Faith*in*fiction notes that Westbow will be history in its parent company’s reorganization. Thomas Nelson has 18 imprints and plans to consolidate all of them under one name over several months. President and CEO of Thomas Nelson, Michael Hyatt, said imprints are “an inside-out way of looking at the market, self-focused rather than customer-focused. The only ones who care about imprints are publishers, and they are expensive to maintain.” No jobs will be cut and some added, according to the report.
Boring post on interesting writing
In my last post I included a photograph, and noted the fact that adding a staged, theatrical element to the scene actually resulted in a more realistic (and impressive) picture, one that gave a truer impression.
I burbled something fuzzy about the paradox of a fiction increasing realism. I wasn’t up to thinking about it much more at the time.
I’m not actually up to thinking much tonight either, but I’ve been pondering the matter off and on over the weekend and have come up with the following hypothesis.
What the tourist people did, when they added the fictional elf-girl to the scene, was a sort of visual counterpart to what I do when writing novels (especially since I write fantasy).
You had a prospect, a “view” which was most impressive in real life, but didn’t translate well to the photographic record. The problem with the photograph was that scale was lacking. You saw a picture of rocks and moving water, and you couldn’t tell if you were looking at a small mountain stream or a mighty waterfall.
So the tourist people added a human being. She gave it scale. Suddenly you take a picture and you can see how large the waterfall is in comparison to her. The falls comes alive (not to mention that the girl is nice to look at in her own right). You can almost hear the roar of the water now.
Fiction is like that. History (contemporary or older) provides data, data that can overwhelm and bore the consumer. There are a few talented historians who can bring the stories alive, but even their work doesn’t ring bells for many people. Because the historian (generally) follows strict rules. He can only use the documented evidence. He may not invent things. And there’s a lot he can’t know.
His narrative, therefore, often lacks human scale on the emotional level. We miss the drama of the story because the historian can’t tell us how it felt to the people involved—the things they feared, their hates and loves.
The novelist adds the personal element. He tries (with more or less success) to transport us into the skin of a historical character (real or imagined or composite). He tells us how things looked and sounded and smelled. He shows us (doesn’t just tell us) how the issues being contested affected the people involved. The flat photograph acquires proportion.
The subjective human element provides scale.
The irony of this is that subjective things generally make poor yardsticks.
I shall consider that problem tomorrow.
Unless I find I’ve thought myself into a corner and turn to drink instead.
Hymn Sung to "Kingsfold"
I love this hymn, written by a Quaker teacher in 1906, sung to a traditional English tune called “Kingsfold.”
I feel the winds of God today; today my sail I lift,
Though heavy, oft with drenching spray, and torn with many a rift;
If hope but light the water’s crest, and Christ my bark will use,
I’ll seek the seas at His behest, and brave another cruise.It is the wind of God that dries my vain regretful tears,
Until with braver thoughts shall rise the purer, brighter years;
If cast on shores of selfish ease or pleasure I should be;
Lord, let me feel Thy freshening breeze, and I’ll put back to sea.If ever I forget Thy love and how that love was shown,
Lift high the blood red flag above; it bears Thy Name alone.
Great Pilot of my onward way, Thou wilt not let me drift;
I feel the winds of God today, today my sail I lift.
The choir in my church was to sing an arrangement of this song today, and I could have joined them if I wasn’t with my sweet wife having another little girl. We had prayed for an easy delivery of our fourth daughter, and we received it. Thank the Lord. The next day after we returned home, my wife felt a hardening in her leg with some pain when she drew back her toes–a potential blood clot in the leg most afflicted with varicose veins during pregnancy. We called her midwife and obeyed the summons to the emergency room downtown. A five-hour wait to be admitted to a labor room upstairs for another uncomfortable night on a hospital bed for my good, good wife who only wanted to recoup her strength from carrying and delivering the baby.
But I am able to write you tonight because we have returned home. Thank the Lord. The symptoms in her leg were not a serious blood clot, though maybe asuperficial one treatable with heat and aspirin. We can rest at home without blood thinners and monitoring. The Lord saw us through the drenching spray of a rough sea, and will continue his faithfulness as we raise our daughters I have no doubt. Now, to bed.
A City By Any Other Name Would Still Smell
Seattle, Washington, hopes to draw tourists and new residents by calling itself “metronatural.” For those of you in the back row, that’s like metropolitan with a part of that word replaced by another word so that the final word is–I don’t know–kewl.
What does “metronatural” say to you? If it doesn’t say, “Visit Seattle for your kind of vacation,” then you can add it to your list of ways to spell “failure.”
This reminds me of a breifly lived slogan my city did while I was away in college. In print with designed letters, it’s attractive enough that you may miss the words: “Live it, love it, it’s Chattanooga.” That’s close to “like it or lump it.” Perhaps others agreed with me, which is why the city’s current tagline is “The attraction’s only natural.” Similar to Seattle’s, when you think of it, but less hokey.
Traffic is irrelevant to your blog’s success
Someone in the marketing department is talking about blogging in 2006. He seems to make good points, but I still don’t like the label “Web 2.0.” It’s old-school, though it may be a better name than anything that would be more accurate.
Feel free to comment on Brandywine Books in this thread whether or not it relates to this list of blog observations. Complain, entreat, rebuke, what have you.
I like it when the elves trick me
My mind is sterile, tonight, clean as a boiled sheet. All I can think of to do is to post a picture and tell you about it.
This comes from my last trip to Norway. There’s a place called Flåm, on a beautiful fjord. A funicular railroad runs up to a mountain station from there. Some people take the train for practical purposes, but much of its business is tourists (like me, on two occasions).
This picture shows a place on the route where they stop the train so people can take photos of the waterfall. The first time I took the trip, with my dad, we got out and took pictures, but they were a little disappointing. In two dimensions, it just wasn’t as dramatic as it is in real life.
This last time the tourist people had jazzed it up. When a crowd comes out to gawk, a girl in folk costume comes out and stands on the rocks. She mimics singing while a loudspeaker plays a haunting folk song. At one point she disappears behind the rocks, and another girl dressed just the same pops out of a building nearer by, as if she had magically transported herself. Clearly she’s a huldre, an elf maiden, trying to lure us to our deaths in the fast water.
It’s hokey and corny, but you know what? It works. Not just for the drama, but because including the girl in your photo adds perspective to the whole thing and makes the waterfall look much more dramatic. In other words, the fake thing makes it more real.
I don’t know what the moral of this is. Perhaps it means it’s OK to go over the top now and then, as long as it works and nobody’s fooled.
Lewis link
I got this link from the New York C.S. Lewis Society’s newsletter. Sort of.
Apparently the BBC has reconfigured its website, and the precise link I got from the newsletter didn’t work. But, in my selfless zeal to provide the best resources to you, the valued reader, I worked my way through the maze and found the right place.
What you’ll get here is two sound files made from voice recordings of Lewis himself in his career as a BBC broadcaster. One is from 1944, part of the broadcast talk that became the book Beyond Personality, later a section of Mere Christianity. The other is his introduction to The Great Divorce from 1948.
I’ve often dreamed that original recordings of Lewis’ BBC broadcasts might be found. Apparently these bits are all that were actually saved. (Yes, I know about the Four Loves recordings, and I have them. But I’m told those aren’t his best work.)
But personally I don’t believe the recordings are lost. I believe the BBC is sitting on the original wax disks, terrified that the release of the full series would singlehandedly bring Britain back to God.
It would dishonor me not to wear a tie
Thoughts thought while preparing to go to church for the meeting last night:
“Looks like rain. I’d better wear my trenchcoat.
“If I wear the trenchcoat, I’ll have to wear a tie.
“You cannot wear a trenchcoat without a tie. If you do, you look like a pervert hanging around a playground, not the International Man of Intrigue you bought the coat to resemble.”
Dave Lull sent me this link to a Reason article by Jonathan Rauch which explains Honor Cultures (one of my current obsessions) pretty clearly.
Lars Confronts Viking Shield Wall
Lars apparently didn’t feel his contribution to the defense of Fargo-Moorhead against a Viking onslaught significant enough to mention, but I have discovered a photo of what happened. Lars took the vanguard while the other men were still collecting their shields.
Bored of deacons
I don’t have much time tonight. I’ve got to go to church to participate in a long, boring, meeting. I know it’ll be long and boring because that’s the only kind we do.
I agreed a couple years back to serve on a constitutional revision committee. Since then we’ve held zero meetings. I came to look on the obligation the same way we Boomers think back on the atomic bomb scares of our childhoods, something we feared then but need not worry about now (oh, wait…)
But the call finally came.
I’m pondering whether to attend the meeting or just kill myself.
Decisions, decisions.
Being dead is an acceptable excuse for non-attendance, right?