And now for something completely different: an advertisement for creative critique services.
Being nice, in some circumstances, can cause more harm than good. 🙂
Birthday
Today is my birthday, and I’ll be driving down to a point in southern Minnesota after work, to have dinner with my brother. So probably no posting tonight.
Bonnie & Clyde: Nothing heroes for a nothing world-view
You already know that I keep novelist Stephen Hunter’s picture in a locket, close to my heart. He proves (once again) his worthiness of such adoration in this marvelous piece in Commentary about Bonnie and Clyde–both the movie and the actual persons.
I always held pretty much this opinion. I just didn’t know enough to say it so well.
Tip: Threedonia.
Four Lost Wodehouse Playlets Found
Four short, satirical plays written by P.G. Wodehouse between 1904-1907 have been discovered and show the great comic author’s politics. He wrote them in support of British conservatives and those arguing for tariff reform.
Literary historian Paul Spiring discovered the works. “They are quite powerful,” he said, “and show that he was very much a supporter of the Tariff Reform League and pro-Chamberlain. His writing has often given people the impression that he was above politics. But the songs show that he was quite astute.”
September 1928: English novelist Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881 – 1975), creator of the characters Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, at the door of his home at Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk. (Photo by Sasha/Getty Images)
Catalina’s Riddle, by Steven Saylor
I picked up a couple of Steven Saylor’s Rome Sub Rosa novels because James Lileks praises them highly, and I have a high opinion of James’ taste. Unfortunately, I find I can’t share his enthusiasm.
Not to say the two I’ve read have been bad books. Catilina’s Riddle, which I just finished, and The Venus Throw, which I reviewed a while ago, are well-researched and well-written mysteries centered on the political conflicts that convulsed the Roman republic during the ascendancy of Cicero and the rise of Julius Caesar.
This story starts in 63 B.C. Gordianus the Finder, the detective hero of the series, has settled down on a farm in Etruria, some distance north of Rome, which he inherited from a friend. His new farm is entirely surrounded by the properties of his late friend’s siblings, and they (with one exception) do not welcome him. But Gordianus has had his belly full of Rome and its intrigues. The simple life of a gentleman farmer looks very good to him.
Neverthless, his past—in the person of an agent of his old patron, Cicero—intrudes. Cicero has an odd request. He wants Gordianus to play host to (and to spy on) Cicero’s own greatest political enemy, the charismatic young politician Catilina. Gordianus is sick of Cicero, and initially refuses. But he changes his mind after a headless body shows up in one of his barns. He interprets this as a threat, and begins to realize that you can flee Rome, but Rome will always follow you. Thus he gets more and more enmeshed in the plots and counter-plots of Cicero and Catilina. As in The Venus Throw, the actual murder mystery—the question of the headless body, along with two more that follow—turns out to be a footnote to the great events that overtake them all by the end of the story. Continue reading Catalina’s Riddle, by Steven Saylor
Health Care: The Right to Grant is the Right to Deny
Dalrymple on the rights of health care, the role of government, and what tax-funded health care has done in the U.K.:
. . . the right to grant is also the right to deny. And in times of economic stringency, when the first call on public expenditure is the payment of the salaries and pensions of health-care staff, we can rely with absolute confidence on the capacity of government sophists to find good reasons for doing bad things.
. . . After 60 years of universal health care, free at the point of usage and funded by taxation, inequalities between the richest and poorest sections of the population have not been reduced. But Britain does have the dirtiest, most broken-down hospitals in Europe.
(via Frank Wilson)
Stylin’
One of my co-workers came to see me in my office today. He said he was interested in writing. He was particularly curious, he said, as to how a writer develops a style.
Here’s the answer I gave him. It’s probably not the last word on the matter, but this is how I understand it, based on my own experience.
First, you find an author you’d like to be like. And you try to write like him (or her). This isn’t actually part of the process as such. It’s just where most of us start. You’ve got to start somewhere, so most of us start as imitators. When I was a kid, I tried to write like Poe, I recall.
This derivative writing is the raw material from which you begin to build your identity as a writer. It’s Square One, nothing more, really.
Continue reading Stylin’
A Shining Moment of Chivalry
Sharon Pelletier writes on her experience among chivalrous men. I used to be chivalrous. Perhaps I still am, but I feel like it anymore. Maybe my light is dimming. Maybe when the dragons you fight are within you, that feeling of chivalry gets lost.
How Is a Novelist Like a Gardener?
They both go digging around. Man, that’s bad. Gimme a minute to come up with a better answer. In the meantime, Athol Dickson has returned to blogging and talks about the similarities betwixt novel writing and gardening.
hmm, how is a novelist . . . The good ones call a spade a spade?
Government Representatives Ride in Herds
I am told the Congressman John Conyers, seen in this video, has argued in the past that congressman should read the bills they are passing. Through the link, you’ll see him making fun of that idea.
Voting on legislation you have not read is completely immoral! I can understand partial readings and using summaries in part, but more than once congressmen have been surprised by the bills they voted into law, and that must stop. Throw them out, if they can’t keep up with things on Capitol Hill, and for the leaders in both parties who encourage herd mentalities with our congressmen, throw them out too or raise the noise make them slow down to represent us, not their party or lobbyists or any special interests other than us.