Raskolnikov is back, and this time he’s not wasting his time philosophizing! In the long awaited sequel to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, terror strikes the heart of a sleepy Russian town . . . okay, I’m making that up, but there is a sequel to this novel, reviewed today in the Philly Inquirer.
Science in the Service of Christianity
Bryan Appleyard reviews physicist Frank Tipler’s book, The Physics of Christianity. Tipler argues that established theories in modern physics explain Christian history and doctrine.
Central to this argument is his conviction that there is no discontinuity between the insights of science and the revelations of the Gospels. Miracles, for example, are not, as is often claimed, sudden deformations or breaches of the natural order. They happen through known physical processes. Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory. That they happen when they do is, of course, God’s will, but, in making them happen, he does not violate the order of his creation.
I can’t comment on Tipler’s specific claims, but I heartily agree that the popular perception of scientists is that they would rather find meaninglessness in the universe than purposeful creation. A natural belief. If mankind is for nothing but what we make for ourselves, then we have become gods. Is that what we’ve always wanted?
Those Good Ol’ Books of Yesteryear
Stefen Beck describes a curious West Virginia bookstore before praising what may be one of this summer’s bestsellers, The Dangerous Book for Boys. Have you heard about this one? Good Pete! The video promotion on Amazon.com is a seller.
In an Amazon.com interview, the author says, “I think we’ve become aware that the whole ‘health and safety’ overprotective culture isn’t doing our sons any favors. Boys need to learn about risk.” Amen. He describes a British game called “conkers” which is the same game I made up when I was a boy, not with horse chestnuts but with our toy jeeps and figurines. Mounds of fun. And it has “Latin Phrases Every Boy Should Know”? I’ve got to get hold of that.
It Could be Funny
Bill Reichart has filed his review of Evan Almighty. He likes it better than Bruce Almighty.
The agency of innocence
This poster from Despair.com embodies a vision I’m coming to embrace in my own life. In the spirit of that sentiment, I’ll discuss a question commenters Sherry and Kathleen Marie raised on my last post, which was (in essence), “How does a head case like you get an agent?”
The answer is, “Once, by luck. Probably never again.”
(I’m not going to name my agents, by the way. They’re good guys who agented part time and never made it to the top of the pile. They made some choices that probably weren’t optimal, but then so have I.)
I’ve sometimes referred to “my agent” in blog posts, but that was an abbreviation of convenience. In fact they were a two-man shop. I’ll call them Primus and Secundus. Primus was the senior partner, and I dealt with him mostly when I actually had book contracts. I dealt with Secundus when I was out in the cold, at the beginning and at the end.
I got acquainted with them (by correspondence; I’ve never actually met either man) back when I was writing short fantasy stories. They were editors for a certain prominent fantasy and science fiction magazine, and they immediately impressed me with their taste and good judgment (by buying the first short story I ever sent them).
After a couple fruitful years (in which I never managed to sell a story to anybody else) they announced they were resigning from the magazine and opening an agency. They asked me if I’d care to come on board, and I jumped at it, knowing that getting an agent in the first place is one of the biggest hurdles a prospective author faces.
Then followed about ten years of nothing. I dealt almost exclusively with Secundus during that period, and they sent my first manuscript, and then a second, off to one publisher after another. Each one bounced back, although I got some flattering rejections.
I noticed, as time passed, that the agency was… less than energetic. Very compatible with my own personal style, of course, but not what you really want in an agent. They’d send a book off to somebody, and a year and a half later I’d ask them whether they’d heard anything, and they’d say, “Oh yes, we’ll have to give them a call.” Then another year would pass before the final rejection came.
Finally Jim Baen of Baen Books took the bait, and I started dealing with Primus.
Four books later, Jim Baen invited me never to darken his transom again, and I was back with Secundus.
And the slow, measured rhythm of submissions resumed. And again I’d ask them after a year or two if they’d heard anything, and again I’d get the impression that they’d forgotten about me completely.
Then one day I e-mailed Primus (I forget why it was him and not Secundus), and got no response. When I e-mailed him again, he replied that I should contact Secundus.
And Secundus told me that a) Primus was in bad health, and b) they’d recently noticed that nobody was returning their calls or messages. They deduced from this fact that they were out of business.
But Secundus said that he’d been in contact with a woman from a major agency, and she was interested in hearing from me. So I carefully sent her an e-mail with my personal bibliography, along with sample chapters from an unpublished book as an attachment.
No response.
I’ve done some research on this agency, and I have my doubts. For one thing this agency proudly declares itself a pioneering feminist agency. It was begun for the express purpose of getting more women writers published.
This makes me wonder if, after all these years, Secundus has ever actually read one of my books. Maybe he thinks I’m a woman. It’s a little troubling when your own agent misunderstands you so fundamentally.
So here I am. I’ve asked a couple writer acquaintances for references, but the one contact I’ve gotten went into the hospital about the time I e-mailed him, and so nothing has happened to date.
As you’d expect, knowing me, my hopes aren’t high.
What I need to do is go to one of the agent sites (here and here) I shared a while back, buckle down and start sending out query letters.
Maybe when this bout of light-headedness (and heavy-bottomedness) is past.
Hope in the Heavenly Father
“It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing.” –Thomas a Kempis
Tony Connor’s Aftermath
According to Dana Gioia, poet Tony Connor’s “work is both original and entertaining …. Connor does not simply report events, he vividly recreates them, shaping each scene with the skill and care of a novelist …. his work remains clear-headed, intelligent and immensely readable.”
Take for example this poem of heros and apathy, “Aftermath”:
Slumped in a prickly armchair
on a humid summer night,
I listened dully to dogs
barking with brainless pleasure
far away and in this street
under the Victory flags.
The bronze eagles with spread wings,
flightless on walls and porches,
reflected the light from stars,
as my slow imaginings
moved between foreign corpses
and these Stars and Stripes of ours.
Susan Wise Bauer at BookExpo
Here’s a brief report with photos of BookExpoAmerica from the author of some great history books.
Trust me–you don’t want to live in my world
Warning: All I’ve got to post t about is what I did today. Which, as faithful readers know, is a subject both dull and irritating.
I actually accomplished a small achievement. One of the burdens of my job, a job which I generally like very much, is the business of book returns. No matter how canny you try to be when ordering textbooks in fall and winter, you always end up with rows and rows of unsold books, staring back at you with a “You brought us out here for this?” expression on their spines. (Yes, books look at you with their spines. They’re books, for pete’s sake. If they have eyes at all, they have them all over, like the living beasts in Ezekiel.)
I hate doing book returns. It’s one of many activities which normal people accomplish without a second thought, but are like East German tax audits to me. I hate to call strangers on the phone, for one thing. And of all the things I could call them about, asking their permission give back something I asked them for in the first place is one of the worst. One of the numerous absolute rules in my shabby little interior world is that I should never ask for anything that might possibly be refused. Refusal—rejection—is intolerable. Refusal is judgment on my personal worth. There’s no possible reason anyone would ever turn me down on anything, except that they hold me in utter contempt.
Sometime last term, one of our instructors ordered five copies of a particular book, then changed his mind after it had been delivered. So (at great expense in emotional effort) I called the distribution company and faxed them the information the lady said she needed to provide a return document.
But when I’d done that, I got a fax back from her saying she had no record of that book in their stock lists.
This was in April. Since that time I’ve had the books sitting in a box in my office, and I’ve told myself every day, “I’ve got to call her back and find out what the hang-up is.”
Today, I called at last. The lady I’d dealt with was on vacation, but the lady I talked to said I needed to talk to another number (some sort of publisher/distributor division of labor). The lady I talked to at the new place took my information, then e-mailed me a .pdf of the return document I needed. I put the box of books in the mail this afternoon.
Success!
My reward? I get to do the same thing with a bunch of other books and publishers.
Headed home, I noticed that all the traffic lights were out in my neighborhood. I wondered if we were having a power outage.
We were. The problem, apparently, was some kind of fire or accident just down the street from me. The street where I’d planned to walk after work, taking advantage of the rare sunny afternoon in a rainy week.
And, of course, when the fire department barricades a street, I don’t go up it even on foot. Somebody might tell me I wasn’t allowed to come that way, and that would be a judgment on my personal worth (see above).
So I mowed my lawn. Which is just as good, and accomplishes something besides.
The moral? The moral? After a day like this you want morals from me? As my enemies have always maintained (when they’re not refusing me things), I’ve got no morals.
Macmillan CEO ‘Borrows’ Google Laptops
A publishing CEO decides to play the game, “Let’s See How You Like It,” with Google. He takes a couple laptops from the Google Booth at BookExpo and when discovered says he was doing to Google what Google Books is doing to publishing companies.
A CEO did this. Who says you have to grow up to be a success? (via Digg.com)