February 28, 2005
And speaking of archival work
CatalogueAnnie has posted a useful link: Palaeography: reading old handwriting 1500 — 1800: a practical online tutorial."
Court of Chancery: extract from Alexander Selkirk's deposition to the Examiners' Office, dated 1712.
Here is one of a number of "practice documents" posted on the site. Hey, good luck, eh?
February 27, 2005
Beautiful junk
Chris Jordan, Circuit boards, Atlanta 2004
Artist John Taylor's ships made from found objects.
Chris Jordan's photographs: Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption. And Flickr: The Urban Decay Pool (links from wood s lot). From Jordan:
Our consumerism hold an anesthetizing kind of mob mentality; collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences… So perhaps my photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-reflection. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know we are awake.
Elephant Dung Paper and Paper-Products and Kangaroo Dung Used to Make Paper. Okay, so maybe those two aren't, strictly speaking, "beautiful" ...
Bags Made from Strange Materials. Okay, but felt-tip markers? Skateboards? (from TreeHugger).
SF news & views
Nalo Hopkinson's blog is at a new address, in case you were wondering where she was.
Adam Roberts has posted his assessment of the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist for 2005. He compares this year's crop with the nominees for the BSFA Award, and finds that the Clarke list this year tends towards the populist, even the middlebrow. Roberts is such a smart reviewer and has the most apt turns of phrase: "Knowledge," in Neal Stephenson's The System of the World, is "pathologically metastasising" and in Iron Council China Miéville writes "a compacted prose that works with a thesaurus-density of signifiers to build, layer on layer, a distinct and often atmospheric effect." I have come to trust his judgement, even when I don't fully agree.
Matthew Cheney writes on clubbiness in (sf) bookblogging. (Disclaimer: Adam Roberts and I are sporadic email correspondents.)
There is a blog called Mundane-SF that started last Nov. They have a manifesto that concludes "That the most likely future is one in which we only have ourselves and this planet," and a list of "stupidities" which includes "Aliens: especially those aliens who act like feudal Japanese/American Indians/Tibetan Buddhists/Nazis." Hear hear! Though I am glad that they recognize the 'harmless fun that these and all the other Stupidities have brought to millions of people."
Superheros: don't quit your day jobs (from Long story; short pier).
In the "this will be news to some" dept.: Reading sf makes you a better Christian (via BoingBoing).
Addendum:
M Valdemar: A blog about horror and the death of contemporaneity (via Plep).
The Fantastic in Art and Fiction: created by the Cornell Institute for Digital Collections (via Life in the Present). Very attractive site; great images.
Sources of The LotR, including _The Ring of the Niblung, Beowulf, The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison, &etc. (via Catalogue Blog).
Streetprint
The Flowers of Maiden Lane, Pub. John Pitts, London, c1818 (Click on image for more information and a typscript of the text)
Jim Chevalier just posted the following to C18-L:
... this site has a variety of 'street literature' — including ballads, newspapers, etc. — much around our period.
It also uses a tool — the Streetprint engine — especially designed for this sort of thing that might interest anyone looking to put a collection of documents on-line.
Streetprint is open source:
A collection of British street literature needed an online home, a place where students and researchers could interact with these fragile texts as though they were sitting down with the original artifacts. The technological complexity of this task soon became a problem; specialists in centuries-old popular print are rarely internet wizards.
In search of an ideal solution, our team in the CRC Studio developed the Streetprint Engine, free software that gives researchers and collectors (like YOU!) easy-to-use tools to create powerful digital archives and share them on the web.
We broadened our focus along the way, creating a system which can now showcase much more than "street print." We like to think, however, that the ideals which underlie our first collection — finding value in the popular and the importance of public circulation, among others — remain at the core of the Streetprint Engine's mission.
What a wonderful idea. And a beautiful dovetailing of the web and print culture. Of all the texts that need to be digitalized, it seems to me that ephemera is close to the top of the list. It's certainly convenient to have canonical texts online, particularly for teaching, but the various projects, large and small, that digitalize street literature and other ephemera are invaluable. The Revolution and Romanticism collection at U of A contains a broadside about William Corder that I hadn't seen, quite possibly the only copy extant, and I probably would not have visited the collection and so might never have known of it.
February 26, 2005
I have
already mentioned sorryeverybody.com, apologiesaccepted.com, and PostSecret. Now here is i used to believe: the childhood beliefs site (link from Pratie Place). Here is one:
When I was about five, and didn't understand the whole how and where babies came from, I used to think as we (children) aged our parents would do the opposite and become younger. And once we reached adulthood, we would become the parents and our parents were our children. Death and giving birth did not exist in my mind.
The Jinker Boy and I were watching television this morning and an ad for Pound Puppies came on. JB turned to me:
JB: When you are a little gel, I will buy that for you.
Me. Would you like one of those?
JB. No, that's for gels. When you are a little gel, I will buy it for you.
These online collaborative projects are fascinating. They channel the overwhelming number of competing voices on the web into something purposeful and understandable, something that builds community. But they are also a product or installation rather than a meandering conversation, so in that they differ from other forms of online community. They are limited; one sends in an entry (or two or three) and moves on. To use some of the common metaphors for online communities, these projects are like giant multi-artist murals on urban walls, rather than coffeehourses or townhalls.
February 25, 2005
Things to look at
Lowry Educational Site (from Plep). About artist Laurence Stephen Lowry, from Manchester. Interested in industrial scenes; painted Swansea, which is how I heard of him.
Battlestar Gallactica: Episode 1 online (link from Metafilter).
And the best for last: Romance Novels under the covers (via BoingBoing). My pick: Lord of the Tube Socks.
iJoined
Edward Champion says "Fuck the iPod." Uh-oh. Guess what I just ordered?
February 24, 2005
Things to read
Sharon posts a slew of plaguey links. Of particular note: Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt, Citizen of London; The Dance of Death in Book Illustration by Marcia Collins.
Digital Dante (via Plep).
The Bathroom Diaries: toilets...bathrooms...dignity: "When Nature Calls, even intrepid travelers prefer a comfortable reply" (also via Plep).
February 23, 2005
Farah Mendlesohn
gave a fascinating talk at our campus earlier today to a small but select group, as they say. I had originally thought that her project on children's sf was peripheral to my own interests, and in terms of the texts she is studying, it is. But her approach and her methodology are so interesting, and she is such an engaged and lively speaker, that I was completely captivated by what she had to say and can report with certainty that I will be looking out for the book to appear in 2006.
Farah was very complimentary about our sf collection at the Ward Chipman Library, and found some useful materials, she said. After the talk, we went out to lunch with a former student of mine, now doing graduate work on sf at another institution but home for the winter break. Thai food and excellent conversation; a wonderful day. Anyone who has the opportunity to see Farah during the rest of her sojourn here — she will be in Acadia, N.S., umm, Florida, and half a dozen other places — anyway, do see her if you have the chance.
And visit her blog, her project blog, and her questionaire.
Both from Erich Fuchs, Journey to the Moon (1969). For more mod views of the future, click on picture.
February 22, 2005
And the Ia(i)ns have it
A meme from Natalie; the other Miriam has also played: list authors by whom you have read more than ten books:
(This could get embarrassing)
Margaret Atwood
Iain Banks
Greg Bear
Enid Blyton
Edgar Rice Burroughs
C.J. Cherryh
Len Deighton
Ian Fleming
William Gibson
Sue Grafton
Graham Greene
Tony Hillerman
P.D. James
"Carolyn Keene"
Stephen King
John Le Carré
Doris Lessing
James Michener
Anaïs Nin
Sarah Paretsky
Ian Rankin
Dorothy Sayers
Shakespeare
Sheri S. Tepper
Kurt Vonnegut
Tennessee Williams
Virginia Woolf
(I also like Ian R. MacLeod and Ian Watson, but haven't yet read ten by either of them.)
George Washington Gets Extreme Makeover
Jim Chevalier posted to the C-18-L listserv with a link to this story: in essence,
a team of scientists is creating a trio of action figures of [George] Washington as part of a larger [US]$95 million educational effort to reintroduce the first president to America, hoping to illustrate who he was better than those countless portraits.
Jim adds to his post:
I don't know if it ever occured to anyone to do this in Washington's lifetime, but the idea wasn't entirely unknown in our period [c18th]. When Simon-Henri Linguet was still a celebrated lawyer, in addition to the hats, etc. sold as Linguet souvenirs, there were apparently little Linguet dolls. Why not Washington dolls?
I think we Canadians are missing the boat here. How about a Sir John A. Macdonald action figure, complete with glass of gin for those two-day filibusters?
A few minutes of googling later: Good god, there already is one! And, he seems to be holding something, and it looks like a glass. That is so much more fun than wooden dentures.
Bonus link:
February 21, 2005
Children's SF
Farah Mendlesohn is coming to UNBSJ this Wednesday to see our sf collection, and she will be giving an informal roundtable on children's lit, sf, Buffy, and whatever else comes up. Anyone in the area, come to Ward Chipman Library 232 at 12:30. Admission free; refreshments to be served. It's sure to be a good conversation. Farah is doing an interesting project about children's sf. And don't forget to take her survey of the childhood reading habits of sf readers.
I made posters using a picture from a science book for children published in 1959 from Dreams of Space: space art in children's books 1950's to 1970's, to which I linked some time back. An amazing site: so many space stations, and rockets, and Martian colonies. A good, old-fashioned future.
February 20, 2005
Quick link
to Susan Herzog's excellent set of links on academic blogging.
Boy, we're a self-reflexive lot.
News flash: reading may be bad for you
An ill-defined plague, luckily more annoying than dangerous, is stalking through the world of lit-bloggers.
SF
At Fantastic Metropolis: China Miéville's fifty sf novels for socialists (link from BoingBoing). I love Miéville. But Ayn Rand? I'd rather know some enemies from a distance. And anyway, her stuff is hardly sf. But lots of excellent suggestions here, many of them 19th- or early 20th-century.
There has been a flurry of posting about the inclusion of two sf stories in the upcoming Best American Short Stories edited by Michael Chabon: Kelly Link's "Stone Animals" and Tim Pratt's "Hart & Boot."
An interview with Iain Banks at Salon (link from Emerald City). He speculates about the less than overwhelming reception of his non-sf novels in the U.S. The fact that he can't do a book tour there — he cut up his passport and sent it to Tony Blair in protest over the involvement of the U.K. in Iraq — can't help. He discusses whether or not U.K. sf is "anti-American," and confesses the similarity between the wise-cracking Dwellers in The Algebraist and the A.I.s in the Culture novels. I really enjoyed the Dwellers, but they did feel like old friends.
February 19, 2005
Blogging advice
I have linked previously to Henry Fielding's excellent advice to bloggers, channeled by melinama. He's at it again, and now, T.S. Eliot has got into the act.
Myself, I like Dorothy Osborne's advice:
All posts, methinks, should be free and easy as one's discourse, not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm.
Osborne to William Temple, 2 June 1653
More detritus
Orphaned photographs: Close to Home: An American Album (via Plep).
Urban Adventure in Rotterdam and Deserted in Prague (via things magazine).
Weblog: Overheard in New York (via Pratie Place):
Trendy: I'd like a swiss burger and, instead of fries, can I substitute soup?
Waiter: No.
Trendy: OK, it was just a suggestion.
Waiter: Great. You can have it that way when you open your own restaurant.
Yes, this is too detritus. And plenty of it.
February 18, 2005
Beautiful books
Livres de Poètes (link from Mark Woods). Writes one of the artists, Lisa Kokin:
I’ve been making books since 1991. My primary source for art supplies is the flea market; I’m intrigued by other people’s detritus. At some point I started using other people’s cast off words. I would take parts of books and cut them up and juxtapose them with parts of other books, such as a sex manual with a hunting guide. Writing in this way, I came up with lots of surprises that I wouldn’t necessarily have come up with on my own.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944), The Sleeping Beauty and other Fairy Tales (1910) online, illustrated by Edmund Dulac; The Canterbury Tales online; and The World of Dante: "a hypermedia environment for the study of the Inferno" (links from Plep). Be sure to visit the map of hell.
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (via Bibi).
Eerie Publications Cover Gallery (also from Bibi).
The Penguin Collectors' Society (from things magazine).
February 17, 2005
She's got game
Headline from a news story sent to the campus community from our Advancement office:
"Jacqueline Kennedy breaks UNB Saint John Women's Basketball All-Time Scoring Record."
There are, no doubt, still a number of us around who did double-takes.
February 16, 2005
Asylum art
Untitled, c.1940, Ink on card, by Madge Gill. Henry Boxer Gallery
Boing Boing points towards an article about Outsider Art in France which is, as it turns out, also about Outsider Art in Britain. Or perhaps that would be "insider art," as one of the collections discussed is held at the Royal Bethlam Hospital. Yes, Bedlam. And apparently there are hundreds of pieces of art by inmates, the vast majority of which have never been displayed.
February 15, 2005
IWD2005
Spent much of the day working on a page listing the events we are planning to celebrate International Women's Day this year. Since March 8 falls on our winter break, our campus will celebrate the following week. In fact, we're taking the whole week. Anyone reading this who wants to plan an event or otherwise get involved, please let me know.
February 14, 2005
It's that special day!
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place 76 years ago, today, in Chicago.
Bloody links:
Haunted Chicago: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Al Capone Museum: lots of visuals. And music!
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre on The Jazz Age Page.
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre at My Al Capone Museum. Lots of photos! Check out the page about the bricks from the walls of the murder room!
HymieWeiss.com has info. on the massacre.
The wierd and wonderful Roger Corman did a movie in 1967.
Inspired? Have a St. Valentine's Day Massacre party.
I swear that Joe and I went to some sort of "Al Capone museum" tourist attraction, some years back, but I cannot find any mention of it on the web. But I did find an "Untouchables Tour." (One of the tour guides is called "Al Dente.")
Anyway. Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.
Update — better late than never (15/2/05): Viewer warning: black and white photographs can be more gruesome than you might think.
February 13, 2005
Thinking some more
about the interview with Edward P. Jones I listened to Friday. He talked about the importance of his mother in his life; he described her as someone who couldn't read or write, who had a hard life and worked hard. Eleanor Wachtel asked him what this woman would have thought of his novel, implying by her question, I think, that she might have found it alien. Jones answered literally: he said, well, it's out in a spoken-text version, so she would have been just fine. I thought that he was deftly deflecting the idea that his mother might not have understood or appreciated his work. And maybe he was. But the more I thought about it, the more I wonder if for him — a man who composed and carried around a novel in his head for a decade — that the "oral/print divide" is not quite so compelling, and that the black marks on the page don't have the same fetish-value as they do for many of us. Not sure where I'm going with this; he did, finally, write down his story and that is how he came to be interviewed by the CBC. I suppose one of the reasons I am so struck by this is because it serves as a refreshing antidote to the ritualistic obeisance that is generally paid to "writers' desks" — you've all seen the coffee-table books, calendars, and memes — writing implements and tools, writers' habits and superstitions. And I am speaking as someone with a moleskine tucked into her shoulder bag and a serious pen addiction. But I have rarely considered that these things might in fact be a detriment to productivity.
Addendum (14/2/05): Stephen Mitchelmore has a spookily pertinent post about using Moleskines at This Space (link from wood s lot).
Academic blogging
A couple of days ago Liz Lawley posted a wealth of links on academic blogging. She has set up a wiki page on the subject, too; I just added my immortal On the Value of Blogging for an Academic.
Reading
Matthew Kirschenbaum continues his series of posts on the Technologies of Writing seminar he is attending. He discusses Don Quixote, and how revolutions in technologies of writing paradoxically spur innovation in older technologies. And, more beautiful graphics.
The playful antiquarian points towards a special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn with the evocative title "Handmade Literacies." She particularly recommends "Why I Like to Set Type by Hand" by master printer Barbara Henry:
Henry's essay reminded me of all the reasons why I love hand-press books — the poetic vocabulary of printing, the meditative nature of the process, and the connection to the history of printed word.
Full texts are available through Project Muse, if your library subscribes (ours does), but the abstracts can be read. There appear to be a lot of studies of children's literature in the mix.
February 12, 2005
I love CBC radio
Since the weather was crappy the trip to and from Fredericton yesterday took longer than usual; a good four hours of driving altogether. I listened to CBC Radio One all the way — didn't have a lot of choice really as the tape deck is broken, campus radio doesn't broadcast all that way, and commercial radio, well — I'll always remember something friend of mine said once, about a Madonna tape I was foolish enough to admit to playing while driving: "What if you were in a car accident and were pinned down but conscious, and the tape deck was playing on a loop?" — anyway, the CBC it was. And what a great evening! On the way up I listened to an interview with Neil Simon about Arthur Miller. Never mind that he barely knew him and the only reason they interviewed him was that they were both NYC playwrights: that was just fine. On the way back I really hit pay dirt: first, on Ideas, Greg Kelley looked at Dante's journey from Hell to Paradise in Part One of "Dante: Poet of the Impossible."
Then, Eleanor Wachtel interviewed African- American writer and MacArthur Fellow Edward P. Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Known World. His description of the way he wrote the novel was astonishing: he worked it out and kept it mainly in his head for ten years, at which point he left his day job and finally wrote it down. The novel is set in 19thc America and is about a free black who owned slaves; Jones also described how while he initially planned to do considerable research, he ended up inventing everything. So I was whisked away from white-knuckle driving and into a reverie about world-building in historical, or quasi-historical, fiction.
Bonus links:
An interview with Jones at Africana; one with Bella Stander; one at washingtonpost.com; another at identitytheory.com; and another at BookBrowse.
NPR story on Jones.
Cats and sf
Last night at dinner Farah made the claim that sf people (readers and writers both, I suppose) are disproportionately cat people. I don't know how one would go about testing that theory, except annecdotally — perhaps there is a grant there for someone — but it seemed to hold true around the table. So here I offer my credentials as an sf reader. With other interests:
Sally and Furio. Used with permission. Schrödinger's Cat jokes optional.
A little late for Friday cat-blogging, but it's probably still Friday somewhere. Unless it's already Sunday. (Maybe I should switch to fantasy.) Speaking of which, Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw (Tor 2003) came up over the shrimp fried rice. Now normally you couldn't pay me enough to read a book about dragons, but this one sounds interesting: apparently it's about a culture that literally embodies Victorian ideas of social Darwinism. "It's a novel of manners in which all the characters are dragons and eat each other," according to one site. The first chapter is posted online.
February 11, 2005
Just got home
Greg and Farah
from Fredericton, where I had dinner with Farah Mendlesohn, who is swinging through New Brunswick on a research trip gathering material for her next book, on children's sf, as well as four of our graduate students, including Greg Bechtel, who writes urban fantasy and who organized the gathering, and Brecken Hancock, who is writing a dissertation on Canadian women's sf.
It was a good evening, and well worth the long drive through the snow to spend time in such excellent company. Farah's level of activity is insprirational; she organizes more conferences in a year than I attend.
She has posted a questionaire on the early reading habits of sf readers; she was only expecting to collect fifty responses but now has, as of last count, 699. Lets add to those numbers, people! As she says, it would be so much easier to do the math for an even thousand.
Brecken
(I think my pulling out my camera disconcerted everyone. I tried to explain about blogger trophies. Ah well.)
February 10, 2005
Beautiful books
Engravings from Italian graphic artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634-1718), at Giornale Nuovo.
Mark Woods reminds us that it was recently the birthday of Richard Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).
The Cinderella Project, The Little Red Riding Hood Project and The Jack and the Beanstalk Project (links from The Secret Library). Also, the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection (also from The Secret Library).
The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) — "one of the most puzzling, enigmatic and fascinating books ever conceived" — in an online facsimile (link from Rashomon).
Elizabethan English and Anna-Marie Ferguson's illustrations to Le Morte d'Arthur (links via Plep).
THIS kid
February 9, 2005
Henry Fielding's advice to bloggers?
Came across an interersting new blog via referrer stats: Pratie Place: Reflections and news, primarily from the previous millennium. Because I can't keep up. "Pratie" is Gaelic for "potato" (and I've just got used to "tatties." And I don't even like the things). Of particular interest to me is one series of posts, "Fielding's Advice to Bloggers" (#1, #2, #3):
In the first excerpt, Fielding compares an author to a publican rather than a private host, the distinction being whether or not one pays for the meal. That being the case, I am not sure that bloggers are not more like private hosts (i.e. they can serve whatever they please, however well- or ill-prepared). Though of course there is an economy of blogging, even without ads, sponsorships, etc. etc. Bloggers — some bloggers, anyway — work for hits, links, and "googlejuice." I suppose, then, that we are publicans after all. In my case, of a kind of wine bar—gin joint—ice cream parlour fusion place.
In the second, he promises to write only when he has something of interest to write about.
Oops. Zero for two.
In the last, we are warned against being "morose snarling critics." Oh, like he should talk.
February 8, 2005
Mucking about
with the blogroll. I know I said that I thought it was better not to classify other blogs, as I don't (can't) classify my own, but the blogroll was getting unwieldy and the truth is that I often trawl through it looking for blogs of one stripe or another, so why not make it easy for myself? Of course, then comes the problem of categorization; some fit nicely on various shelves — indeed they jump up themselves — while others defy ones best efforts. As is their right. But then I am left with some wimpy-assed categories in an effort to avoid using "misc." or "other" or something equally flattering. As it is, some will no doubt wonder at their "shelving"; if that is the case please let me know. And if at all possible, let me know where you would rather be.
February 7, 2005
Our wonderful campus bookstore
is having a sale this week and I picked up a book I had been eyeing — fingering, even — for a little while now: Thomas Wharton's beautifully produced The Logogryph: a bibliography of imaginary books, compact in its handsome little slipcase. Apart from its sheer loveliness, the description reminded me of "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges, a story I read ages ago and have never forgotten:
In a small town in the mountains, a young boy is given a suitcase filled with battered old books. So begins a lifelong pursuit of the elusive creature known as the logogryph. Describing imaginary books and alternate realities, Wharton explores the mysterious alchemy called reading, and along the way summons a cast of characters that includes duelling margin scribblers, a dislodged protagonist, and an unforgettable family that becomes one man's mythology.
"Duelling margin scribblers." I can hardly wait.
Just as importantly,
This book is a Smyth-sewn paperback with a jacket and full sleeve. The text was typeset by Andrew Steeves in Caslon types and printed on Rolland Zephyr Laid paper. The jacket was printed letterpress. The inside features illustrations by Wesley Bates.
And what serendipity to also find, at the same sale, a copy of In the Stacks: short stories about libraries and librarians edited by Michael Cart, which includes "The Library of Babel" as well as stories by Italo Calvino, Ursula LeGuin, Alice Munro, and a host of other luminaries.
Wharton wrote the marvellous — in both senses — Salamander, about an eighteenth-century printer who attempts to print an infinite book. A memorable, wonderful novel.
February 6, 2005
Couple of sf links
Suzette Haden Elgin has a number of posts about science fiction poetry, and Matthew Cheney offers his picks for sf poems of the year.
Locus's Best of the Best Short Stories of 2005 (at Notes from Coode Street).
Matthew Cheney on the difficulty of picking the best fantasy story of all time, an addendum to the annual Locus survey.
"And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon" by Paul Di Filippo — one of my favs — at SciFi.com. About "blebs" — composite gadgets made by the spontaneous merging of smart household objects.
Letter from Sri Lanka: Arthur C. Clarke on the tsunami's aftermath and the roles of science fiction and technology in predicting future disasters, in Wired (link from BoingBoing).
February 5, 2005
Due Preparations for the Plague
I plead illness as excuse for my earlier harsh words about Janette Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague. I finished it today (and as a sidenote: if you think a book will make you cry, you could do worse than to read it in the bath). It is painful to read, as I said, but well worth it. It's beautifully done, the way she folds the philosophic and the literary into the thriller. Or perhaps it's the other way around.
In a nutshell, the novel is about the aftermath of a plane hijacking in 1987. One of the main characters was a child who, along with other children on board, was released by the hijackers. The other main character lost his mother in the attack. What could be the apparatus of a routine espionage story, however, is read within a framework of literary plague narratives: Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), as well as his little-known Due Preparations for the Plague, as Well for Soul as Body (1722), as well as Albert Camus' The Plague (1947) and Boccaccio's The Decameron (Hospital is trained as a medievalist). It is from Boccaccio, who wrote of ten people who hide themselves away to avoid the plague and pass the time by telling stories, that she takes the central motif of the ten hostages locked in a bunker filled with lethal gas.
Apparently most of the novel was already written before 9/11, so Hospital has clearly tapped into the zeitgeist. The indictment of realpolitik is harrowing; by midpoint one is quite hopeless. Ultimately, however, Hospital sidesteps the political — or at any rate, deemphasizes it — in order to focus on the philosophical. How can one prepare for death? How can one live, knowing that nothing is certain? The epigram from Camus provides a frame for the novel:
To state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.
Pestilence literally, in the sense of sarin and other biochemical weapons, but also more metaphorically, as a way of characterizing terrorism. At times she wanders close to Joseph Heller country — and this is where I like her best — as when she offers the lectures of a forcibly-retired spymeister to his class of the hand-picked "happy few":
All that we do has already been dreamed of and foretold. From Sodom and Gomorrah to Nagasaki, we walk with alchemists and gods. We make firestorms from air, and we walk through the fire unharmed. We are Zeus of the thunderbolts, and we are the decontamination and survival experts. We may not yet have learned to make a heaven-on-earth—though we strive to keep this planet safe for those who indulge in the idea of heaven—but we are specialists in making that other world spoken of in the Gospel of Mark, a place where the worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. (227)
(We are later told that he is yanked from the classroom because of his inappropriate lectures.)
As I read I wondered how Hospital was going to finish; a happy ending, of any kind, would have felt like a sop. But to offer no respite from the bleakness — well, I would have just washed down the drain with the bathwater and put an end to it. She treads a fine line here, and I do think that she pulls back from the fuller implications of all that went before. But then, she might be modelling survival for us, mightn't she?
I'm glad I read this. It was harrowing, though, and I will look over carefully any of her other work I come across, before I commit.
And it might just do for my sf course this summer.
Clearly they didn't read my last post
The magnificent Isabella of The Magnificent Octopus just gave me a heads up that I have been noticed across the pond. And in such illustrious company!
But tell me the truth ... do I "meander"?
February 4, 2005
I have a cold
and I'm feeling very sorry for myself. I started to read a novel described as a thriller in order to take my mind off the tap that is my nose, but I don't like either of the main characters. In fact, reading about them is painful. So instead, I offer some links:
The CNN Health Library advises the following: "To stop your runny nose, try the following: Blow your nose." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration — perhaps they have the same consultants? — helpfully advises, "Try to Avoid Getting a Cold."
A site with the alarming name Wrong Diagnosis says that there are 32 possible causes for a stuffy nose. In related news, "Airborne Fungus May Cause Chronic Stuffy Nose."
More cheerfully, "Sex stops a runny nose." Now if I could just find someone who likes a woman with a tissue wadded up each nostril...
Oh well, there are always Runny Nose Gifts.
But is there a cure? Seems that Echinacea is overrated. Perhaps garlic? red wine? warm and cold showers? super duper cold killing soup or sucking on a lemon? a gentle cup of Chamomile tea? Or ... bread?
But wait: "Stuffy Nose Remedies." I came upon this and looked no further:
Ingredients: 1/3 Cup Jalepeno Pepper Juice
2 Tablespoons Chili Powder
A big glob of Horse raddish
A pich of Salt
Butter USED SEPERATLEY
Instructions: Add all the Ingredients (EXCEPT THE BUTTER) in a small to medium sized sauce pan and Fill the rest with water. Let it come to a rolling boil. Put the pan on the table make a tent over your face with a Towel and inhale deeply untill the steam is gone. The smear Butter inbetween your eyes and let it sit for 5 minutes. It smells absolutley wretched but it not only clears out your sinuses at that time but it will keep them clear for a few hours to come. Trust me on this one people. I have been a certified hippie for 31 years.
I'm off to the kitchen. Catch you later.
February 3, 2005
Bombing for Choice
Just came across this, via feministe, and have added it to the sidebar:
Anti-abortion ideologues beware: I'm promoting objective, factual information on: You can too. Join me in Bombing for Choice.
I know some have questioned the efficacy of googlebombing, but if nothing else, it starts discussion.
February 2, 2005
Discussing Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
use of morphine in my intro. class today (maybe I'm sleazy to pander but they really seem to brighten up when I mention the various addictions of the writers we're discussing) and was wishing, earlier this evening, that I had some myself. Had a meeting with the other members of my dept. at which I was presenting a somewhat contentious proposal about reorganization, and not only have I come down with a cold, but I developed a migraine. Usually I would have just left and gone home to bed, but didn't feel I could this time, it being my initiative and all. To add some piquancy to the evening, begged a ride home from the person at the table least enamoured with my proposal, and had to fight hard not to throw up in her new car as we made chitchat for twenty minutes.
Came home and decided to go right to bed, but was worried that the Jinker Boy, having been without me for some hours, would object:
Me: Sweetie, I'm very sorry, but Mummy has a headache and has to go to bed now.
JB: (not moving eyes from Blue's Clues DVD) Well go to bed then.
Joe: (snorts, then looks abashed and pats my shoulder).
So, doped up and clutching my ice packs, I crashed out and had vivid dreams about programme requirements.
February 1, 2005
Do you think she used
a stunt double?: click here to see Margaret Atwood giving tips about hockey. Heads up from the other Paul Martin (the one who teaches Can. Lit. in Vermont).
Now I know that I am the only Canadian who can't skate.
Update (2/2/05): A student of mine just posted a killer page on Margaret Atwood.