April 30, 2004

derelictlondon.com

Derelict London: "an unusual photographic portrait (of over 600 pics)." Link from greenfairydotcom.

SF links

New documentary, Earthlings Ugly Bags of Mostly Water [or diet Cola, in my case], about Klingon language and culture stars Michael Dorn. Via Slashdot.

Salon begins biweekly reviews of new science fiction and fantasy books. From Isabella, who says "Quick, get me a copy of this book," of Bruce Sterling's The Zenith Angle.

Found Magazine

we collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles — anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. anything goes...

Some of this stuff is funny. Some is sad.

Find Found.

(Link from Frogs and Ravens).

The Wife's Lament

Update (3/5/04): Liliputian Lilith is collecting links to blogged poems.

Here is my contribution to Poem on Your Blog Day, on this, the last day of Poetry Month.

The Wife's Lament

(translated from the Anglo-Saxon by Brian Kim Stefans)

I will speak my plight’s tale, care-

wretched, about myself. I can say: what

woes I’ve borne growing up, present

and past, were all less than now. I have

won, for my exile-paths, just pain.

First, my lord left: over deep seas, far

from people, and I’ve grieved each

morning, where, earth-wide, he could

be. Then I left: voyaging sought service

– sad exile – for my woeful desires!

My lord’s kin schemed secretly: that

they’d estrange us, keep us most apart,

across the earth-kingdom, and my heart

suffered. My lord bade me: take

dwelling here. I had few friends in

this land, no devoted comrades – so I

feel as if lost! I had found a man full fit

to me, though unfortunate, spiritually

fraught – a feigning mind, blissvisaged,

but planning a crime! Full

oft we vowed we’d never part, not till

death alone, nothing else; but that is

changed, our friendship – is now, as if

it never were. I must hear, far and near,

contempt for my loved. My man

bade me live by the grove’s wood,

beneath the oak tree, in an earth-cave.

This cave is old – I am all oppressed –

the valleys dim, mountains steep – a

bitter home! tangled with vines –

an arid dwelling! The cruelty hits often

– my lord’s absence! On earth there are

lovers, living in love, they share the

same bed, meanwhile... I go alone each

dawn, by the oak and earth-cave,

where I sit, summerlong days. There, I

might weep my exile-paths, its many

woes, because an anxious mind won’t

rest, nor this sorrow, which wrests from

me this life. A young man must be

stern, hard-of-heart, stand blissful,

opposing breast-cares and his sorrows’

legions. All world-joy should wake

from himself, for wide and far, in

foreign folk-lands, my friend sits

under a hard slope, frosted by storms,

silenced for a friend, water bordering

his sad-hall! My friend suffers sorrow;

he know too oft his home was joyful.

Woe to those who live longing all

for a loved one.

I offer this poem today because it has haunted me since I first read it. In translation, of course; to help keep that in mind, links to other translations are included below. Each one is a different poem. We don't know who the author was, though many assume it was a woman.

Want more?

In the original Old Saxon with links to modern translations

Modern English translation by Louis J. Rodrigues

Modern English translation by Richard Hamer

Another translation

Audio recording read by Rosamund Allen.

Audio recording read by Mary Blockley (scroll down).

The Husband's Message [said to be a response].

For those who are really interested: Cumulative bibliography: The Wife’s Lament

April 29, 2004

Children's books

A couple of days ago, E. at Reading to my Kid posted a list of children's books with the same instructions as the last book meme: bold the ones you have read. Below the fold I replicate her list, followed by additional titles that we like:

Update (30/4/04): Perhaps we're barking up the wrong tree with all these beautiful books; CNN reports, "'Poop fiction' big hit with kids." Inelegant link from Mark Sarvas.

Another update (6/5/04): milk factory joins the conversation. Be sure to read the comments for other book suggestions.

Millions of Cats, by Wanda Gag
Angus and the Ducks, by Marjorie Flack
Caps for Sale, by Esphyr Slobodkina
The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes, by Phyllis Krasilovsky
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton
Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff
Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans
The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown
Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss
Bread and Jam for Frances, by Russell Hoban, illus. Lillian Hoban
Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson
A Hole is to Dig, by Ruth Krauss, illus. Maurice Sendak
In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak [amazing]
George and Martha, by James Marshall
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, by William Steig
Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion, illus. Margaret Bloy Graham [check out the other Harry books, too]
Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, by Charlotte Zolotow, illus. Maurice Sendak
Ira Sleeps Over, by Bernard Waber
A Color of His Own, by Leo Lionni [a rainbow message for those who pay attention to pronouns]
A Whistle for Willie, by Ezra Jack Keats
The Beast of Monsieur Racine, by Tomi Ungerer
Strega Nona, by Tomi De Paola [one of our favourites]
Eloise, by Kay Thompson, illus. Hilary Knight
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? Bill Martin Jr., illus Eric Carle [Jinker boy also likes Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do You Hear?]
Freight Train, by Donald Crews
Frog and Toad are Friends, by Arnold Lobel
Jamberry, by Bruce Degan
First Tomato, by Rosemary Wells
Hondo & Fabian, by Peter McCarty [Lovely soft pencil drawings]
My Friend Rabbit, by Eric Rohmann
Tuesday, by David Wiesner
Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin, by Lloyd Moss, illus. Marjorie Priceman
Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, by Chris Rashka

And here are some titles that I would add:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Counting, colours, food, holes in the page: what's not to like? [View image]
Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi. Hilarious, earthy, matter-of-fact, and part of an excellent series about the body. [View image]. [This was on the list before I saw the CNN story.]
The Mole Sisters and the Moonlit Night by Roslyn Schwartz. And all the other Mole Sisters books; they're magic. [View image]
Doggies by Sandra Boynton. All of Boynton, in fact, though the following is also particularly good. [View image]
The Going-To-Bed Book by Sandra Boynton. "They rock, and rock, and rock, to sleep." [View image]
Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann. Be sure to look at the expressions on the faces of the animals. [View image]
The Mitten: A Ukrainian Folktale by Jan Brett. A beautiful artist; amazingly detailed images. [View image]
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear. Another intricately painted Jan Brett book. [View image]
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. One of Keats' colourful urban tales. [View image]
Madlenka by Peter Sis. Wistful, evocative, fantastic story; intricate and beautiful art. See also Madlenka's Dog. [View image]
Beegu by Alexis Deacon. Baby's first sf. Wonderful story; wonderful art. [View image]
The Subway Mouse by Barbara Reid. Amazing plastercine art. [View image]
McDuff Moves in by Rosemary Wells & Susan Jeffers. First of this nostalgic series. [View image]
Gaspard and Lisa at the Museum by Anne Gutman & Georg Hallensleben. Part of a series. Witty; thick and colourful oil (?) paintings. [View image]
Cat and Canary by Michael Foreman. Magic tale of bird-friendly cat who flies over NYC.
Where's That Cat? by Stephane Poulin. Wonderful scenes of Montreal. See also Catch That Cat! [View image]

April 28, 2004

Jules Verne exhibit

Exhibition of the work of Jules Verne — "the most translated author in the world, surpassing even Shakespeare" — in Geneva, a year ahead of the centuary (Via The Elegant Variation).

WTF?

Text messaging used on exams? In the OED?? Via
Keywords

Recycled art

Elise blogs about her new piece by Jean Shin. Shin is an artist who makes sculptures from throwaway items like rolodex cards, discarded shoes, and used lottery tickets. Here is more info.

More (10:50): Was thinking about why I like this image, apart from a general interest in recycled art, and I think it is because the strips of shoe leather are so clean; they look fresh and even damp, like seaweed. They have left behind all associations with dusty, cracked, dry leather fit for the dustbin, and become something else completely.

Compare with Glenn Priestley's charcoal drawing, "Black Shoes" (detail):

SF mash ups

A photoshopping contest: mash up two or more sf television shows or movies. Some of these are pretty funny. Via Boing Boing.

April 27, 2004

In the air

Rooting around in my backpack, avoiding marking, and found this little bear. Awhile back the Jinker boy got it from McDonald$. As far as I know he hasn't ever seen the Di$ney movie, but he took one look and said, "A Mummy bear!" I was taken aback, having nothing like this dressing gown in my closet at home (I assure you!), and chagrined, too, that the dress code is already so firmly entrenched: he's only three. But he was holding it and smiling, and then he brought it to his face and gave it a big kiss. So my "click" moment turned into an "aww shucks" moment.

(Maybe I could find some tiny little rollers for it.)

In Academic News

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story on the late, lamented Invisible Adjunct. And here is Henry Farrell's thoughtful take on the Calvinist free market of academe.

Jill points towards the blog of Steve Stanzak, an NYU student who couldn't afford to pay board after his tuition, and so lived in the basement of the Bobst Library and blogged the experience. The server must be overloaded as I can't get through, but here is the link, and here is the New York Times story. NYU is really working the spin:

"NYU doesn't attract just smart students, it attracts smart, eclectic students," said [John] Beckman, the university spokesman. "We had a film student who wanted to film a couple performing a live sex act in front of a class. We had students who set up a swimming pool in their dorm room. Now we have this fellow."

At least they have now given him a dorm room. No word on whether or not it has a pool.

Beam me some

Liliputian Lilith, who likes Barbies herself, offers a link to Star Trek Barbie and Ken. Check out the site for other wonders, like Grand Ole Opry Barbie and Barbie as That Girl.

April 26, 2004

Some links

Poetry in your pocket (via Culture Cat).

Tracking kids with Lego writstbands (via slashdot).

Zombies are the new Republicans (via the chutry experiment).

A woman who says her iPod is better than her boyfriend (via Cult of Mac).

Screensaver mimics airplane window (via Cult of Mac).

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: a punctuation game (via forty.something. And no, you may not know my score.)

La Gringa asks, "What would Joan Jett do?" (W.W.J.J.D.?)

Book meme

This is either really new or really old. From The Little Professor, via a long list before.

Bold all the titles you have read (list below the fold).

Update (28/4/04): The Little Professor offers an alternate list. Unlike the one posted here, this one contains some sf (Orson Scott Card alert!), children's literature, and Canadians, but fewer pre-20thc texts.

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua — Things Fall Apart
Agee, James — A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane — Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James — Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel — Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul — The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte — Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily — Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert — The Stranger
Cather, Willa — Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey — The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton — The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate — The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph — Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore — The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen — The Red Badge of Courage
Dante — Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel — Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel — Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles — A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor — Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick — Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore — An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre — The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George — The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph — Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo — Selected Essays
Faulkner, William — As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William — The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry — Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott — The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave — Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox — The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von — Faust
Golding, William — Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas — Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel — The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph — Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest — A Farewell to Arms
Homer — The Iliad
Homer — The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor — The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale — Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous — Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik — A Doll's House
James, Henry — The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry — The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James — A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz — The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong — The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper — To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair — Babbitt
London, Jack — The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas — The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García — One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman — Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman — Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur — The Crucible
Morrison, Toni — Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery — A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene — Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George — Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris — Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia — The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan — Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel — Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas — The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria — All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond — Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry — Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. — The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William — Hamlet
Shakespeare, William — Macbeth
Shakespeare, William — A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William — Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard — Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary — Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon — Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander — One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles — Antigone
Sophocles — Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John — The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis — Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher — Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan — Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William — Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David — Walden
Tolstoy, Leo — War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan — Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire — Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. — Slaughterhouse—Five
Walker, Alice — The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith — The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora — Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt — Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar — The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee — The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia — To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard — Native Son

Pretty standard list of the "classics," with a heavy American focus and little c18th. But what are ya gonna do?

Marching for women's lives

Go to ms. musings for a series of exhilarating, exuberant, posts on the march yesterday.

Addendum (4:27): More on the march, from feministing.

Update (9:57): Edward Champion is underwhelmed by the coverage in both the media and the blogosphere. (Hey, I blogged it! What am I, chopped liver?)

(11:04): And feministe has lots of thoughtful material.

(27/4/04): And Geekery Today.

Democracy in action

The Green Party of Canada has a wiki. How cool is that? Via Boing Boing.

Barbies, from PC to ... not

Two Barbie links, one to the unexceptionable "Midwife Mary," complete with LaLeche league tee and herbal tinctures, and the other to Arsenic and Apple Pie, site of artist Paul Hansen and his wonderful drag queen Kens, as well as "Trailer Trash Barbie."

(Via Lillipution Lilith)

April 25, 2004

Bad news for Orson Scott Card

In a post to FeministSF, Petra Mayerhofer links to an article about successful parthenogenesis in mice. She includes a list of sf novels which treat parthenogenesis:

The Y Chromosome by Leona Gom
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
The Demeter Flower by Rochelle Singer
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mizora by Mary E. Lane
The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Wingwomen of Hera by Sandi Hall

I would add Suzy McKee Charnas's Holdfast series: Walk to the End of the World (1974), Motherlines (1978), The Furies (1994), and The Conqueror's Child (1999).

And note to Charnas: the Japanese researchers did it without the use of horses.

Update (6:16pm): Lee Anne Phillips adds the following, via FeministSF (sorry, I'm not going to add links!):

Katherine V. Forrest, Daughters of a Coral Dawn & Daughters of an Amber Noon
Jane Fletcher, The World Celaeno Chose
Jean Stewart's Isis Series
Donna J. Young, Retreat: As It Was!
Merrill Mushroom, Daughters of Khaton
James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon), "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"

Update (7:38pm): Pat Mathews adds the following, via FeministSF (sorry, I'm not going to add links!):

Rainbow Cadenza, by L. Neil Schulman

Politics and art and sf

Against his better judgement, Kip Manley weighs in on the politics and art debate with a post subtitled "Why I Don't Trust Aesthetes." He includes a link to a horrifying story about an interview Donna Minkowitz did with Orson Scott Card, and makes some excellent points about choosing whether or not to read sf, specifically, on political grounds:

... science fiction is largely a fiction of setting: the bulk of the iceberg that’s unseen, underwater, is the act of world-building, and in that act, politics is paramount. (One is building a polis, after all.) (Oh, hey, look! World-building again!) —Therefore, it’s all-too-appropriate to keep in mind an author’s politics when considering their science fiction: an author who, say, considers homosexuality to be an aberration, is un- (or perhaps less) likely to build a world that would appeal to a reader who does not. There’s an assumption clash: one of his fundamental, foundational bedrocks is abhorrent to me, and vice-versa.

... I’ll allow as how there’s frequently large gaps in the jerry-rigged polis left as exercises for the reader: one can hardly describe every kitchen sink, after all; one must make assumptions, and count on the reader doing likewise (which among other reasons is why fan fiction [and slash fiction] is so popular in science fiction). But that’s precisely why when those assumptions suddenly clash, it’s unsettling, even violently dissonant ...

(And he goes on to quote one of my favourite writers. Read the whole post.)

Of course some sf writers reproduce the here and now in the if and when, while some mainstream writers create a strange new world in the suburbs. But Kip is correct; the particular characteristics of sf add a twist to the whole question. If I list the writers whose heads I don't mind living in for extended periods, they are often fellow travellers of one stripe or another, because in sf they are the ones asking some of the "what ifs?" that I interest me as well, even if, as is often the case, I didn't realize it before picking up the book.

Let's go back to Matthew Cheney's post of ten days ago, in which he argues not only that there are aspects of sf which make the politics of the author particularly significant, but that sf, broadly defined, is the main locus of political imaginings in literature:

It seems to me that books such as The Grapes of Wrath are anomalies in the history of fiction, and that the majority of political art — political art that lasts more than a few weeks, that is — has utilized imagination and fantasy to explore truths which lie beneath the surface of the morning paper's headlines.

Which opens the door to a discussion of definition of the genre. Another discussion; not this one.

Fly through the sky

Got to plan a trip to Leeds in July, a.s.a.p. (off to this conference). Maybe this will motivate me: places I've been:

(link from Liz, jill and various others. It's going around.)

More on "breeders"

The Little Professor links to the Chronicle's live colloquy, "Single Professors, Isolated in the Coupled World of Academe," in which Bella M. DePaulo, the guest, answered most comments with some variation of "Thank you soo much for that important question! I really hope someone does some research on that!" Timothy Burkes says it best in his post, "cry me a river": he makes a clear and valuable distinction between a culture that may make some people feel like outsiders—"always worth discussing empathetically, as a human concern"—and bona fide inequality or injustice.

And sorry about the title of this post. Does the word "breeder" make your blood boil, too? It was used in the Colloquy by "Ms. (read Miss) Nettle, small liberal arts college" when she asked, "What is it about academe that makes it such a hotbed for breeders?" This is stunning news for most of the (young, untenured) parents I know who are reluctant even to talk much about their families for fear of seeming unprofessional. As someone who is up for tenure next year and who has also, since having a child three years ago, completely lost all those evenings and weekends she used to devote to work, I have been reading this whole debate slack-jawed.

But I don't for a minute think that DePaulo and Miss Nettled speak for more than a minority of single faculty. Most, I am confident, do not share this Thatcherite view of the atomized individual in competition with all others; most surely take the view that raising the next generation is something in which we all have an interest. If for no other reason than because, as the old joke goes, they'll be choosing our nursing homes.

Update (26/4/04): Apt. 11D has some new links.

April 24, 2004

Kill Bill intertextually

Go here for a catalogue of film references in Tarantino's Kill Bill duology. (From kottke via Boing Boing.)

A commentator on an earlier post does not like the yellow tracksuit Thurman wears. Apparently it's a reference to the one Bruce Lee wears in his last film, Game of Death. (Don't know if that makes it more appealing).

I am planning to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 next week, the gods of the local multiplex allowing.

April 23, 2004

It's that time of year

The fun continues at zigzackly. Come on; post here, or post there, or both. You know you wanna.

To get you started (these are posted at zigzackly):

Withering Heights: The king of the killer review gets his comeuppance on the moors.
Bride and Prejudice: Lizzie gets married in Chapter One. Darcy doesn't like the look of the vicar. A very short novella.
As I Lay Dyeing: Experimental account of relaxed hairdresser.
Kiss Me Mate: Musical rendering of coming-out story in Elizabethan England.
BEING, BEING: Frolicksome '60s comedy about existentialists swapping theories and airhostesses while flying around the world.

In other news, I proctored my last exam of the term this morning, sat through two meetings this afternoon, am only now getting over the cold from hell, and will do anything to put off looking at that pile of marking for just a little while longer.

Just two more:

King Solomon's Mine: What really goes on among those dashing adventurers.

The Badwoman in the Attic: Gilbert and Gubar recant.

Update (24/4/04): The Little Professor and la gringa join in the fun.

April 22, 2004

Stand up for Women's Lives

The March for Women's Lives! will take place in just a few days, on April 25, 2004.

Several posts about abortion in the last little while: see particularly Lauren's searching entry at feministe and ampersand at Alas, a Blog, here and here.

Addendum (23/4/04): (And George's post, here.)

I know it when I see it

Art or porn? You decide. Via Plep.

My score? "You scored 8 out of a possible 10. There are two explanations for how you've done so well. 1: You're a devotee of great cinematic art, and recognise key moments in film history when you see them. 2: You have a huge stash of vintage porn."

My lips are sealed.

Children and the academy

There have been a series of posts lately on the singles/parents divide between academics and related issues. Don't have time now to do more than list them as I am getting my kid ready for his first dentist appointment in about an hour. (Sorry, gotta go; continue without me.)

A little while ago Netwoman noted the difficulties of being a woman with children on the job search in her post about "The Mommy Candidate" in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Today, The Little Professor notes two other articles in The Chronicle: "Unmarried professors are outsiders in the Ozzie and Harriet world of academe" (huh?), and "Singing the Grad-School Baby Blues."

Laura at Apt. 11 D cites those same articles in a long and thoughtful post on the subject (with good links to the ongoing discussion in other blogs).

And, see this earlier post.

Update (5:16pm): Back from the dentist. The Jinker boy was a little prince. Chuck has an excellent post on the question of singles vs. marrieds in which he makes the crucial point that it is the competitive job market that is really at issue here, and is in effect turning us against ourselves. I heartily agree. There are some practically feudal aspects to the ways in which our profession is organized that affect all of us, no matter what our family status.

Update (23/4/04): the conversation continues at Apt. 11 D and Moment, Linger On.

Update (23/4/04): Brayden King adds his two cents, and concludes, "all workplaces need to do a better job of making room for the family." Samantha Blackmon is shut down when she takes issue with the idea of single people as "the last underrepresented minority on campus." And Liliputian Lilith reminds us of the impermanence of categories.

Feeling fresh as life or death

Cup of Chicha has an interesting meditation on television advertisments: "I thought there was an artistry to caricature: a visual semiotics testing how much can be thrown out while retaining signification." But now, ads for feminine hygiene products have gone too far.

April 21, 2004

I vote for Catherine of Sienna

Franciscan friars have mounted a petition in an attempt to interest Mel Gibson in doing a biopic of their patron saint. According to the BBC story, the friars say that "This powerful figure has too often been reduced to a pious, peace-loving character cast in plaster."

Well, perhaps not for long. G'a 'head, sign the petition.

(Via Mirabilis.ca.)

This reminds me of an All Saints' party a friend of mine had some years back. I went as the little-known St. Afra, a prostitute who sheltered a Christian on the run and was burnt at the stake for her troubles. Putting that costume together was a blast. Joe thought he would top us all and went as Satan (cheating, I think, though I lack a proper religious education). But the joke was on him, for as he was lounging around the snack table with my lipstick all over his face, his red track suit caught on fire from a nearby candle. He won a prize for best special effects.

SF news

From More Notes from Coode Street: it was recently announced that David Pringle is leaving Interzone after 22 years, and now we hear that Gardner Dozois is stepping down as editor of Asimov's after 19 years in order to pursue his own writing. I, for one, though I'm sure I'm not alone, selfishly hope he keeps editing the Year's Best anthologies. Read Matthew Cheney's consideration of Dozois' tenure.

Beckett's Endgame

A brief brag: Robert Moore, a colleague of mine, recently mounted a production of Beckett's Endgame (here's a review), and my introductory students did a webpage about the production, of which I am very proud.

Origamido

Print-on-demand chiyogami.¹ (From the paper doll chronicles, a very cool site, via That Rabbit Girl)

Josesph Wu Origami, an attractive commercial page with photos of Wu's innovative projects, resources, and more.

Hatori Koshiro's sleek site with animated folding instructions and good links.

The Geometry Junkyard's origami page: lots of interesting links and a photograph of Jeannine Mosely, who is building a fractal cube out of 66048 business cards.

Godzilla, Mothra, and more.

A plug for the Japanese Paper Place in Toronto. I've had many happy trips there, and their mail-order service is great too.

The Japan Origami Academic Society, the British Origami Society, and Origami USA. (No national organization in Canada, but several regional groups.)

A fascinating subgenre, origami with paper money.

Interactive, virtual origami at Oriland (also from the paper doll chronicles). And here is Interactive Origami in VRML and The Einstein Origami Game.

Online Origami, with an origami mystery: "You know how to crease, don't you?" She said, "Just put it between your thumb and forefinger and slide it along."

Fabric origami workshop, for those pesky remnants.

File under "questionable but still funny": a site that will send you an origami boulder, otherwise known as a wad of paper. Will do custom orders.

Erotic origami, more interesting for its existence at all, than for its artistry (via The Mumpsimus).

¹ A very popular type of colourful, printed paper used for origami.

April 20, 2004

Even more lost

By way of a followup to my earlier post: according to Boing Boing, criticism of the depiction of Japanese characters in Coppola's film is heating up. Links to this article in The Christian Science Monitor, and this post from Joi Ito.

Update (21/4/04): Joi Ito posts that "Lost in Translation doesn't translate well in Japan." Lots of agreement in the comments section, though I do admire the one dissident who writes, "The complaints about the movie remind me of dentists who see a movie and critique the teeth of the actors."

New game!

Kitabkhana, through a very circuitous route, posts a new game: change one letter in a book title and get a whole new story:

My entries:

Spamela: Young girl of modest background rises to fame and fortune by selling generic Viagra on the internet.

The Dairy of Samuel Pepys: The comprehensive manual for dairy farmers.

Sensei and Sensibility: After her sister is seduced by a rake, a young woman journeys to a monastery to learn martial arts before seeking revenge.

Greet Expectations: The story of a young man who goes to Edinburgh in order to better himself.

Addendum (4:36):

Evilina; or, a young vampire's entry into the world.

Okay, that's less funny. How about

Brash: J.G. Ballard's cheeky tale of the Greater London transportation system.

You can no doubt tell I am trawling my bookshelves.

April 19, 2004

Jules Verne

stamps from 1955 to 2004. Check them out; they're beautiful. The early ones are so atomic.

From Plep.

Politics and art II

The conversation about politics and art continues apace. If you haven't read it, check out my previous entry and follow the links. Dan Green and Edward Champion have each posted thoughtful explorations of what it means to be an aesthete, in part in answer to my rather offhand characterization in the earlier post (think Oscar Wilde with the green carnation here). I could have been clearer: I was referring to the ultimate position on some sort of continuum rather than to individuals who consider aesthetic values paramount in all the nuanced ways in which it is possible to do so. But then I suppose I should have said that.

In a comment to the earlier post Edward Champion suggested that we are manoeuvring around a semantic difference, and I am increasingly convinced that this is, in part, true. We are all referring to "politics" at cross-purposes. I do in fact mean "by saying everyone is 'political' we mean everyone has his/her interests," as Dan Green puts it. He also writes, "If we are all 'political creatures who exist in the world,' are we not also 'sociological creatures,' 'historical creatures,' 'cultural creatures,' 'economic creatures'? Such abstractions are so cosmically extended as to be meaningless." To my mind the term "political" includes all these other ideas, but even so I don't feel that the term is meaningless. I suppose what I am really saying is that I am a materialist. That is how I look at things, at everything. That does not mean that I don't appreciate aesthetic values; it just means that I don't think they were inspired by the muses ("muses" meaning, something outside of history). This doesn't mean that I "prefer" politics over art; it means that I understand art — individual instances of it, our appreciation (or not) of those instances, as well as "art" as a concept or concepts — as arising from material conditions.

I am sympathetic to the irritation of people on the aesthetic side of this debate — if we should even put it that divisive way — when they feel that they are being patronized by the claims of the politicos that they are simply ignorant of the politics that are so manifestly there for anyone with eyes to see; sympathetic, because I myself am irritated by what seem to me to be parallel claims that my perspective is impoverished, that I am blinded by my agenda into merely exploiting artistic products for didactic purposes, that I can't even enjoy the beauty of a sunset without thinking of the pollution that is contributing to the display and cursing the multinationals that are destroying our grandchildren's birthright.

Not sure how to wind this up; clearly this is an old debate, but it rarely fails to draw us in. And as my mother used to say, usually in an (unsuccessful) attempt to end a conversation that was getting too fractious, "Well wouldn't life be boring if we all agreed?" Yes, especially as the quality of the disagreement has been particularly fine, of late.

Update (21/4/04): The discussion continues to be lively over at The Reading Experience.

Reversing vandalism

For a year, an unknown person mutilated copies of books on GLBTQ topics¹ in the San Francisco Public Library and left them with little typewritten advertisements for a Bible radio station inside. He was finally caught, but what to do with the books? Click here to see "Reversing Vandalism," an amazing collection by various artists, professional and amateur, made from the damaged books.

From Maud, via Bookninja.

"For Duf" by Dacey Hunter, courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library.
[The glass highlights the words, "What were you afraid we would learn?"]

¹ Okay, I'm being snotty, quoting this. So be it: "Though the vandal had clearly relied on the library catalog to seek out books on gay issues, he evidently did not understand the search results: Among the books destroyed were works by author Gay Talese and those concerning the Enola Gay, the famous World War II warplane..."

Spring in Atlantic Canada

The river is finally free, the ferry is back running, and the remaining snow is confined to odd, isolated patches in nooks and crannies.

Spring is in full force, and all that implies: a significant proportion of people have been wearing tee-shirts and sandals for weeks, moving comfortably among those of us still in our fleeces and wind-breakers. We're too warm; they're too cold: it's April in Saint John. The bulbs are coming up but are still some days away from flowering; there are small buds on the trees and bushes; there is water water everywhere. We had a nasty surprise snowfall last week but it melted away quickly, and the smart money says it was the last gasp of a very long, though mild, winter.

Joe was out clearing flower beds yesterday, the Jinker boy has stopped asking for sleigh rides, the dog has advanced Spring fever, and the cat does not seem quite so domesticated as he did last month. And me? I have nothing to wear.

April 18, 2004

Note to self

Like the author of Arete, I am attaching a copy of this Tom Wayman poem to all future syllabi. And I'll keep a few in my satchel, for good measure.

Supernatural Fiction

Tartarus Press is putting together a Supernatural Fiction Database.

From Weirdwriter via Gambols and Frolics.

I know who the murderer is, Kevin blogged.

Results of the 2004 Lyttle Lytton Contest are in. For anyone who is wondering, the "Lyttle Lytton" is Adam Cadre's response to the increasingly long entries to the official Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Via Long story; short pier. And read the post.

Nebulas

Locus Online has a list of the Nebula Awards winners for 2003. The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon won best novel, and Neil Gaiman's lovely Coraline won for best novella.

Cory Doctorow, who was nominated for Best Novelette but didn't win (Jeffrey Ford did) offers his acceptance speech "for alternate historians."

April 17, 2004

English Pattern Books

Plep points towards eighteenth-century English pattern books at the Met. The context is American but the books are British.

Kill Bill without apology

ms.musings links (scroll down) to an interview with Uma Thurman about her role in Kill Bill:

"I'm not going to buy into that 'because it's a woman it has to be worse,'" she said. "If it's a character, it's a very male character. I mean, the scope of the journey that the character goes through is something that you wouldn't blink twice if you saw Mel Gibson's Mad Max in this position, or Clint Eastwood. The character is severely abused, and it's a revenge story. It's about someone being victimized who, yes, was a former professional assassin.

"It's comic booklike road-kill. It's a very, very familiar story. What is different is that I am a woman and the person fighting their way back out of the grave, the person seeking revenge, the person taking the beating and the person coming back for more fearlessly is me, a woman, and not your typical man. For people to find that to be anti-feminist is interesting to me, because for as many people who find it upsetting on that level, there are many more who find it more sort of exciting and inspiring to see a woman exhibiting as much strength and aggression and power as you expect from a male in storytelling....

Thurman drew inspiration not only from Gibson and Eastwood but two strong women: Gena Rowland's Oscar-nominated performance as a woman hiding a child from the mob in Gloria and bodacious blaxploitation heroine Pam Grier, who is now a regular on Showtime's The L Word.

Thurman spoke of the revelation she had watching both parts of Kill Bill.

"I realize that I didn't grow up watching a movie where a woman was portrayed as so tough and so strong and so fierce and brave," she said. "I went through many other wonderful adventures, but I never saw that, and if there was one thing that I got back out of all the work that went into it, all the pain that went into doing it, it was that that gave me something back. Like, 'Wow.' Like it or not, Kill Bill is an example of that, and that's not common."

It's my birthday next week. I have asked for dinner and a movie.

Addendum (20/4/04):Boing Boing links to an on-line game based on the movie. Caveat: it's in Czech.

Academic freedom

From Ampersand at Alas, a Blog:

Odds are you haven't heard of Title VI of the International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003 - but if it passes the [U.S.] Senate, it'll be an enormous loss for academic freedom and free speech.

It already passed the House last fall (it's bill number is H.R. 3077), and is expected to come up in the Senate soon. If it becomes law, what Title VI will do is creat an "International Higher Education Board," which will review International Studies programs at universities and reccomend to the Secretary of Education and Congress which programs should continue getting grants.

Read more.

April 16, 2004

Creation by Katherine Govier

Last year Katherine Govier read at UNBSJ as part of the excellent annual Lorenzo Society reading series. I went, enjoyed her reading immensely, and so bought a copy of Creation. I have just in the past few days begun to read it, in between bouts of marking, and the writing is beautiful. Can't stop thinking about Victor Frankenstein, though, meeting up with the almost equally obsessed Robert Walton out on the ice. At the beginning of Creation — a fiction that fills a gap in the records of the life of John James Audubon — the driven Audubon meets Captain Bayfield of the Royal Navy off the shores of Labrador where the former has gone to find birds for his Great Work.

When I began the novel I didn't realise that Govier is also the author of Between Men, a novel I read many years ago and still remember clearly, it was so horrific. It counterpoises the story of an academic in the 1980s with that of a Native woman whose mysterious death in the previous century she is investigating. I believe that the second story is factual; Govier is another novelist who works with historical material. She also wrote Fables of Brunswick Avenue; just looking at the cover fills me with nostalgia as I lived in that neighbourhood for years.

She is a powerful writer and builds an atmosphere in Creation from the first page. I will report back.

[Side-note: Govier was also Coordinator of the Writers in Electronic Residence program.]

Pulp

From "The New Republic Online":

What Is Pulps? The criticism of literature has always been one of the fundamental tasks of The New Republic, but there is a difference between the criticism of literature and the criticism of books. Not all books are literature. Yet it is a fundamental fact of American life that large numbers of Americans read books that are not literature. Even if some of those books do not warrant literary examination, they certainly warrant cultural examination. A nation's highest and lowest notions of itself may be found in its amusements. Thinking about America's popular books is a way of thinking about America. In the 1950s and 1960s, critics such as Robert Warshow and Mary McCarthy and Dwight Macdonald taught by example how, and why, intellectual seriousness may be brought to bear upon things that are not intellectually serious; and, in recent decades, with mixed results, the discipline of cultural studies was established on this premise. The aim of this feature of TNR Online will be to toil in the same vineyards, though rather more snappily. Pulps will regularly visit the best-seller list and linger over thrillers, romances, fiction, non-fiction, and even (as The New York Times puts it) "advice, how-to, and miscellaneous" books, as documents of our time, for the purpose of a brief but undoubtedly penetrating exercise in cultural anthropology. After all, influential ideas have a way of turning up in the strangest places. A warning: Pulps will give away the books' plots. Critics have a way of spoiling all the fun.

Well I'm glad that someone is confident of their ability to separate the literary wheat from the chaff. Is anyone else envisioning reviewers typing with one hand while holding their noses with the other?

(From Maud Newton via Cup of Chica.)

Addendum (4:59pm): Check out Beatrice.com for a clear critique of the first Pulps review, posted yesterday. Doesn't sound good.

What would Richardson think?

Stephany Aulenback points towards Eric Brown's Digital Epistolary Novel, Intimacies (beware seizure-inducing intro). The plot:

Two young professionals "meet" through a mis-sent e-mail. They become "attracted" in cyber-space and tentatively agree to a "real" meeting. A brutal assault follows. The obvious suspect is the e-mail partner, but one person is unconvinced. A series of surprises and revelations follows — all delivered in digital form, all entirely possible, and all representing ways we now learn of events in our world where virtual reality constantly fights its counterpart.

Brown, "a former English professor who teaches executives how to write," says in a NYTimes interview that the plot is based on Pamela, but it sounds more like a modern-day, hyper violent Clarissa, at least from the description above. Not to mention the photograph of the mascara-stained woman on the site.

Politics and art

The discussion is spreading. Maud Newton writes, very reasonably,

I wouldn't necessarily avoid a writer's work based on his or her politics — and I wouldn't "boycott" a book or call for anyone else to do so because an author's beliefs are offensive to me personally. But absent some independent reason for believing that the book would resonate for me, I might be less likely to pick it up.¹

The comments section of my own original post has also become quite interesting.

Edward Champion agrees with Jessa Crispin that art and politics are separate. Kitabkhana is in accord; he writes that authors are not their books. Champion writes that when he tried to think of "great art" that is political,

The only immediate examples that came to my head were Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur Miller, and Margaret Atwood. But even in these offerings, the politics is relatively subdued, more subject to a reader's individual impressions. It's a far more subtle thing for Atwood to point out the politics of gender in Cat's Eye by showing us how girls are reluctant to touch bugs in a university building, implying that 1940s society carried an unspoken stigma that an entomologist's line was verboeten to women.

Whoever said that politics could not be subtle? I think there is a straw man being set up here: when people hear the words "politics" and "art" together they think of the most heavy handed examples — Soviet "socialist realism" perhaps. I think that Mark Sarvas falls into the same trap in his thoughtful post.

I agree with Matthew Cheney here: all writing — all human endeavour — is political in one way or another. It could not be anything but, as we are all political creatures who exist in the world. The absolute disdain for politics of the aesthete is in itself a political choice. Of course, to a large extent when we are talking about artistic products, given our culture's continuing Romantic hangover, the inherent politics are not always overt or even conscious. But that does not mean that they are not there.

Rasputin at Sloganeering raises the economic question: every dollar you spend on a book in one of Card's endless series is a dollar that he in turn could be funnelling to political groups with whom you may violently disagree: " if you're a particularly sensitive sort, you can almost feel your money going Alliance for Marriage as soon as it leaves your hand." (Which doesn't preclude going the second-hand route, for the conscientious-but-curious.)

I want to be clear that I am not advocating boycotting Orson Scott Card — fat chance — or suggesting that I only read writers who share my particular brand of politics; as I commented about my earlier post, I would have precious little to read if that were the case. What I am saying is that I need reasons to read something, and if there is nothing on the plus side to weigh against a known negative, then I am unlikely to crack the cover. As I also commented earlier, life's too short. I used to finish any book I began, out of some sort of misplaced pride or sense of duty. No longer. And I'll never get all those hours back, either.

But at least I'm not a fantasy reader.

¹ Matthew Cheney responds to Maud's admission in the same post that she doesn't read much sf with a wonderful list of suggestions.

Correction (11:28pm): s1ngularity.net link currently not working; go to the main page and scroll down to April 14/04.

Update (17/4/04): Jessa Crispin has two more links on Card.

And in the right corner...

A piece of literary vitriol from a writers’ spat nearly two centuries old graced the walls of the National Library of Scotland yesterday.

An assault by Lord Byron on Sir Walter Scott in 1809 is the centrepiece of an exhibition of manuscripts from the John Murray archive that will run until 10 May. It faces, across the room, Scott’s gentlemanly response.

The library is gearing up to buy the publisher’s archive for Scotland for £33 million. The exhibition marks the latest effort to highlight the attractions of the unique literary treasure trove.

The exhibition includes the original manuscript of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

Byron penned the poem of over 1,000 lines after an unfavourable review of his Hours of Idleness in the Edinburgh Review of January 1808.

In it, he singled out Scott as a "prostituted muse and hireling bard" who dared to "foist his stale romance" on an unsuspecting public for "half-a-crown a line".

(Scott had once called Byron "the imp of fame" and "that young whelp, Lord Byron.")

Go to Scotsman.com for the whole story.

Via Mirabilis.ca.

Addendum (17/4/04): Edward Champion links to an article detailing plans to publish the unfinished novel Walter Scott was working on when he died. Reliquiae Trotcosienses: The Gabions of the Late Jonathan Oldbuck Esq of Monkbarns "came about after Scott was commissioned to write an account of Abbotsford’s collections museum items. However, instead of a guide book, he wrote a work of fiction in which he simultaneously mocked and exhibited his own bibliophilia and antiquarian knowledge."

I sense a new footnote coming to my Scott chapter.

April 15, 2004

Just one more PEEEEZZ!!

Just found two blogs by literary mums: Magnificent Octopus, which led me to Reading to my Kid. I immediately blogrolled both. (Now if either of you ladies had a comments feature, I could have complimented you on your own turf... )

ROFL!!!!!!

Okay, this is truly hilarious: Romeo and Juliet for text-messaging teens. Thanks to James D. and bean for posting the link at Alas, a Blog.

April 14, 2004

Today's sf links

1. Oodles of definitions of sf, via The Mumpsimus, one of several interesting links on offer. I like Darko Suvin's definition:

[...] SF is ... a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment.

2. The Male Malaise. Speculation about the long-term untenability of the Y chromosome (125,000 years long-term). Ends with references to various female utopias and some good links. Via ms. musings.

3. And finally, extending the Easter festivities just a few more days, we have a 30 second version of The Exorcist re-enacted by bunnies. Via Alas, a Blog. Which seems to be indulging in a lot of levity of late.

Addendum (7:51): 4. Wonderful zombie parody at Yankee Pot Roast.

Today's Barbie link

"Anti-Barbie becomes Russian icon": the story of an average-looking young woman who was the popular favourite to represent Russia in the Miss Universe pageant. Via feministe.

We're teaching him to share

Our exam period started yesterday, and my students have their first exam in less than an hour. Rather them than me; if I had to write anything more than my name this morning I would be in deep trouble. All three of us have the cold from hell — brought into the house by Typhoid Jinker Boy and passed around — and the worst of it is that he is feeling so rotten that none of us can get the solid night's sleep we all so desperately need. And he won't give up that damn soother, even with his little nose so plugged up!

Anyway, I'll go in there and try to keep my eyes from crossing, and hope no-one asks any hard questions.

April 13, 2004

Off my list

Well now I don't have to feel guilty for never reading Ender's Game: Orson Scott Card authors homophobic diatribe between novels. Via Alas, a Blog.

Update (15/4/04): Bookslut gets misty-eyed about Orson Scott Card. She writes, "His politics and his books are separate." I don't see how they could be, and in the one book of his I have read, they weren't (see comments). But I love Bookslut and will certainly not stop reading her, despite a slight lack of rigour in this single instance.

More Googlebombing

Why type Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew?

Addendum (12:22am): Times of India article about why Google won't pull the offensive listing.

Update (14/4/04): Just typed in "Jew" in Amazon.com's new search engine, A9.com, and the notorious site is nowhere to be seen.

Alternate histories

Except for steampunk, which I quite like, I don't read alternate histories on purpose. By that, I mean that I stumble into them sometimes in collections or magazines, but I don't knowingly buy them. I'm not sure why; I have the — no doubt false — impression that they are all written by aficionados of various wars, notably the American Civil War and WWII, and are read by people who also have shelves of Times-Life collections of books on those same wars. So I read with interest a post at Pedantry, suggestively titled "Alternate Universe SF as a form of Intellectual Masturbation," which points towards an article by Tristram Hunt in the Guardian which claims, in essence, that alternate histories push a right-wing agenda. At this point, I congratulated myself for having avoided them so assiduously. But the Pedantry post goes on to skewer Hunt and to maintain that alternate history can in fact present "the possibility of a different world," which, according to the writer, is what sf should be about. At issue here are various theories of history: the remarkably resilient "great man" theory, the Whiggish notion of progress, and different flavours of historical materialism. It makes a certain kind of sense that if one subscribes to any of the latter, changing this or that in the timeline would not, in the final analysis, mean a whole lot. The writer of the post does not argue with this, but does write,

That's the thing about future-oriented SF and alternate universe SF: Both explicitly require some kind of theory of history. Professor Hunt is simply wrong to see an inherently conservative agenda in alternate universe fiction. Whether set in the future or in some parallel timeline, we need to speculate about the prospect of a different world, and SF has been and can continue to be instrumental to this. There is nothing about AUSF that is inherently reactionary.

So rather than giving me a reason to go and read alternate history, the writer has usefully articulated the problem with a lot of sf more broadly.

And you have to love a post which includes the sentence, "Marxism is like UNIX. Those who don't understand it are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."

As to why I like steampunk, I'm not sure. I am extremely critical of popular historical novels in a way that I am not of other popular writing, and have developed a real aversion to the Anne Perry version of the nineteenth century. It is extremely cheeky to use times past as a mere backdrop. Steampunk, on the other hand, takes a position analogous to that of an historian; it presents speculation: an argument rather than a representation. To an extent it is fantasy; it is not for a moment suggesting that if only such-and-such had happened, then look how different things would have been. It is a meditation on the past, firmly and respectfully rooted in the present, in full knowledge, even in celebration of, the blinkers we of necessity must wear when looking back.

Update (15/4/04): Alan Lattimore takes the "intellecual" out of the equation in his nicely scathing post on alternate histories.

Nebulas

On-line chat at Asimov's:

Meet Our Nebula Nominees
April 13 @9 PM EST [10 PM AST]
James Van Pelt, Eleanor Arnason, John Kessel, Kage Baker, Molly Gloss and Ian R. McLeod will be on hand for this chat about their nominations

(From Maud via Kitabkhana).

The Seattle Times has a preview of the Nebulas, which is to start Thursday. Events open to the public. (Via MoorishGirl).

April 12, 2004

Price of Textbooks

From Alas, a Blog: a study on the rising prices of college and university textbooks, and the new editions that make texts only a year or two old worthless. According to CALPIRG, "students will spend an average of [US]$898 per year on textbooks in 2003-04."

High/Low

Two links on the relationship between "literary" and "popular" culture:

Mark Haddon on the differences between genre and literary fiction, in The Guardian. Via Maud Newton. Haddon sees a place for each:

Genre fiction says: 'Forget the gas bill. Forget the office politics. Pretend you're a spy. Pretend you're a courtesan. Pretend you're the owner of a crumbling gothic mansion on this worryingly foggy promontory.' Literary fiction says: 'Bad luck. You're stuck with who you are, just as these people are stuck with who they are. But use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.'

Anne Applebaum sees an increase in the literary divide:

There are still a few "crossover'' writers, mostly writers of excellent popular books about American history, and one or two novelists. But my sense is that their numbers are shrinking, that there's almost no more middle ground. Popular culture now hates high culture so much that it campaigns aggressively against it. High culture now fears popular culture so much that it insulates itself deliberately from it.

Read the Washington Post article (sorry, registration required), or this freely accessible version. (From Crooked Timber via Arts and Letters Daily; Mercury News link from MoorishGirl).

Update (14/4/04): Read Matthew Cheney's post on Applebaum's piece. Cheney prefers the term "escapist" to "genre," and concludes, "Using such a taxonomy, there is no need to separate various forms of genre fiction from the stuff that just gets shelved under "fiction" in bookstores."

I'm more interested in what's inside

Via Crooked Timber: The Chocolate Wrappers Museum. Seeking wrappers from Namibia, Samoa, and Turkmenistan, among others.

We are Canadian, part 347

We went to a sugar camp today with some friends of ours, took a tour, and then had a breakfast of sausages and pancakes. The guide poured hot maple syrup on snow spread over a split log, and gave out popsicle sticks so that we could twirl it up and eat it. Delicious! The children, as you see, fell on it like locusts.

These are not the first New Brunswickers we have met who have found innovative ways — all of which seem to involve tourism — to continue leading some semblance of a traditional life.

Yet more tinkering

I want the world to know that Amit Karmakar was generous and patient with some troubles I was having yesterday with his monthly archives drop-down menu.

And, found Elise Bauer's fabulous site, Learning Movable Type — and her entry on creating an about page — which led me to Jay Allen's site, and in particular, his entry on fixing MT bookmarklets in Safari.

All three of you just earned some good Karma.

April 11, 2004

Proofers wanted

Boing Boing links to Distributed Proofreaders, who organize proof-reading of public domain books for Project Gutenberg. On April 6th Distributed Proofreaders posted it's 4,000th ebook, Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras by Jules Verne (en française).

Ghost stations

Photo by David Sagarin. City Hall Station, NYC.

Underground History, a site devoted to abandoned stations on London's Underground. Via Boing Boing.

London's Abandoned Tube Stations. Via Plep.

Closed stations in Paris' subway.

Cincinnati's Abandoned Subway (also posted by Plep).

More from Cincinnati.

Remnants of Abandoned Stations, Tunnels, and Station Entrances found on the MBTA.

Abandoned Stations at nycsubway.org.

Abandoned Stations (NYC) by Joseph Brennan, "the city's foremost expert when it comes to these abandoned stations," according to NewYorkish.

Abandoned subway tunnel (Newark), at Satan's Laundromat.

Friends of the High Line, "a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and reuse of the High Line, an elevated rail structure on the West Side of Manhattan" (check out the photo gallery).

OldNYC.com, "a web page that explores some of the many facets of New York City's transportation infrastructure" (link from Making Light, in an excellent post about NYC which also links to Forgotten NY. Other links here, here, and here.)

Photo by Bruce Davidson. NYC Subway, 1980

The photo, above, is how I remember the subway when I first went to NYC with Joe in 1984. I kinda miss the graffiti.

More tinkering

Just found some code for drop-down monthly archive menus at Karmakars.com, via ETC. Indulging my inner geek. Can't figure out how to change the font colour, though I seem to be able to change the size... At any rate, I like the menu and it saves on real estate! Thanks, Amit.

April 10, 2004

Pre-school locker-rooms, Jesus on roids, and why Barbie really left Ken

Three posts from ms.musings:

A story pointing to Jill Storey's meditation on sensitive sons, "Act like a man" at Salon.com (sorry, subscription required, but the Ms. piece gives a good overview), and another on the hyper-masculinization of Jesus.

And, a young woman is awarded damages after being suspended from school for wearing a tee-shirt that read, "Barbie is a lesbian."

Update (14/4/04): Alas, a Blog has a thoughtful post on the Salon story.

Hugos

The Hugo nominees for 2003 have been posted. Via Boing Boing.

Addendum (12/4/04): Matthew Cheney's take on the Hugos: "most of the ... categories seem to be incredibly dull representations of a year that was not in fact dull." Read more.

April 9, 2004

Sorry, Mr. Furio

Via Watermark: a link to a fabulous rant on the evil of cats:

Cats kill things. Stalin killed things too, and everyone admits that Stalin was pretty evil. Here's what Stalin didn't do ... Stalin didn't walk up to my family on the porch one afternoon to get our attention, and then turn around, climb up a tree, and start trying to throw baby birds out of a nest. Those things were beyond the pale for even Stalin — not for our cats though.

And then she walked in...

Via Plep: The Thrilling Detective.

Happy Easter to all, and to all, a good night

La Gringa has a scrumptious selection of links to strange and hilarious sites about marshmallow peeps. Go! Read!

My favourite peep, though, is still the one in

Addendum (11/4/04): Go to Boing Boing for a picture of "The Passion of the Peeps."

Mac User alert

This via William Porter on H-Mac listserv: "Intego warns of first Mac OS X Trojan Horse."

Addendum (8:42pm): Apparently the situation is not dire.

9:14: It's even "suspicious."

Lost in Translation

Jesse, a student of mine, wrote about Lost in Translation awhile back in his blog. I responded in the comments, in best Butley fashion—not having seen it and "you know how it exhausts me to write about films I haven't seen"—and he promptly lent me a copy on DVD. I have been promising a response for awhile.

Spoiler alert, eh?

Jesse sees Japan, in the film, as a representation of the "cultural and intellectual noise" of contemporary post-industrial society, to the nth degree, and as such, it is an effective background for a film that is about, finally, an act of communication in a world that makes such acts almost impossible. The inability of the anglophone characters to speak to the Japanese characters reflects a general inability to communicate, even in a shared language.

I find this a persuasive argument, with the caveat that Coppola is also indicating something about the specificity of Japanese culture as experienced by two Americans. It would not have been the same film had it been shot in Hong Kong or Buenos Aires; it does represent something of Japan, though backwards and upsidedown.¹

Jesse goes on to write, approvingly, of the way in which the film undercuts the expected boy-meets-girl narrative by not having Bob and Charlotte fall into bed. Of their final scene together, when Bob whispers something to her before he leaves, he writes,

We, the audience, never hear what he says. To me, we don't need to hear it — more than that, we can't hear it, because it would be meaningless to us. But in that moment, they finally reach each other — he talks, she listens. And whatever it is he says, it is exactly what she needed to hear.

He continues,

Admittedly, my own interpretation is slightly weakened by that over-long kiss on the lips the two characters enjoy. In my mind, though, it's the final kiss on the cheek that's more important — a kiss of affection, but not a kiss of lovers.

I think this is exactly right; it is that final kiss that summarizes their interaction. But the longer kiss on the lips is significant, too: to my mind, it stands for all the "what ifs" of Murray's character's situation: "what if I weren't married? What if you weren't?" But more importantly, "what if I were twenty years younger?" (or, why not? à la Something's Gotta Give, "what if you were twenty years older?")

It would have been beyond tedious if Bob had had sex with Charlotte. One thing that I liked about this film, among many, was that both leads played their ages: Bob is middle-aged. He is a bone fide boomer: he's rumpled and wrinkled; he gets tired; he is bemused by youth culture; he is in a mature, long-term relationship and all that implies (love the scene where his wife FedEx's him carpet samples and he looks at them where they have fallen on the floor, muttering, "which one is burgundy?"). Charlotte is a slacker: young, at points even immature, as when she sulks about Bob's one-nighter with the lounge singer:

Photo by Yoshio Sato

As someone closer in age to Murray than Scarlett Johansson, I was impressed that a director of Coppola's generation had such a nuanced take. Or maybe she's just sick of the Michael Douglas factor. In my reading, Charlotte probably would have consented to a sexual affair, but Bob was clear-sighted, or experienced enough, to know that it would have been destructive. He seemed to view her with a sad nostalgia from almost the beginning.

This is not to be critical of Charlotte; she is not irresponsible, she is young and adrift. To some extent she is a cautionary figure: girls, don't let yourself become some man's baggage (an old story that needs retelling). By underscoring her age, Coppola makes Charlotte's potential clearer. She is a work in progress, whereas Bob is more fixed. I found her contented expression in the final scene, after Bob returns to the taxi, an indication of learning and transformation.

Will Bob and Charlotte meet again? Unlikely. You can't go home. Or in this case, they couldn't take it home. And that's a good thing: what they had was a bubble, an interlude, ultimately uncategorizable but nevertheless life-changing. But completely dependent on that time and that place.

So she won't seek him out at home and seduce him on the burgundy floor of his study. If for no other reason than his knees couldn't take it.

And, boy, was Bill Murray ever robbed of that Oscar.

Sidenote:

Languagehat writes about mis/translation, and points to Margaret Marks' post on the Suntory whiskey scene and what the director is really saying.

¹ An exchange on Joi Ito's blog about whether or not the film is racist, and his initial reaction to the film:

I just saw Lost in Translation. It was strange watching it in Boston just hours after leaving Tokyo. It was like looking at my moblog... I knew the sushi chef from Ichikan in Daikanyama and the guy who played the producer of the photo shoot, Maki-san. I knew almost every location they shot. Everything was so familiar. It was strange thinking that it must seems so weird to people who haven't been there.

Makiko Itoh likes the film. Check out the links and comments.

Addendum (9:55pm): Chuck Tryon points towards an interesting review, at miscellany is the largest category, which focuses on sound in the film.

April 8, 2004

Steve Jobs: "Who writes software in French!?"

Plep links to "Resisting Cyber-English" by Joe Lockard (Bad Subjects 24 [Feb. 1996]), an article that is no doubt even more pertinent eight years on. Lockard concludes,

...the overwhelming predominance of cyber-english establishes, through language/class, a monologic and declamatory relationship with the other-than-anglophone world rather than a dialogic and supple relationship. Maintenance of online language/class structures recapitulates offline English-only monologism, which has encountered historic resistance. For those seeking alterity, the character of trans-language software has been configured by marketability rather than communicative needs. Grassroots non-anglophone cyber-access and empowerment hover temptingly at the horizon, but remain vastly distant.

He does offer a sliver of hope, however, in the final paragraph:

In practical terms, English rejectionism in cyberspace without any acceptable substitute is a self-defeating exercise in purposeless autonomy. That leaves anglophones pursuing Gramscian 'badness' in the paradoxical binds of a double consciousness, an awareness of the repressive effects of cyber-english even as we benefit from its use. Double consciousness, fortunately, is a very productive site of practice.

"Domestic blogs"

Laura at Apt. 11D writes about to Brayden King's recent post in praise of what he calls "domestic blogs" (less cutesy and more inclusive than "mommy blogs," I'll admit).

King links to a recent Times article, "The New Family Album: More parents are using online blogs to share photos, memories, gripes and advice with friends — and strangers." The article, while generally upbeat, has some exceptionable language:¹

Mommy blogs often take navel gazing to new and uninhibited depths, recording every aspect of parenthood, from the pregnancy blood test through the umbilical-cord clipping to the latest triumph in toilet training — complete with photographs, video clips and message boards.

"Navel gazing"??!!? Well, perhaps, but not at one's own navel. The article goes on,

Nobody tracks the number of family-oriented blogs, and estimates of the blogging universe range from 300,000 to 3 million sites, but by all indications, baby blogs are becoming more common. According to an October 2002 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, parents are more likely to be online than nonparents, and 53% of online parents say the Internet has improved the way they connect with family; 61% say it has boosted relations with friends. At Lycos, which is host to two blog sites, moms are regarded as the future. "The new blogging world skews female," explains Michael Sikillian, marketing manager for Lycos Web Publishing. "One day," he predicts, "every family will have a blog. Instead of putting drawings up on the refrigerator, you'll scan them into your computer and upload."

I like the idea of the blogging world "skewing female," though I would question the absolute correlation implied here between "female" and "domestic/family/baby." There are certainly lots of men who blog blog blog about their children, and many, many more women who blog about something else entirely. I would hope that the blogging world "skews" female—though skewing implies going off-course, when any right-thinking person can see that what is meant is moving _on-course_—because more and more women feel blogging holds something for them.

All of which brings me to the question of the categorization of this blog. I think scribblingwoman is pretty mixed. It's written by an academic with wide interests and a pre-schooler. It's not a "domestic blog," or a book blog, or an sf blog, and it's not always an academic blog. Every now and then I think of putting divisions in my blogroll, but just as I can't categorize this blog, I don't want to diminish others. Certainly some blogs are extremely focused, but many are not. King writes,

I prefer to think that although blogs may offer distinct kinds of content, domestic blogs can be just as intelligently-written and analytically precise as any other kind of blog. For a good example see Laura at Apt. 11D.

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I started to read Apt. 11D when I found it listed somewhere as an academic blog, and I know that many others position it in that way.

I think I will stick to my alphabetized blogroll.

Why do we have to keep reinventing the wheel, anyway? Has everyone forgotten Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, in which the protagonist kept differently coloured notebooks about the various aspects of her life? Disintegration ensued, until she realized what was happening and reintegrated her life, symbolized by her decision to use one notebook. (It's a very long novel so I'm sure I'm leaving something out. But you see my point. And without the trouble and expense of analysis.)

Anyway, the very name of this blog evokes the dismissal of early women writers as dilettantes, ignorant of learned and literary culture, dragging down the noble profession of "author" by their inclusion of the personal, the domestic, and the trivial. So you see, I have a mission.

¹ Dawn Friedman, who blogs at This Woman's Work and who was interviewed for the Times article, offers a quick correction to the way her remarks are reported.

Update (8/2/05): Well, I knucked under and introduced categories into my blogroll. But I agonized over it, I really did.

April 7, 2004

Decayed Machinery

Here is a weblog devoted to, well, decayed machinery. Via Beyond the Beyond.

Gabriela Mistral

(1889-1957)

This via the always-interesting wood s lot: Ursula LeGuin translated a selection of the poetry of Gabriela Mistral, the only Latin American woman to have won the Nobel Prize for literature (in 1945). Mark Woods posts the following poem, one of several of which LeGuin includes both versions on her site, and I have reproduced it here because, well, it's been my reality too, for the last three years:

Song of Death

Old Woman Census-taker,
Death the Trickster,
when you’re going along,
don’t you meet my baby.

Sniffing at newborns,
smelling for the milk,
find salt, find cornmeal,
don’t find my milk.

Anti-Mother of the world,
People-Collector --
on the beaches and byways,
don’t meet that child.

The name he was baptized,
that flower he grows with,
forget it, Rememberer.
Lose it, Death.

Let wind and salt and sand
drive you crazy, mix you up
so you can’t tell
East from West,

or mother from child,
like fish in the sea.
And on the day, at the hour,
find only me.

from Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, Trans. Ursula LeGuin (2003)

Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month in the U.S.

But we can celebrate, too.

April 6, 2004

Tinkering.

Can you tell?

(Complaints will be dealt with promptly. Or not.)

According to Bainbridge

Just finished According to Queeney (2001) by Beryl Bainbridge, a retelling of the relationship between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale Piozzi. The novel is framed by a series of letters from Piozzi's daughter, Hester (Queeney) when adult, so her point of view dominates, but she is not alone: the bulk is told with a variety of shifting perspectives, though mainly Piozzi's and Johnson's. It is a cold, sad book. Piozzi is presented as selfish and violent with her children. Johnson's complicated relations with women and his physical decline are described in detail. One feels sympathy for the young Queeney, but the older Queeney of the framing letters is bitter and self-righteous. Bainbridge's writing is economical, and she rarely missteps, but I would agree with one (forgotten, sorry) reviewer who advised that only those already familiar with the Streatham circle should read the novel: in other words, that one should not judge Piozzi et al. by Bainbridge's portraits. A beautifully written but bleak, at times even macabre, set-piece, from the opening dissection to the final funeral. And remarkable for its reproduction of the turns of phrase, the modes of thought, of the period.

Addendum: Here is the Henry and Hester Thrale page of a comprehensive website about things Thrale, run by one David Thrale.

April 5, 2004

Googlebomb against fascism

This in from Crooked Timber: apparently the first site that comes up when one does a Google search for "Jew" is an anti-semitic hate site. Help correct this by including the word Jew on your blog or website, linked to the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew.

Addendum (2:48): Liz at mamamusings suggests links to "Who is a Jew" in addition to/instead of the Wikipedia link.

April 4, 2004

Two books

Wow, this has really taken off at Crooked Timber.

More (with the requisite Canadian content):

The Handmaid's Tale of Two Cities: It was the best ... no, it really just was the worst of times.

The Edible Woman in White: Sex, mystery, and the importance of good table manners.

The Stone Angel over America: Elderly Canadian woman starts out to revisit her life but gets confused.

Media tie-ins:

Survival: the series: Contestants are isolated in northern Ontario in order to expose the unpleasant dynamics of their interpersonal relationships, and to delve into their own psyches. Nobody wins.

Alias Grace: the series: Enigmatic, illiterate Irish maid dons a series of improbable size 2 disguises.

Negotiating with the Dawn of the Dead: In this sequel, no-one is left alive but literary critics.

Coming soon:

Three Blind Assassins.
Cat's Eye on a Hot Tin Roof.
Not Wanted on the Voyage of the Damned.
Such a Long Day's Journey Into Night.

April 3, 2004

Food for thought [wince!]

It's time for Books2Eat 2004, The Fifth International Edible Book Festival. At least fourteen countries are participating, with 45 separate events (two thirds of them in the U.S.). The Literary Salon seems a little embarrassed to even report it, but gamely suggests that the event might "get some of the participants thinking about the literary works as well." I think it is a populist form of book art — at times a little kitschy — but still a paean to the resonance of the book as a cultural icon. Some of the pieces celebrate the book as material object,

while others are more conceptual, or provide critical commentary:

Ancient Wisdom (detail) by Linda Aiello. Discovered 6 April 3002. Since a "book" hasn't been made in nearly 500 years, this is a monumental find. Many computer-related illnesses have transpired since the end of Solid Waste Act, 2506.

Of course, some are just dreadful puns. But that's fun too. In all cases, the artists are affirming the importance of the book, and reinforcing ideas of community and shared culture.

And some of the pieces are even low carb.

April 2, 2004

Try it, it's addictive

A very funny thread at the I Love Books message board about reading two books at once. Some good ones:

Heart of Darkness at Noon: English explorer misreads map, winds up in gulag.

The Remains of the Day of the Triffids: Ageing butler tours postwar England. Takes up gardening.

Gone with the Wind in the Willows: Thrills, romance, voles.

My contribution: Gulliver's Travels with my Aunt: Hapless fellow suffers the consequences when his Edwardian aunt insults the Brobdingnagians about their body odour.

Via Maud Newton.

Addendum (3/4/04): Ho ho, John Holbo at Crooked Timber has caught the bug. Be sure to read to the end for The Runaway Bunny Jury and Goodnight Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

web zen

Strange and wonderful links blog. The museum zen entry links to xerox art, the "gallery of forgotten girlie magazines," and on-line museums: "collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions."

[Link from Boing Boing]

New (to me) blog/women's writing

Check out Notes in the Margin. How could I not blogroll a blog which quotes from Peter Høeg's Smila's Sense of Snow, one of my favourite books?:

You can learn something about your fellow human beings from what they write in the margin.

Some interesting links right up: an 86 years old woman self-publishes a novel about her life in the depression (23/3/04), and the Feminist Press has reissued three pulp novels by women (13/2/04).

From the Feminist Press: The suggestively named Dix Steele is an ex-airman, an isolated, tough-talking drifter.

Lynn is innocently flattered by what seems to be his fatherly interest in her, which includes invitations to stylish parties and to his spectacular country estate. But fatherly interest is not what David Dwight has in mind, and he usually gets what he wants.

The Girls in 3-B reveals in heart-breaking detail the hidden world of mid-century America, where women live on their own in seedy apartments, have premarital sex, get illegal abortions, yearn to be artists, experiment with drugs, and, if they are so inclined, discover a mannered, thriving lesbian underworld.

I can hardly wait.

University Presses R.I.P.

MoorishGirl has a post about the demise of various university presses, Northeastern University Press and University of Idaho Press among them. She links to an article in The Christian Science Monitor which ends,

Emphasizing the value of Northeastern's press, which specializes in regional history, criminal justice, and music, [journalism professor William] Kirtz says, "They weren't just books read by 12 anthropologists in Borneo."

United we stand.

Link entry of little substance

Pandagon has a generic blog entry; read this and you can stop reading blogs right now. Be sure to check out all the comments, too; they pretty much cover it. Nothing more to see here. Via feministe.

April 1, 2004

April Fools

MoorishGirl links to a story at Locus Online about a new, mandatory National Book Club, linked to the Patriot Act (Nothing like Canada Reads!). Click on the other stories, which are even better: "Hugo Awards Renamed" to shut out Connie Willis, and "Heinlein, Dick, Bradbury and Others To Become Imaginary", which begins,

The Science Fiction Writers of America's Nomenclature Committee has issued its long-awaited final report on the status of obsolete science fiction — stories overtaken by current events. Many in and outside of SFWA have come to question whether texts originally written in the '40s, '50s and '60s but set in the '80s, '90s and '00s ought still to be considered SF. ... The Committee is recommending that a new genre be created for all science fiction formerly set in the future, to be called Imaginary Fiction, or IF. If this recommendation is approved, all science fiction set prior to 2005 will re-genred as IF.

Re-genred. Yeah, I like that.

More Superman

Superman: Red Son is a limited series in DC Comics’ ElseWorlds line of stories that take existing characters and place them into alternative scenarios. What if, when a baby, Superman had landed in the Ukraine rather than the U.S.?

Here is an interview in which Mark Miller, the series writer, makes his point clear:

Superman: Red Son is an Orwellian examination of what happens when the balance of power tilts in the world and one country finds itself the only world superpower....

Wait a minute, he's not talking about the Ukraine ...

[Links from Maud Newton].

Did you know...?

Sure, it's April Fool's Day, but it's also Captain Regents Day (in San Marino), Commemoration of the battle of Näfels (in Switzerland), Cyprus National Day, Republic Day (in Iran), and Youth Day (in Benin).

April 1 is also the birthday of Lon Chaney (1883), and it marks the deaths of Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1204 and Max Ernst in 1976, and the formation of Weight Watchers in 1946.

Info. from Earth Calendar and Today In History, via That Rabbit Girl.