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Sunday, August second, 2009
Saramago posts today about reading García Márquez:
Writers can be divided (assuming that they will accept being divided...) into two groups: the smaller group, of those who can open new paths into literature, and the more numerous, those who go after and who use these paths for their own journey. It's been this way since the birth of our planet and the (legitimate?) vanity of authors will do nothing against the clarity of the evidence. Gabriel García Márquez used his ingenuity to open and to pave the way that would come to be called "magical realism," down which multitudes of followers would later proceed and, as always happens, detractors in their turn. The first book of his which came into my hands was Cien años de soledad, and the shock which it caused me was enough to make me stop reading at the end of fifty pages. I needed to put some order in my mind, some discipline in my heart, and above all, learn to get my bearings and orient myself on the paths of the new world which presented itself before my eyes. In my life as a reader there have been very few occasions that have produced an experience like this. If the word "trauma" could take a positive meaning, I would willingly use it in this case. But, it has been written, leave it there. I hope it will be understood.
posted evening of August second, 2009: Respond
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Michael Pollan's article in this week's Times Magazine, "Out of the Kitchen, onto the Couch" is well worth reading. He spins the current popularity of cooking shows on TV in some interesting directions, and makes me want to watch Julie & Julia.
posted evening of August second, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, August first, 2009
Having a lazy morning and I thought I would pick up and look at A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.... This is a book which I read and loved when I was 14 years old, but which has over the years resisted efforts at rereading. I picked up a copy at a garage sale recently and was enchanted again by the opening paragraphs. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo... His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt. This morning's discovery is, this is a great, great read-aloud book. I haven't enjoyed reading anything aloud so much since The Hobbit. Try reading this aloud, in an even, relaxed tone: They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar. He tried to think of Wells's mother but he did not dare to raise his eyes to Wells's face. (And in addition to thinking this sounds great, I am identifying with it -- I can feel myself getting hot and confused as I try and figure out how to make the boys stop laughing at me...)You know what book this is reminding me of in its opening pages, is Boy by Roald Dahl.
posted morning of August first, 2009: 1 response
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Well this is a weird coincidence, or something... The same day I think about, and link to, Patrick Farley's Apocamon, Mr. Farley posts a notice to his LiveJournal -- he is rebooting Electric Sheep Comix! Nothing on the site yet; but this is great news. Thanks to Randolph for calling it to my attention. Randolph also linked to Farley's guest strip at DiceBox, Don't Look Back. What an excellent thing it is; you ought to go read it. And it looks like I have days of fun ahead of me getting acquainted with DiceBox...
 And aargh, speaking of weird coincidences, as I'm writing this post about Farley's reboot, I see my own host has gone down for reboot. I'll post this when it comes back...
posted morning of August first, 2009: Respond
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Friday, July 31st, 2009
I do not follow Fred Clarke's Left Behind analyses religiously; but when I do read one, I am never disappointed. In today's post, he looks at the unusual meaning of "literal" when that term is used by a fundamentalist Christian explicator of the Bible. We've already seen how, for Bruce as for Tim LaHaye, this word "literally" is not meant literally. For them it means something more like "my way." It's opposite would be "mere symbolism," which means for them, roughly, "any meaning other than the meaning imposed on a passage by reading it my way." Clarke reads LaHaye's explanation of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and my mind is  drawn irresistably to Patrick Farley's Apocamon -- I can see the First through Fourth Living Creatures calling out, "Come and See!" and once again I feel sad. So sad, because Apocamon is no longer available ever since a spammer stole Farley's Electric Sheep domain name... Well, one thing led to another, and I looked at Google, and Apocamon is back on the web. Not only that, but Farley has written two new episodes of it since the last time I saw it! Go and See! It is seriously one of the finest comics I've ever read. I wonder if the rest of the Electric Sheep strips are online again -- they don't seem to be at Serializer but some searching is in order.
posted evening of July 31st, 2009: 5 responses
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Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Last time I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, was with my friends Monique and Jeremy; and I took a couple of pictures on Monique's camera which I had since forgotten all about. But today she mailed them to me. Thanks Monique! The pictures are of a statue whose title and author I have since forgotten, I'm hoping somebody will recognize these photos. If you do, please let me know in comments. Here is the front view of the statue:
and here is the view from behind, over the statue's shoulder, which is what initially caught my eye:
 And speaking of that Museum: I'm going there this Sunday afternoon to meet up with Bill of Orbis Quintus; Bill let me know about the current exhibition of James Ensor's work. (So if nobody recognizes the statue, I will check when I'm there.) I don't know much about Ensor but I'm very intrigued by the sample images I've found looking around the web.
posted evening of July 30th, 2009: 1 response
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Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Harry Patch, the last surviving British combat veteran from World War I, died this week. He was 111 years old. He said he aimed at the German soldiers' legs, that "war is not worth one life" -- it is "a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings." Here is a video of him revisiting Passchendaele two years ago: A few years back, Michael Palin filmed a documentary for the BBC called "The Last Day of World War One," in which he examines the question of the six-hour period between 5 am and 11 am on November 11, 1918, and the soldiers who fought and killed and died in these hours between the signing of the armistice and its taking effect. You can watch the documentary at mazalien.com.
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.- Wilfrid Owen, "The parable of the Old Man and the Young"
posted evening of July 29th, 2009: Respond
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Last week, it was Photoshop Phriday at Something Awful, with the proprietors trying to assemble their favorite fictional animals out of real photographs. Results are mixed but some of them are just great -- check out this take on Miyazaki's Catbus:
I want to take a ride with Totoro! (And speaking of Studio Ghibli, I am on pins and needles waiting for Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea to hit the theaters...) On another page, we see in quick succession Charmander, Road Runner and Wile E., and Cat Dog.
posted evening of July 29th, 2009: 1 response
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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
I was reminded this weekend of a song I love, and I bothered to do a little research and find out more about it. Here's the version I was listening to this weekend:
I always think of this as a Rockabilly tune; turns out the original version predates Rockabilly by a few years. It was written by Granville "Stick" McGhee when he was in the army in WWII (supposedly under the title "Drinkin Wine, Motherfucker" -- I hope hope hope this is not apocryphal*) and recorded on Decca in 1946 -- Granville's elder brother Brownie(!) played guitar.They re-recorded it in 1949 on the Atlantic label and had a hit record:
I can't find the 1946 record on the internet anywhere - hoyhoy.com says Decca re-issued it after Atlantic's hit and "It flopped because it didn't rock."The big hit, the reason I think of this as a Rockabilly number, was Jerry Lee Lewis:
So which do you like best? I hear things I love in each of them, I'm leaning towards thinking the Pirates version rocks the hardest... Any other favorite covers of this tune?
 *Update: I found a reference for this story, and more information about Stick McGhee, in The Unsung Heroes of Rock n Roll, by Nick Tosches.
posted evening of July 28th, 2009: 2 responses
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I dreamt of frozen detectives in the great
refrigerator of Los Angeles
in the great refrigerator of Mexico City.-- Roberto Bolaño
I'm getting really excited and champing at the bit to read Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Inherent Vice, which will be coming out one week from today (if my fingers are accurate). Here are some preparatory links I've been collecting over the last little while:
- Louis Menand's review in the New Yorker is to my way of thinking, a model for how book reviews ought to be written. Every other review of this book I've read has contained the same superficial, thoughtless (and in some cases debatable) bits of information -- that the novel is a detective story set in Los Angeles, the main character "Doc" Sportello is a stoner and gumshoe, that the story is more straightforward and plotted than your archetypally cryptic Pynchon novel, that Hollywood is talking about optioning rights, a first for the famously unfilmable TRP... Menand goes much deeper, pulls in Pynchon's other work in specific ways rather than general, really thinks about the consequences of what he is saying.
- Tim Ware of thomaspynchon.com has created an Inherent Vice Wiki, initialized with his page-by-page notes. It's just waiting for other people to read the book and start contributing.
- Wired has published The Unofficial Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles, an interactive map of the city marked up with references from Inherent Vice. Useful for finding your way around as you read.
- Update: And furthermore: the mysterious Basileios (of the Against The Day weblog) will be keeping an Inherent Vice weblog as well. This seems like good news to me.
 Speaking by the way of excellent book reviews, Giles Harvey has a very nice take (and cleverly titled!) on Bolaño's The Skating Rink in the Abu Dhabi National. Thanks for the link, badger!
posted evening of July 28th, 2009: Respond
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