Book of Quotes, Number Seven

"(I)f one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." -- Henry David Thoreau

This is the most inspirational sentence I have ever read. It is also, I believe, the very essence of the American dream. I fear that too many of us have lost sight of it. I know I did.

Protecting Kids From a Lifetime of Reading

Last month I made a brief, snarky comment on the subject of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and the threat it poses for libraries and sellers of old books. The law, as currently written, would keep older books out of the hands of children. Since the cost of testing thousands (or millions) of books printed before 1985 (which was when publishers switched over to soy-based ink) is insanely expensive, librarians would either have to ban kids from the children's room or they'd have to get rid of the books. The intent was to protect kids, but the result could lead to the biggest book burning since Berlin, 1933.

Bibliophile Bullpen now informs us of (and posts the text of) a new bill, H.R. 1692, that would fix the flaw in the law and save the books.

If you think that kids and books shouldn't be kept apart it might be a good idea to give this bill your vocal support. You could contact the congressman who wrote it, or you might just want to contact your own congressman.

Really Clever Title Goes Here

The winner of one of my favorite annual literary prizes has been announced. This year's Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year goes to The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Philip M. Parker. It somehow managed to beat Baboon Metaphysics in the final voting.

Congratulations, of course, to all the winners, but I have to ask, how did this book not get nominated?

The Sanguinary Student

The headmaster of Boston Latin School has denied reports that vampires roam the hallways, attack students, and drink their blood. Really.

Senior class president Buffy Summers agrees, saying that she and the Scooby Gang have the situation under control.

Actually, it sounds like the typical bullying, picking on the square peg, and hysteria that I remember from my school days. Pity.

Franz Kafka International Airport

I first spotted this at Neil Gaiman's blog, but it's getting a lot of play around the web. I love me a good literary joke.


Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

As Long As You're Not Afraid to Die, It's OK

Here's a folk art form that I've never heard of -- Dashuhua. It is the art of throwing molten metal at a wall. Really. The stills are great, but you really need to see it in motion. It is beautiful and insane.



(I swiped the photos from People's Daily)

Book of Quotes, Number Six

“It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” -- Henry David Thoreau

Why explore the world when you haven't sought the most important destination, the one that lies within yourself? The more challenging, dangerous, and rewarding expedition is the one that fills in the terra incognita on the map of yourself, alone.

Extreme Shepherding

I don't think I can find words to capture the awesomeness of this:

That'll do.

I Watch the Watchmen

I read Watchmen when it first came out as a 12 issue comic book series, way too many years ago. I remember talking to a fellow comics geek at the time about whether it would make a good movie. He thought it would be great. I wasn't so sanguine. For one thing the story is too rich, the plot too dense for movies. It would have to be cut down or it would be five or six hours long. The problem is that if you cut it down you cut out what makes it great.

The big problem though is that Watchmen is a work of metafiction. It is a comic book about comic books. Alan Moore took the superhero genre apart, found out what made it tick, and put it back together. What, Moore asked, would it really be like? What sort of person would dress up in a costume and fight crime? Why would they do it? What would it do to them? And how would it change the world?

Watchmen changed the genre forever. After that book no one could look at comics the same way again. The characters were real, troubled, flawed human beings living in a real, violent, and terrifying world. In their wake four-color heroes motivated only by goodness and niceness seemed hopelessly quaint.

As this new movie got closer to completion I heard people making a new argument. They said that comics were now part of the mainstream. Movies and TV are now so heavily influenced by comics that a movie that was a commentary on these themes would have a resonance that it would not have had just a few years ago. I thought that might just be so. Maybe Watchmen was filmable after all. I certainly wanted to believe it.

I've just seen the movie, and I'm afraid I was right all along. You just can't make a movie that does the comic justice. Watchmen was a great book. It blew my mind. Watchmen was a pretty good movie. It entertained me.

As a fan of the book it was fun to see the characters come to life. As a fan of the genre it was fun to see a thrilling superhero action movie. Fun, certainly, but it doesn't hold up to the original.

As predicted, there was way too much stuff to fit in. Cuts had to be made and things that were important to understanding the plot and the fictional world got mentioned quickly, in passing, in the hopes that audiences would keep up. I'm not sure if people who hadn't done their reading assignments could follow along. Those important plot points had to get shoved aside for extended action sequences. Motion pictures, after all, require motion.

They got a lot of things right. I liked the look of the movie. I think the characters were spot on. But so much of the book was about the psychology of the characters, and while the filmmakers tried, it just wasn't possible to paint as rich a portrait as was necessary. They came a lot closer than I thought they would, but not quite.

So yeah, it's a good movie. If you like superhero flicks you shouldn't miss it. It's just not going to change the world. Which is kind of a shame, considering the source material, but not really a surprise.

Begun, the Ebook Wars Have

So you thought it was all about the Kindle did you? No respect for the Sony Reader? Well, Sony just tagged up with Google, embraced the idea of an open platform, and launched a double drop-kick at Amazon. You can now read Google's public domain library on your Sony. And they've dropped the price a bit.

Yeah, both devices are still too expensive for me. And yeah, while Sony now has more titles available, Amazon has most of the new titles. But what does all this competition mean? Who is going to win?

Us, or at least those of us who would like to see a good, affordable, ebook device that can let us read just about any book ever published.

Disclaimer -- I love dead-tree books as much as the next guy. They are beautiful, even the cheap paperbacks. I live in a small space surrounded by thousands of them. But I do most of my reading these days on a train. This week I've been lugging around a three pound tome. A lightweight device that can give me a library of books sounds pretty attractive right now.

Book of Quotes, Number Five

"No two persons ever read the same book." -- Edmund Wilson

The creation of a book is usually a lonely process. The completion of a book is collaborative. Until a book is read it is merely a stack of papers. Each reader completes the circuit, and each reader brings something unique to the experience. That's part of why talking about books is so interesting. A single book can be . . . infinite.

Gaiman Alert!

Neil Gaiman is going to get the Colbert Bump tonight. First the Newberry, now this. Next stop -- Nobel.

Our Great Adventure

We weren't in our usual places. She was at my desk, using the computer. I was was in the front room, on the couch. She was buying fabric and patterns, that sort of thing. I had the laptop propped up on my knees and had just laid down about 750 words of deathless prose. I was trying to get to the end of the chapter. She was having a little trouble with the computer and wanted me to come in to the other room.

“Hold on. I just want to finish this.” She drifted away. “Hey, do you hear that?” I yelled.

“Hear what?” she said, coming back into the room.

“You'll hear it now.”

“It's a truck backing up.”

“Nope,” I said, not looking up from the screen. “It's some kind of alarm.”

“It is?” It was. A few seconds later the building fire alarm sounded.

“Do you smell smoke?” she asked.

“No.” I went into the kitchen. “Yes.” Acrid, like a grease fire. The smell was coming up the stairs.

“Should I get my coat?”

“Yup,” I said, reaching for the cat carrier.

The cat didn't like the look of this. She bolted. I had to move the couch to get her. Getting her into the little carrier wasn't all that easy She's a champion squirmer when she wants to be. It was a two person job.

Out into the hallway the klaxon was really loud. No smoke, just a lot of frightened looking neighbors and and their cats. I sat on a curb, cat carrier on my knees. One guy told us that it wasn't a fire, but that the guy in one of the downstairs apartments had been cooking and had kicked up a lot of smoke. Ah. Well that's better than seeing your apartment burn down. We sat around for a minute or two. The firefighters rolled up and went in where we had just come out. They went into the downstairs apartment, then they put a really powerful fan in the door.

Other than the fact that it was 32 degrees it wasn't such a bad night. We got to talk to the neighbors, which we don't usually do. We got to meet their cats, which we never do. Damn, but that one black and white kitty was a big one. She didn't have a carrier for it. She may have at one time, but it's probably outgrown it. It didn't like being outside one bit, and wanted everyone to know it. After a while it got tired of hearing its own voice and it relaxed, a big cat held by a small woman.

The firefighters where quick, efficient, and polite. The guy from the smoky apartment kept saying how sorry he was as we all filed back into the building, and we said it was okay. Back in the apartment the cat ran around meowing. I took care of the little computer issue, then finished up what I was writing. My friend collapsed onto the couch, saying that she had had her heart attack for the week. The cat began to patrol the apartment, looking skittish.

And that, my friends, is what passes for a great adventure around here.

The Vampire of Venice

Archaeologists report that they have disturbed the remains of a vampire. To be more precise, they have dug up a woman who they think was believed to have been a vampire. It appears that after she was buried she was dug up and had a brick shoved in her mouth, which is what would have been done to keep the undead from wandering about. Scientists, of course, don't believe in such nonsense. But have you noticed that they haven't removed the brick?

Bloody Bard

I don't think I'll get much argument by calling Titus Andronicus Shakespeare's most hated play. Some critics hate so much that they question whether or not their beloved bard actually penned it. T.S. Eliot called it “one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written.” A hundred years after it was first performed playwright Edward Ravenscroft called its structure “Rubbish” (yes, with a capital R).

Where's the love for Titus? What do people have against it? Maybe it's the ultraviolence. Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's Blood Feast. We have execution, filicide, mutilation (rather a lot of it), rape, cannibalism, and lots of good old ordinary murder. Every act is soaked in blood. Body parts get scattered about the stage. This is one nasty day at the theater.

Harold Bloom thinks that all this gore was actually intended as comedy. The young Shakespeare crafted a play that went deliberately over the top as a wry commentary on writers like Marlowe who achieved great popularity with violent productions. He has suggested that the next filmed version should be directed by Mel Brooks.

While I may defer to Professor Bloom's scholarship, I've often been less impressed by his judgment. Titus Andronicus, while it does have a few bitter jokes, is not a comedy. It is an Elizabethan revenge drama. It was not intended to elevate, educate, or enhance. It was intended to entertain. And to make lots of money.

Which it did. Records show that it played a good long time to packed houses. Titus Andronicus was loathed by the Victorians and heartily disliked by almost everyone else, but the paying public of Elizabethan London loved it. What the heck was wrong with them?

“The past is a foreign country,” said L.P. Hartley. “They do things differently there.” We tend to think of folks from other centuries as pretty much the same as us, only with funny clothes and poorer hygiene. It's just not so. They lived on another planet. They thought differently, reacted differently, saw the world differently, processed information differently; they were different.

Shakespeare's London was a violent place. Dogfighting and cockfighting were common. Plays had to compete with entertainment such as bear baiting, a popular attraction in which a bear was chained to a stake and then set upon by dogs. People would pay to watch the dogs and the bear tear each other apart. Criminals were publicly executed, and executions were always well attended. Sometimes their heads were put up on spikes and left to rot. In one year 20,000 Londoners died of the plague. A few years later 15,000 died. War and rumors of war were a constant drumbeat. Political assassination was routine. The Pope had declared a fatwa against the queen.

It was a violent time. They were a violent people. Violent themes were a crowd pleaser. Violent revenge dramas like Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy were blockbusters. Classical poetry was becoming increasingly popular, and it was positively blood soaked. Arthur Golding had recently translated Ovid's Metamorphoses into English. Shakespeare adapted a little of Ovid's plot, specifically the Tale of Philomela, and turned it into his own tale of horror and revenge. Dr. Johnson said that “(n)o man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” The bard was not a blockhead.

In his introduction to the play Sylvan Barnet suggested that Shakespeare was trying to “make art out of violence.” I think that's closer to the truth, but it may be overstating it a bit. The art is in the drama, the story, and the language. Titus is not a commentary on the violence of the age. It does not transcend its milieu. It is simply a part of it. It was violent because that is the way the world was, and that is what people wanted to see.

I understand why people like Harold Bloom want to believe that Shakespeare was only kidding. Tasteful, thoughtful, intelligent people, the sort of people who watch public TV, listen to jazz, and read Literature, do not like horror stories. It is hard to imagine that the greatest writer in the English language would pen a slasher. They want to construct a wall of 21st century irony between their Shakespeare and the bloody truth. It doesn't stand.

The question remains; is Titus Andronicus a good play? Sure it is. It's just not a great play. It doesn't hold a candle to King Lear, Julius Caesar, or Hamlet. But if you like a good horror show it's a corker. If you're the sort of person who doesn't like to think about the truly horrible things that people do, who would prefer not to look in the darkest corners of human nature, then avoid it. If, on the other hand, you have more in common with Shakespeare's audience, you understand what sort of creatures human beings really are, and you find yourself drawn to those dark corners as places worthy of closer study, then you might find a little truth and beauty in this most lamentable Roman tragedy.

New Improved Shakespeare

I like this newly discovered face of Shakespeare. It has character. It is “as a book where men may read strange matters.” It could be the face of genius. There's just something about it. Maybe it's the eyes. Less world-weary than the old Droeshout engraving. More alive with a sense of inquiry and irony. Yes, I like this Shakespeare. He looks a fellow of most excellent fancy.

Book of Quotes, Number Four

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)."
-- Walt Whitman "Song of Myself"

Because it may indeed be a gift to be simple, but I am not. Neither are you. Be large.

Who Watches Alan Moore?

Salon has an interesting interview with writer and wizard Alan Moore. I've only recently found out that there are people who had never heard of Watchmen before the movie. That's rather sad.

I Love the Smell of Star Trek in the Morning

I'm definitely getting me a bottle of Tiberius. Hey, if smelling like Captain Kirk worked for Captain Kirk, who am I to argue?

All I want is a piece of the action.

via: Violins and Starships

Riddle Game

Years ago I decided that I wanted to read the classic novels of modern fantasy. Being the kind of person who likes to organize with lists I thought I'd put together a list of the books that were most highly regarded in the genre. And being the kind of person who wastes a lot of time with pointless research, I put together a long list. Several actually. Not too long ago I found myself revisiting one of those old lists and realized that I had worked my way through quite a bit of it, but I still hadn't read The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip. It is the first book of a trilogy now collected in one volume called Riddle-Master.

Riddle-Master is an avowedly Tolkienian work. It starts with the standard map of the realm. It takes place in a vaguely medieval world of kings and farmers and wizards and such. The hero comes from a quiet, idyllic, rural place, set aside from the wider world of swords and sorcery. The tropes of western folktales abound, including the hero with a hidden destiny, magical objects, shape-changers, and of course lots of traveling on that map from page one.

I probably would have been pretty frustrated if I had read this when it first came out. Like Tolkien the three novels do not really stand on their own. They are really three distinct parts of one story. The first book ends in a cliffhanger. Had I not had the rest of the story in my hand I probably would not have continued. The Riddle-Master of Hed was a good read, but not all that special. It's in the second book things begin to really take off. In the first book we meet Morgon, a prince of the island of Hed. He's the eponymous riddle-master and the guy with the hidden destiny. As the ruler of Hed he possesses a magical awareness of his land called the land-rule. Each country in the realm has a ruler who has this connection to his territory. He is mystically aware of the land and all things living on it. As the story continues Morgon begins to discover other magical powers. He does not fully understand these things and neither does the reader. As we travel around the land we learn bits and pieces of the meaning behind things and the hidden motives of the various powers swirling around our hero. It takes a long time to unfold and in the process we develop a fuller picture of an interesting fantasy world and magical system.

McKillip weaves some magic of her own with this complex tale featuring memorable characters, drama, adventure, poetic descriptive passages, and a nice love story. I'd recommend it for fans of high fantasy only, but for those fans this is a certified must read.

Book of Quotes, Number Three

"It isn't often that someone comes along who is both a true friend and a good writer." -- Wilbur, of Charlotte, in Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.

I've always liked that one. True friends are rare. Good writers rarer still. Both in one package? Hang on to that.