover,” a song which puts the lie entire to the vile slanders of Phil (and Ian in Comments) that all Irish (or all folk, if you prefer) songs are about misery and loss.
Granted, 99% of folk songs are about misery and loss. Because, to be sure, when a fellow’s happy he generally has better things to do than write songs, while when he’s feeling low writing songs is about all he does feel up to.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day this week. This version is not the version I’m most familiar with. Apparently, the small Irish band which came to town some years ago and encouraged me to buy their CD sang an ancient version of this very old song. The gist is the same. A young man last sees his bride-to-be walking through the fair. Sometime afterwards, she dies, and in the last verse, her ghost visits him at night to say her final words to him again.
That’s the way Irish love songs go. One lover dies; another one is rejected; or another couple is opposed by their family or society or circumstances from living happily ever after. Moral: Don’t love an Irish person.