Reading
Book reviews, reccomendations; magazine commentary
Strange links
(97 Words. January 22, 2012, 08:50 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
A couple links to critical material on Norrell & Strange: Cynn Corvus, a series of personal essays on the book, essentially an enthusiastic and literate reader’s reflections, basically an internal monologue, on the book. Includes an essay on Clarke’s short stories as well, which I skipped in order to permit me to read them fresh when I pick up the…
Starstruck update
(90 Words. January 21, 2012, 10:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Update to my posts of a week or two ago. In the interim of buying a new set of the original Epic run on eBay and the new copies arriving, I, of course, found the missing box of comics that contained the original copies. It turns out I had not picked up one of the original issues when I was…
Gibson
(207 Words. January 17, 2012, 09:37 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Listening to William Gibson on the radio, I suddenly remember buying the paperback edition of Neuromancer at Left Bank Books in the Market. Thinking about it I realize I may have bought it new, on initial publication. After looking up a bibliography of his stuff, I am surprised to see he published consistently in Omni throughout the 1980s, and therefore…
More on Starstruck
(3 Words. January 08, 2012, 06:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
some critical analysis…
Starstruck Deluxe Edition: missing material
(23 Words. January 08, 2012, 05:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Aargh, I was right, sez the CJ: You won’t find the material from issues #2-6 of the Epic series in this book……
ex gReader PM weighs in on UI redesign
(225 Words. November 01, 2011, 04:13 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Brian Shih on the new gR UI: Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision? Google released the previously announced set of changes around G+ integration and UI updates today, and boy is it a disaster. … …it’s as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something. When you log into…
Crimes in Southern Indiana
(1263 Words. October 25, 2011, 01:24 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(I expect that I will post this on my own blog as well. I use the formal “Mr.” convention here for reasons I hope are obvious.) A few weeks ago I noticed a flutter in the twittersphere concerning a just-released book, Frank Bill’s Crimes in Southern Indiana. (Mr. Bill maintains an active blog at Frank Bill’s House of Grit.) Preveiwers…
Zero History
(291 Words. April 29, 2011, 10:34 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally started Gibson’s Zero History, which I had been putting off for months. I’m happy to report it is entertaining me very much. The book is about industrial espionage in the global clothing industry. A major supporting character is introduced wearing a ridiculous suit in International Klein Blue, and the hardback’s boards are this color. This little joke make…
The Sun that Burns
(539 Words. August 30, 2010, 11:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Saturday, I spent the whole day sitting on the beach near the San Onofre nuclear plant, reading. The whole day was cool, and the morning, from 10 to 1 or so, was grey and misty, quite pleasant. Just as the clouds pushed back offshore, the Goodyear blimp mosied on by, headed south at about 800 feet. I friended…
RIP Harvey
(304 Words. July 12, 2010, 09:27 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Local-news site Cleveland.com reports that comic-book writer, jazz critic, and curmudgeon Harvey Pekar died overnight at his home: Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. I can’t help but think Harvey would be amused that his…
Svalbard
(249 Words. April 16, 2010, 08:57 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, I finally got around to reading Philip Pullmann’s celebrated “The Golden Compass,” and did enjoy it. It was a little odd reading a book that was clearly intended for a pretty young audience for the first time in many years, but it was carefully written and a story that would surely have struck powerfully had I read it…
All along the Watchmentower
(222 Words. March 06, 2009, 04:41 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’ve been amusedly following the reviews for Zak Snyder’s “Watchmen.” The news, it seems, is not so good. Most of the negative reviews have been by relatively thoughtless reviewers, a few have been reviews that contained worthwhile critiques, and a vanishingly small number have been by folks who understand the brilliance of the original comic and have consequently approached…
Endless
(30 Words. February 16, 2009, 09:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As a child, I intensely desired the Endless Book. Now that it flows through my computer hourly, I see that I was quite mistaken in my desires, exactly as forewarned….
Reread redeemed
(94 Words. September 19, 2008, 07:07 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
For reasons unknowable to myself, I was drawn to excavate the Sherman Alexie short story What You Pawn I Will Redeem first from the recesses of my mind and thence from the archives of the New Yorker. It remains as astonishing and moving as it was on first reading. I so want to read it aloud to Viv, but…
Independence Day
(100 Words. July 06, 2008, 04:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Endzone was the livejournal of SF writer Tom Disch, a master of dystopian SF and a treasured early reading companion of mine. The books that I remember best are 334 and Camp Concentration. Appropriately, he also executed the novelization of The Prisoner. His perfect cynicism and hopeless view of the human condition are certainly the aspects of his work…
“But he would not stop screaming.”
(123 Words. June 16, 2008, 06:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The New Yorker’s fiction issue includes a longish, elegantly written tale of the baby-trade which interweaves themes of new life, death and loss, sex, and the things we Americans do in service of our desires. It seems unlikely that the piece, written in the form of a companion’s memoir of the expedition to Addis to save some tot or…
3312
(27 Words. June 02, 2008, 05:22 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Since I know at least two of the authors in the series, and love the idea, I suppose I should really man up on 33 1/2….
Ant King
(99 Words. December 31, 2007, 06:12 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I chuckled myself to sleep last night reading the 2001 Hugo-nominated (man, I have no concept where the hell that idea came from) short story “The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale.” I found the story via manybooks.net, or rather, via mnybks.net, the mobile-oriented skinning of the site. The author, Benjamin Rosenbaum looks to be a fairly celebrated current SF…
Josh Bell rocks (?) the DC Metro
(450 Words. April 07, 2007, 08:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
WaPo recasts Josh as busker. He’s game. DC commuters? um. Point: JOSH! I really, really liked this. I sent this note to the WaPo team responsible for the piece. Thank you all for making my day. I knew Josh, distantly, as a kid when we were growing up in Bloomington. I haven’t seen him except to be aware of…
shiny shiny leather
(24 Words. March 22, 2007, 07:54 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(via <>MoFi<>): The Right Kind of Pain, a look at The Velvet Underground by Richard Witts at the London Review of Book….
Attention Seafarers and Chanteyists
(210 Words. February 18, 2007, 10:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I regret to report that the New Yorker double-issue of this week, Feb. 19-26, 2007 contains a dynamite main course in Mark Singer’s long piece, The Castaways. Why the regret for a terrific piece? Well, it ain’t online, so I can’t extract or link. You, dear reader, will be forced to the extremis of commerce to chime with or…
Bumpy Headed Greek
(709 Words. February 16, 2007, 08:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Nouri posted an intriguing look at Alcibiades that caught my attention. I wrote this as a comment for his blog, but my age must be showing as the spam-defeating measures were beyond my patience. I emailed it to him and eventually decided it was a blog post in-and-of, etc. I assume the essay is something he posted in the…
Yoornalista
(166 Words. February 14, 2007, 06:44 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I totally missed the memo, but TCJ editor emeritus Dirk Deppey has bravely picked up the banner of the sorely missed Journalista chez fanta. Several years ago, Dirk launched the site embedded in the upolished confies of the Fantagraphics website and within months, due simply to absurd internet diligence, had transformed the site into not only the single-best comics…
You Don't Lethem Me Yet
(27 Words. February 11, 2007, 04:12 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As spotted on the Vulgar Boatmen listgroup: Jonathan Lethem’s upcoming novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, is titled after a justly-admired Vulgar Boatmen tune. Intriguing possibility!…
Finding Lost
(103 Words. April 08, 2006, 01:03 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
cityofsound: Why Lost is genuinely new media [via thingsmagazine.net] Far out. The author notes that there is a book for sale on Amazon seen on the show as a manuscript being read by Hurley, and cites the author bio from the online bookseller’s listing: “About the Author: Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary…
All in color for the reading
(57 Words. March 29, 2006, 06:31 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Eric at Fanta points out that Penguin is offering some old great stuff in the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions line with excellent covers by cartoonists of excellence that rivals the works themselves. Chis Ware / Voltaire. Frank Miller / Thomas Pynchon. Etc. What cool idea. Note to self: stay out of bookstores for the next 18 months….
V
(22 Words. March 23, 2006, 08:05 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The Greatest Bus Driver in the World has a heartfelt rant inspired by the Alan Moore disowned V is for Vendetta….
La Perdida
(41 Words. March 22, 2006, 06:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Eric at Fanta noted this village voice feature on Jessica Abel’s La Perdida, which struck me as a unique and successful piece on initial publication. I never read the last couple of issues - maybe I’ll pick the book up….
Chaucer's Bloggetrye
(12 Words. March 18, 2006, 01:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog, via MeFi. Laugh out loud hilarious….
Vidpod
(236 Words. March 12, 2006, 11:06 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I have spent a portion of my weekend messing with RSS and The Democracy Player, per the instructions linked, and so far, so good, although my DSL speed is slow enough to consign this to permanent experiment until I finalize the LAN setup and shanghai one of the G4s as a dedicated media server. The Times has a look…
Seattle and ashes
(60 Words. February 27, 2006, 08:02 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Charles D’Ambrosio sketches scenes from a pre-boom Puget Sound - my good old days, chilluns - in The New Yorker. UPDATE: I found the story, as I often do with D’Ambrsio, beautiful and evocative. Interstingly, I distinctly felt that this story was written in conscious dialogue with Alexie and Vollmann. Perhaps someday Vollmann will write of the Northwest directly….
Reading
(148 Words. February 16, 2006, 08:27 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Of late, I have been breasting my way through the purple prose of Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk (almost nothing, it seems, to do with the Errol Flynn flick of 1940 despite the distinct probability that the film is an adaptation) on my superannuated, but happily green-glowing, Palm Vx. Sadly, as I have come to enjoy reading material in…
Game
(9 Words. February 15, 2006, 09:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Enki Bilal and Pierre Christin’s The Hunting Party….
Olive live
(7 Words. February 03, 2006, 08:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Olive, a “console mode RSS aggregator.”…
Rats!
(11 Words. February 01, 2006, 09:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Stacey helps me to understand some things about pests and parasites….
Bear with me
(14 Words. January 31, 2006, 08:51 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
BoT redux! Better let ‘em in on this bit of Bears on Textalia….
Al Ghoul
(171 Words. January 30, 2006, 07:29 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
An idle witticism by a friend led me to look, briefly, into the etymology of “alcohol.” As he jokingly suggested, the word comes to English via Arabic: In general usage, alcohol (from Arabic al-kukhūl الكحول = “the spirit”, “the chemical”.) The wikipedia entry takes a pleasant jaunt into free association, worth examining: However, this derivation is suspicious since the…
FREE AS IN BEER
(23 Words. January 18, 2006, 05:34 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Spence most kinely points out that a Seattle Public Library card entitles the bearer to free online access to certain tech books. Sweet!…
Things on Ballard
(34 Words. January 04, 2006, 08:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The UK’s ever-delicious Things muses on the (personally much beloved) works of J. G. Ballard. There’s nothing like reading a Ballardian landscape in the world; it’s as delicious and dizzying as ancient Scotch….
You Rope Central
(124 Words. November 21, 2005, 10:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On the phone the other night, Mom mentioned that my current bedside tome, Bill Vollmann’s Europe Central, won the National Book Award for fiction. It clearly deserves it, as thus far I find it to be the most accessible thing of his I’ve yet read. It may be a tad too accessible in a way, as I so enjoyed…
Ha!
(52 Words. November 18, 2005, 06:50 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Several months ago in Now Playing I published a long piece about Star Trek fan films, for which I spoke with several persons from various Trek fan projects. Today, when Wired arrived, I was amused to note a cover-featured story about one of these projects in particular, the East Coast-based New Voyages….
Nemo
(51 Words. October 17, 2005, 06:47 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
NYT: Restoring Slumberland. Peter Maresca’s quixotic reprint project restores a selection of Winsor McCay’s amazing comic strip to full-size, on newsprint-like stock. The 21” x 16” book is priced at a bargain $120 and was printed in an edition of 5,000. The books are available for purchase via sundaypressbooks.com….
ESF on RM
(37 Words. September 21, 2005, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Big Bosoms and Square Jaws is E. Steven Fried’s epic review of a Russ Meyer bio. Word on the street is that Mr. Fried will be making the scene at the too-happenin’ NWFF 10th anniversary party tonight….
Dhalgren redux
(227 Words. September 13, 2005, 03:15 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Editor B sends along a link to this essay on Delany’s Dhalgren and New Orleans by Bishda Bannerjee at reason.com. As Americans struggled to grasp what was unfolding in New Orleans, the word “unimaginable” recurred frequently—even though the catastrophe had been imagined, and envisioned, many times. Thirty years ago, science fiction writer Samuel Delany wrote, in high detail, about…
A minor issue
(162 Words. September 10, 2005, 10:43 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The September 12 issue of the New Yorker arrived today. The issue features a deal of writing concerning the flood in New Orleans, as may be expected. However, the cover, depicting a sax player on the roofs of the French Quarter, is quite weak by comparison to Speigelman’s amazing black-on-black cover of four years ago, depicting the memory of…
Free Conference Calls
(7 Words. September 10, 2005, 09:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
TidBITS covers FreeConference.com, a free conference-call service….
Time to reread
(65 Words. September 07, 2005, 09:23 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
J. G. Ballard’s The Drowned World and Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren seem to offer some twentieth-century perspectives on the events of the past week. I have been thinking of Dhalgren in particular all week. This NYT sketch of the evacuated city certainly echoes it. I certainly hope Delany takes the time to write about what we’ve just watched. Here…
Castle Rock
(357 Words. September 05, 2005, 11:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Last night I had the deep pleasure of reading Alice Munro’s recent New Yorker piece, The View from Castle Rock, to Viv aloud. Man, such fine writing! It’s so precise and finely crafted, pivoting from scene to scene with the grace of a dancing master. (My reading order for the mag got scrambled as I had picked up the…
Washed away
(60 Words. August 20, 2005, 09:26 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
As a child, when overwhelming waves of sourceless sadness and pain would erode my interest in the world, once I had learned to read, I could project my consciousness into books. I subsequently did so for really the majority of my time here on Earth. Of late, however, I have noted that the web appears to have diminished this…
Brilliant neighbors
(188 Words. July 01, 2005, 08:09 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
From the Greatest Bus Driver in the World: Poultry notes, featuring a thoughtful exegesis of soon-to-be-ex Justice Connor and her memorable career in the entertainment industry. His Back to the Blog combines some excellent writing on antidepressant medications with careful observations of Jon’s cat and the environment. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, B^2 breaks radio silence with one of his patented,…
Paintnins
(29 Words. June 13, 2005, 09:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This AskMe thread begins with a plaintive cry into the dark void of space concerning a series of late seventies sci-fi coffeetable books, and uncovers a secret universe….
Piratical!
(69 Words. May 18, 2005, 10:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I read this amusing NYT piece to Viv aloud because she was asking why I was chuckling. Extra points to the author for assiduously avoiding the Napoleon Dynamite and Pirates of the Caribbean referents the photographer so carefully captured. While a tad glib, I am filled with admiration for the writing itself in this article. Geez, 2-for-2 from the…
Flight
(236 Words. May 17, 2005, 04:11 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
JG Ballard reviews The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination 1920-1950, by Robert Wohl, in the Guardian. I have read, and deeply enjoyed, Professor Wohl’s previous book on the subject of the cultural symbology of aviation, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908 to 1918. I am quite looking forward to reading this newer…
Aldiss in his Quicktime
(375 Words. April 12, 2005, 06:16 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Meet the Author | Book Bites - Brian Aldiss: Greybeard. (Quicktime autoload) I just started plowing through some early work by one of may favorite UK New Wave SF authors, Brian Aldiss. I have never really plumbed what attracts me to his work, but he shares a commoanlity of tone and certain interests with his peer J. G. Ballard….
Men of Yesterday
(496 Words. January 23, 2005, 10:01 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I recently read - more devoured - Gerard Jones’ breezy, sprawling Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. Here’s a Comics Journal discussion thread about the book - it looks like I’m not the only comics lover that found the book gripping. Jones charts the rise and diffusion of the contemporary American comic book from…
A Two-way
(62 Words. December 10, 2004, 04:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The Soviet Exploration of Venus and the debunked Lost Cosmonauts. Also, this week, the New Yorker is running a long piece by David Grann on the death of R. L. Green, “the world’s foremost expert on Arthur Conan Doyle.” Oldtimey wrote about Green’s bizarre death at the time of his passing, having had interactions with the chap via her antiquarian…
Mo words
(13 Words. December 04, 2004, 12:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary is MeFite Mo Nickels’ wondrous playground of the word….
Aztecs, the Clash, the Presidency and the Bible
(850 Words. October 31, 2004, 01:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Occasionally, I mention that one piece or another in a given issue of The New Yorker has particularly struck me. In general, though I try to avoid doing so, mostly because the magazine appeals to me so consistently that if I did not deliberately choose to exclude it from my blogging, I’d be repeating myself weekly. This week, however,…
Iphigenia at Aulis
(233 Words. August 27, 2004, 07:27 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Having managed to view fragments amounting to one half of the final episode of the decidedly average The Spartans, I variously learned or was reminded that: Upon the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, about 7,000 Athenian invaders were imprisoned for a fair period of time in a quarry at Syracuse, exposed to the elements and fading fast. According to the transcript…
Bittehouse
(18 Words. August 26, 2004, 10:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The PG Wodehouse Library: public domain Wodehouse. Aaaaah. 36 Wodehouse titles, all free, all for Palm….
six feet from the O. P. to the Prompt Side
(189 Words. August 24, 2004, 11:02 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I’ve embarked on my annual peregrinations in the company of that amiable nitwit Bertie Wooster, and for some reason, the voices of the excellent Fry and Laurie are echoing in my head more clearly than they have in the past. Wodehouse casts the whole oeuvre in Bertie’s wildly flighty voice, and consequently I hear Hugh Laurie’s piping, bug-eyed take on…
in the whale's eye
(71 Words. August 22, 2004, 07:13 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Pursuant to an interesting discussion, In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick is hereby bookmarked, or rather linked. The book is said to be based upon the incident that became the basis for Moby Dick. I’m starting to lean into nineteenth-century readings again and this sounds tasty. Given my towering pile of on-deck matter, however, it may be…
in a lonely place
(244 Words. August 16, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Saturday night, I caught two Bogart films on TMC, 1951’s uneven The Enforcer, a fictionalization of the discovery and prosecution of the notorious Murder, Inc., and a great film I’d unaccountably missed in my peerings at and mumblings on the era’s work. That film is In a Lonely Place (1950), based on the recently-republished Dorothy Hughes title of the same…
ividly
(594 Words. August 15, 2004, 11:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent a big chunk of today finally exploring the integration features in iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. I’m working from a mixed base of assets representing the two most recent camping trips we went on (to Mount Baker in June and to the Olympic Peninsula this month). As it happens, long-time MacWorld editor Jim Heid saw a prior entry…
Annabel Lee; The Banjo - grotesque fantasie; and so forth
(221 Words. August 04, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The eagle eyed Manuel linkied me via email with ye olde Duke U. repository of American sheet music cover pages, covering the years between 1850 and 1920. Each decade is presented in its’ own browsable gallery, although it takes a few clicks to get to the good stuff. But the good stuff, well, it’s good. A typographical horror representing the…
Achangled Bodificises
(20 Words. July 26, 2004, 08:45 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Runtalthreentomoutesometry: ing custoppection hes. Tings, gicarderasseard efins. Iveld unicanectivemeness lationslate insuspa — dulablocken! Guarpes, destation, winnedate, tus. Updang!…
Collective
(269 Words. July 09, 2004, 07:01 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I chuckled my way through Tad Friend’s Letter from California, “Naked Profits,” in the July 12 and 13 issue of The New Yorker, unfortunately not online. Friend is (or was) a staff writer at the magazine, and wrote the interesting “Jumpers” for a 2003 issue of the magazine, in which institutional resistance to jump-proofing scenic landmarks was dissected. Here, Friend…
History
(279 Words. May 21, 2004, 02:59 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I very recently read A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, and I heartily recommend it. This general-interest survey of the current state of scientific knowledge concerning, well, nearly everything, is lucid and highly entertaining. Bryson’s interested-observer role is well played; as I read the book, I have to admit I wondered how long it would be until…
Skeleton Island
(143 Words. May 20, 2004, 03:34 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Click the closeup to see the whole map. Scanning this, I noticed some killer engraved illustrations in the book. But I really must move on today. UPDATE: Hmm, I had noticed this as I was working on the prior entry, but there’s an odd chiming between this new look of mine and the recent redesig over at Josh’s Communications…
On Identity
(266 Words. March 19, 2004, 09:46 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The Statesman claims that Don Foster has fingered exposed unmasked uncovered revealed the author of Belle de Jour. Foster used computer-based linguistic analysis to deduce that Joe Klein wrote Primary Colors. [via Boing Boing] USA Today Says Reporter Faked Stories [NYT]: Five-time Pulitzer nominee fired. Jack Kelley spent 21 years at USA Today, and judging by the fabrications cited in…
When pressed
(219 Words. March 06, 2004, 01:24 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Rising Up and Rising Down: Vollmann’s Anatomy of Violence. [NYT] See? Din’t I tell yez ta pick this up? I do not know if the NYT guy got a different edition than I - but I wouldn’t call the thin-cotton cased boards that form the covers of these books ‘luxurious.’ It’s more ‘respectful,’ a minimum effort to provide a physical…
Congruent Orbital Paths
(100 Words. February 28, 2004, 11:20 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, by now we all know that the end of the world was barely averted recently when an asteroid just missed the planet. Shortly thereafter, I found it peculiar to read a story whose central metaphor for the loss of a child is asteroidal impact and variations thereof. The story was posted online February 23. The actual events took place…
Leo Gursky
(62 Words. February 08, 2004, 02:23 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The Last Words on Earth, by Nicole Krauss. Feb 9, 2004 issue of the New Yorker. A funny little old man tells us about some of the buffeting the century dealt him. He’s hilarious; the story is heartbreaking. I loved it. I laughed, I cried, right? Well, yeah. (I should clarify that the story is a short work of fiction.)…
the Ice Storm
(886 Words. January 25, 2004, 12:15 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Hollyism notes that an ice storm is inbound to my hometown of Bloomington, and as I’ve been looking for an opportunity to elevate the level of discourse here by running a neglected citation by Mr. Twain, here it is. I was pretty much killed by this when I read it - it’s a bit over the top by modern standards,…
Rising up and Rising Down Nominated by NBCC
(36 Words. January 21, 2004, 09:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
National Book Critics Circle chooses awards nominees, sayeth the press release. At the risk of repeating myself, what are you waiting for? Step it up, biblomanes - it’s gonna sell out. Other Vollmann entries here….
Wolfe
(71 Words. January 15, 2004, 09:25 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Latro, Cerebrus, Suns New, Long and Short - Gene Wolfe | Metafilter, from the reliable hand of y2karl. Gene Wolfe roundup, thorough as ever from the redoubtable. Wolfe also is interviewed of late by Neil Gaiman on the occasion of his current book, The Knight, just out. I must be out and about for some portion of my day. Will…
more on RURD
(220 Words. January 05, 2004, 11:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: William Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down, an oral history. After reading this, I am antsy for the book to get here. Ken mentioned that he’d heard Eggers mention a) they were publishing the book and b) it was going to be reasonably priced. It was on the phone or something, instant messaging, I don’t recall….
Rising Up and Rising Down
(23 Words. January 05, 2004, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Rising Up and Rising Down, by Bill Vollmann. Published by McSweeney’s, seven volumes, one C-note, 3500 copies. What are you waiting for?…
Craig Thompson transcript - Contents
(87 Words. December 28, 2003, 07:20 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
This provides a Table of Contents that presents the eight parts of my conversation with Craig Thompson in order (and, being posted last, sits at the top of the Category listing for the material) Craig Thompson transcript - Contents Craig Thompson transcript - Part 1 Craig Thompson transcript - Part 2 Craig Thompson transcript - Part 3 Craig Thompson transcript…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 8
(2338 Words. December 27, 2003, 07:20 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Seven, we’d just discussed the possibility of comparisons between Thompson’s book and the…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 7
(1493 Words. December 26, 2003, 07:20 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Six, Craig had just said he didn’t feel he had the right to…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 6
(2174 Words. December 25, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Five, we’d begun discussing autobio comics as a genre and how Blankets related…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 5
(1719 Words. December 24, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Four, the tape cut off just as we began to discuss the influence…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 4
(2321 Words. December 23, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Three, Craig had just identified some period songs that were appropriate as a…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 3
(2161 Words. December 22, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Two, I’d just spoken with Craig about Blankets’ resemblance to another huge book…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 2
(1846 Words. December 21, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part One, I’d just observed that Craig had traced a series of interests in…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 1
(1984 Words. December 20, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels . Thompson won a Harvey Award for his debut, the fanciful, yet melancholy Goodbye, Chunky Rice, and two years later, in the summer of 2003, followed up with his remarkable 600-page graphic novel, Blankets….
The old prof and the new one
(51 Words. December 18, 2003, 02:13 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Wormtalk and Slugspeak: Michael Drout is a medievalist and Tolkien scholar at Wheaton. His blog, lately, well, it’s about what you might expect. As someone who has attempted to bring a measure of depth to my own writing about the professor and his current avatars, his material holds my attention….
White Elephant I
(570 Words. December 14, 2003, 10:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We attended our second White Elephant gift exchange last night. Tonight as we were eating or out shopping or someplace, Viv asked me where the term and the tradition came from. I told her that I understood it to refer to a tradition in an Asian country, possibly Thailand, where white elephants are a sacred symbol of the king, and…
Fruit Detective update
(261 Words. December 08, 2003, 09:34 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Yesterday, I promised to drop a line to John Seabrook, the author of that amusing New Yorker article about David Karp, the Fruit Detective, in support of an enquiry from a random web surfer concerning information obtained through CBS Sunday Morning concerning a book about the legendary fruit-hunter. To my surprise, I received an email from none other than the…
Craig Thompson piece up at TABLET
(269 Words. December 06, 2003, 02:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Ink and Pixels for Tablet’s 82nd ish is based on a long, long, loooong telephone conversation I had with the gifted creator of Blankets and Goodbye, Chunky Rice. It seems pretty clear to me that the publication of Blankets could be the most important thing that happened in American independent comics this year, because it presents a potential direction for…
Roberta Gregory transcript
(3404 Words. November 20, 2003, 12:14 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I interviewed comics vet Roberta Gregory via email for Ink and Pixels at the end of October. The column that resulted is up at Tablet currently. This is the transcript of our correspondance. I edited it to add links, expand some abbreviations, and remove an intro I included with the questions so that Roberta would have some background on Ink…
What a Bargain!
(16 Words. November 12, 2003, 02:38 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
From a local ad circular in the paper a few days ago. Man! Hold me BACK!…
full text
(180 Words. October 23, 2003, 06:51 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Amazon.com: Books / Search Inside the Book” href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197021/ref=sib_merch_gw/103-5613508-9647049”> Amazon.com: Books / Search Inside the Book: Amazon announces full-text search on books (not every book, mind you). What are the limitations, I wonder? Damn, this could be cool. Does this imply, then, that Amazon might become the de facto electronic publisher of choice for desktop delivery? The FAQ, linked above,…
Steamboats
(151 Words. October 22, 2003, 06:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
More Twain-related links for my own satisfaction. I’m currently completing “Life on the Mississippi” and figured I should supplement my imagination and Twain’s recollections with hard links. Regarding “Life on the Mississippi,” two passages have stood out. In one, Twain modestly describes the peculiar experience of seeing a steamer named after him. He’s writing in the 1880’s, and it’s interesting…
Attn: Poupou
(10 Words. October 15, 2003, 06:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Hello Kitty - The Remarkable Story. That is all….
the Twain
(561 Words. September 25, 2003, 07:55 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, speaking of Mark Twain, the exceptionally obsessive out there will recall that I plunked down nearly five bucks for the complete works of Mark Twain in Palm-compatible formats about a month ago. It’s a formidably huge amount of data, as I noted. There’s something singularly delightful in the act of reading the material on the Palm - Twain once…
B'shoot
(424 Words. September 01, 2003, 01:09 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Went down to Bumbershoot to cover the cartoonists’ panel at InkSpot and met a number of folks that I’ve been corresponding with. I also saw Scott K., who wanted to know why I wasn’t working for him (he’s an event security manager). One hundred simoleans a day. “Hmm”, I had to tell him, “there was no valid reason, in fact,…
More on Palm ebooks
(321 Words. August 27, 2003, 07:22 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I briefly noted some palm ebook resources. Motivated by curiosity I purchased the Mark Twain set - it weighs in at about 8mb, and, yes, it appears to be the actual complete works of Mark Twain. I know, of course, that the material for the Twain books - and most of the rest of the free classics available digitally -…
Free Palm ebooks!
(26 Words. August 25, 2003, 10:07 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
.:: chuggnutt ::. | Free Palm Reader eBooks - I’d say this is, like, self-explanatory. Of course, I should note the $4.95 Complete Mark Twain….
A New York Trio
(1122 Words. August 11, 2003, 08:32 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent the past few weeks plowing through a double-feature, prompted initially by the release to DVD of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. About the time that the disc hit shelves a few weeks ago, I found myself, like others, reflecting on the film. In the theater, it was a frustrating viewing experience; it was clear that there was…
Coloring Outside the Lines: a punk rock memoir
(1021 Words. June 12, 2003, 07:54 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Coloring Outside the Lines: a punk rock memoir Aimee Cooper, 132pp, published by Rowdy’s Press Back in January or February, author Aimee Cooper sent me an email, asking if I’d like to review her self-published book, Coloring Outside the Lines, apparently in response to a dual review of Please Kill Me and American Hardcore I’d posted under the title “I’m…
A True Relation of William The Blind's ARGALL
(1571 Words. June 06, 2003, 08:30 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Argall William T. Vollmann 746 pp. Viking, 2001. ISBN.nu listing I already ran a quick piece on Vollmann’s Argall, and noted, foolishly, that I hoped to complete a formal book review of the work before going on about the book for another five hundred words, which permitted me to start to say what I wanted to without expending any particular…
McSweeney's 10: McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
(1153 Words. June 05, 2003, 08:22 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Edited by Michael Chabon ISBN.nu I picked this up at the same time as I did McSweeney’s 9, thinking it was a McSweeney’s spinoff or one-shot like the Hornby music thingy. It’s a stunt book, guest edited by the reigning high priest of high-and-low-brow, the Pulitzer-prize-winning Spider-man scribe (HA! that was fun to write) Michael Chabon, and it delivers exactly…
I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down
(196 Words. June 04, 2003, 08:27 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Ed Emmer’s Wolfe essay from BOT is now available as scanned images hosted on my imageserver. Ed, a fast talking brainslinger of no mean wit, wrote the nine-page stemwinder, a hilarious, withering dismissal of a specific essay that Mr. Tom Wolfe published in Harper’s just as the hardback edition of “The Bonfire of the Vanities” hit shelves. Here’e how Mr….
The Mall at Borges Grove
(52 Words. June 02, 2003, 10:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Goliard Dream: The Mall Hungers for Fresh Meat. In which Felicity stewards Brittany and Sarah to the mall. There, the girls find they can’t find what they seek, for a time. How long a time? How long indeed, for the mall is large, and they are but Brittany and Sarah….
OUR LIBRARY OPENS!
(35 Words. May 31, 2003, 08:39 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The Capitol Hill Branch of the Seattle Public Library opens today, finally, after a two-year construction process that sadly exactly coincided with the depths of the recession here. We might go have a look-see….
Going Down in the Magic Kingdom
(1049 Words. April 10, 2003, 04:53 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
(Dear god, I fear the search referrers this entry will garner. Cher googleurs: no Disney porn here, nuh-uh, just an over-clever title.) Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is, of course, boingboinger Cory Doctorow’s novel, released not too long ago in print and online in a plethora of free formats. Just about at release, I grabbed it in a…
The Stranger Awakens
(647 Words. April 03, 2003, 12:21 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Was This House Worth Her Life?: Eli Sanders reports from the Gaza Strip on the death of Olympia’s Rachel Corrie. With this long, well-written, and unsentimental news feature, which anchors this week’s issue of The Stranger, Seattle’s once-beloved but lately somnambulant weekly, it’s clear that long-time editor in chief Dan Savage is now once again paying attention. The article is…
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 4
(1779 Words. March 20, 2003, 07:33 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This is the fourth part of my interview with Michael Moorcock, the next to last part. In his work, there are several themes that stand out. Foremost among them are the setting and importance of urban civilization; the use of three-part characters – three persons locked in a relationship, often of both blood and sexual love, two partners male, and…
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 3
(986 Words. March 19, 2003, 01:13 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Beginning in Mr. Moorcock’s New Worlds days, he began producing formalist pranks and serious high-modern pieces that eventually combined into one continuing work, the Jerry Cornelius books (if I have my history right). All four were recently reissued in the book A Cornelius Quartet, and from a formal perspective they are the trickiest of Moorcock’s work. He went on to…
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 2
(718 Words. March 18, 2003, 12:36 PM, Comments: 32) MORE >>>
This is part two, a day late, of my Michael Moorcock interview. In this section, Mr. Moorcock responds to my questions about the original series of Elric novels and stories. In the late nineties, White Wolf Publishing issued a 15-volume series that collects nearly all of Mr. Moorcock’s fantasy and science fiction, including two volumes of Elric stories and novels….
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 1
(1251 Words. March 17, 2003, 01:58 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Michael Moorcock is one of the most prolific F&SF authors of all time, and his work is not easily collected because it spans media. Personally, I’m always discovering new bits and pieces of stuff by him that I haven’t yet read. Moorcock is one of my all-time favorite writers, and I’ve devoured his works since I first discovered them as…
Also overdue
(591 Words. March 16, 2003, 03:40 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I noted a ways back ago that I’d come across Argall, by William T. Vollmann, in my peregrinations and snatched it up with greed. I read the book in about four sittings; it’s Vollmann’s crack at the Pocahontas story. It’s also one of his Seven Dreams, seven books that undertake to re-envision the encounters between Native American and European cultures…
The Iliad and The Odyssey
(541 Words. March 16, 2003, 02:43 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I have been casting about, unsuccessfully, for the next read-aloud book to share in bed, after this past years successful journey through The Lord of the Rings . We tried some of my favorite literary SF and fantasy, which was an utter bomb - instead of trusting the book to provide the visualization of the alternate world, Viv…
Borges, Selected Non-Fictions
(1064 Words. February 20, 2003, 07:48 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I spent a considerable portion of my recent leisure reading time recently with one of three recent American collections of Jorge Luis Borges in fresh translations (by Eliot Weinberger). The Selected Non-Fictions, according to the volume proper, are relatively less well-known than his fiction writing. Given that’s true, allow me to commend your attention to these works. Amazon is also…
Michael Moorcock
(30 Words. January 20, 2003, 03:33 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I just emailed Mr. Moorcock a largish interview which will form the basis of an article for Cinescape soon… and then see the light of day here. I can’t wait!…
Golly!
(299 Words. January 03, 2003, 07:08 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
Goliard Dream: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is felicity’s thumbs up for the remarkable Michael Chabon novel. I expect she knows I’ve read it, although it was in pre-blogging days (I saw it in a bookstore as i was preparing for a trip and grabbed it - the trip may have been my first to NYC, but time…
Interesting or Boring? Promising or Scam?
(263 Words. December 31, 2002, 08:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
New Tolkien book discovered at news.com.au. A US academic, Michael Drout, found the Tolkien material by accident in a box of papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. An assistant professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, Dr Drout was researching Anglo- Saxon scholarship at the Bodleian, and asked to see a copy of a lecture on Beowulf…
lower-case i
(492 Words. December 28, 2002, 11:50 AM, Comments: 17) MORE >>>
Who Owns the Internet? You and i Do at the NYT looks at Joseph Turow’s campaign to encourage journalists to, er, decapitate the word “Internet” when used in copy. Much to my frowniness, the article educated me on the widespread misuse of the capitalization of the word. That’s thanks in part, as the story notes, to Word’s insistent auto-capitalization of…
The gathering storm
(139 Words. December 24, 2002, 07:27 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Propaganda and ‘Lord of the Rings’ "I don’t think that ‘The Two Towers’ or Tolkien’s writing or our work has anything to do with the United States’ foreign ventures," he told Mr. Rose, "and it upsets me to hear that." —Viggo Mortensen in an appearance on Charlie Rose And, less than two days after my prediction we’d see debates concerning…
The girl you love in that merrie green land
(1301 Words. December 20, 2002, 07:00 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
While this week’s series of entries has thus far deliberately excluded the experience of seeing the films for the most part, and may do so for the balance of the week, I’ve admitted their role as catalyst in prompting my renewed acquaintance with the books. In the weeks leading up to the release of last year’s The Fellowship of the…
Rereading Middle-Earth
(1550 Words. December 19, 2002, 07:19 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Rereading the novels was a fascinating, and unique experience. I believe that the last time I read them was at around age 19 or 20, before I completed college, possibly before I declared a major. Therefore, it’s probable that I read them naively, that is, in ignorance of literary devices and critical techniques, solely as story-oriented entertainments. This time, I…
Preparing the ground
(756 Words. December 18, 2002, 07:10 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I first heard of the Peter Jackson film adaptation of Lord of the Rings the way almost everyone else in the computer industry did – online. I knew Jackson as a filmmaker for both over the top kookery the likes of Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive – which are among the most extreme, yet good humored, films ever made…
Two years before the thesaurus
(258 Words. December 07, 2002, 03:38 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Then the starboard watch board the main tack, and the larboard watch lay forward and board the fore tack and haul down the jib sheet, clapping a tackle upon it if it blows very fresh. and When all was right, the bunts were triced well up, the yard-arm gaskets passed, so as not to leave a wrinkle forward of…
Dale on New Orleans
(59 Words. October 30, 2002, 07:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dale Lawrence dropped a line to note that an editing error had dropped a graf from the website posting of his article on New Orleans. Its the third graf, and it’s about the beat. Dale noted it was ‘crucial’, and I see what he means. Tomorrow night, he’ll be channelling Lou Reed in Bloomington. Wish I could be thre….
Books, part two
(1231 Words. October 14, 2002, 07:22 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
On Sunday, the four of us (Eric and Anne, visiting from Chicago; and my wife Vivian and myself, for those keeping score at home) engaged in one of the umpteen mandated activities for out-of-town visitors and took our city’s lovely, 60’s vintage monorail from downtown a whole mile to Seattle center, where the Space Needle and the Experience Music project…
Books, part one
(748 Words. October 12, 2002, 05:54 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Eric and I began our friendship because of a book. It was one of those ’70s Star Trek paperbacks. Since then both he and I have perpetually crammed our living spaces full of other books. Vivian occasionally tries to cull the herd, as it were, but I’m agin it. Thus it was appropriate that today we worked our way from…
Hurricane Ridge
(164 Words. October 11, 2002, 05:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Eric, Anne, Vivian, Eric’s cousin Ilse, and I went to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympics for a picnic today. Eric has one of them new fangled micro-wireless doohickeys, a Danger hiptop, I think, that allows you to check email, reply, websurf, and so forth from a thing about the size of an overweight palm pilot. I tried to post to…
Drummond & Son
(460 Words. October 04, 2002, 08:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Drummond & Son, in the October 7 ish of the New Yorker, spins a sodden tale of my town, and I thought it was nailed. The geography is right, for example; and while Mr. D’Ambrosio locates his typewriter shop in Belltown, there was just such a shop about four blocks from where I live, that’s now become a fine drinking…
The Pirate Hunter
(1000 Words. June 21, 2002, 12:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Capatin Kidd by Robert Zacks. ISBN: 0786865334. Zacks is also the author of “An Underground Education”, kind of contrarian trivia book that I had read and pretty much forgotten about - one of those mind-candy trivia books that includes details about inessential but interesting bits of historical trivia such as the role…
Sky Ships, a review
(1160 Words. May 04, 2002, 07:15 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Sky Ships, a history of the airship in the United States Navy, published 1990 by Pacifica Press. By William Althoff, 304 pp. Out of print. Buy it from the NAS Lakehurst gift shop online or used from Amazon. Here’s an excerpt concerning the consruction of the Shenandoah at NAS Lakehurst, New Jersey. Finally, it should be noted that Lakehurst is…
Gene Wolfe, part two
(348 Words. April 05, 2002, 12:59 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
After the “Book of the New Sun”, Wolfe went on to write many other books, including the undeservedly obscure “Soldier of the Mist” and “Soldier of Arete”, historically rigorous novels of a wandering mercenary in Greece at the time of the wars recounted in Homer. The soldier, who is nameless, has the same brain problem that the Guy Pearce character…
Gene Wolfe, part one
(192 Words. March 30, 2002, 12:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’ve been reading entire oeuvres lately, preferably in order of publication, and am currently taking a break from the incredibly prolific (and just hospitalized) Michael Moorcock by rereading Gene Wolfe’s work. I first read Wolfe in the mid-eighties as his masterwork, the four-volume “Book of the New Sun” was coming out. The tetralogy is highly influenced by the work of…
Smithsonian, April 2002
(473 Words. March 27, 2002, 12:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Lovely Lincoln portrait cover. My faves in the mag were the extremely cool photos by Edward Burtynsky of shipbreaking in India - the scale of the fragments of the ships, and their worn quality, reminds me very strongly of SF art that impressed me as a child. These images seemed to point out to me that what is really interesting…
the New Yorker, March 25, 2002
(454 Words. March 26, 2002, 08:29 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I really enjoyed the illustration for Malcolm Gladwell’s review of “The Myth of the Paperless Office” on page 92. I enjoyed the article itself, of course, which is a reflection on messiness in the workspace as an organizing principle. Both the review and the illustration appear to reflect the ideas of David Gelernter, CS guy at Yale, victim of the…
Book reviews, reccomendations; magazine commentary
Strange links
(97 Words. January 22, 2012, 08:50 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
A couple links to critical material on Norrell & Strange: Cynn Corvus, a series of personal essays on the book, essentially an enthusiastic and literate reader’s reflections, basically an internal monologue, on the book. Includes an essay on Clarke’s short stories as well, which I skipped in order to permit me to read them fresh when I pick up the…
Starstruck update
(90 Words. January 21, 2012, 10:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Update to my posts of a week or two ago. In the interim of buying a new set of the original Epic run on eBay and the new copies arriving, I, of course, found the missing box of comics that contained the original copies. It turns out I had not picked up one of the original issues when I was…
Gibson
(207 Words. January 17, 2012, 09:37 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Listening to William Gibson on the radio, I suddenly remember buying the paperback edition of Neuromancer at Left Bank Books in the Market. Thinking about it I realize I may have bought it new, on initial publication. After looking up a bibliography of his stuff, I am surprised to see he published consistently in Omni throughout the 1980s, and therefore…
More on Starstruck
(3 Words. January 08, 2012, 06:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
some critical analysis…
Starstruck Deluxe Edition: missing material
(23 Words. January 08, 2012, 05:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Aargh, I was right, sez the CJ: You won’t find the material from issues #2-6 of the Epic series in this book……
ex gReader PM weighs in on UI redesign
(225 Words. November 01, 2011, 04:13 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Brian Shih on the new gR UI: Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision? Google released the previously announced set of changes around G+ integration and UI updates today, and boy is it a disaster. … …it’s as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something. When you log into…
Crimes in Southern Indiana
(1263 Words. October 25, 2011, 01:24 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(I expect that I will post this on my own blog as well. I use the formal “Mr.” convention here for reasons I hope are obvious.) A few weeks ago I noticed a flutter in the twittersphere concerning a just-released book, Frank Bill’s Crimes in Southern Indiana. (Mr. Bill maintains an active blog at Frank Bill’s House of Grit.) Preveiwers…
Zero History
(291 Words. April 29, 2011, 10:34 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally started Gibson’s Zero History, which I had been putting off for months. I’m happy to report it is entertaining me very much. The book is about industrial espionage in the global clothing industry. A major supporting character is introduced wearing a ridiculous suit in International Klein Blue, and the hardback’s boards are this color. This little joke make…
The Sun that Burns
(539 Words. August 30, 2010, 11:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Saturday, I spent the whole day sitting on the beach near the San Onofre nuclear plant, reading. The whole day was cool, and the morning, from 10 to 1 or so, was grey and misty, quite pleasant. Just as the clouds pushed back offshore, the Goodyear blimp mosied on by, headed south at about 800 feet. I friended…
RIP Harvey
(304 Words. July 12, 2010, 09:27 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Local-news site Cleveland.com reports that comic-book writer, jazz critic, and curmudgeon Harvey Pekar died overnight at his home: Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. I can’t help but think Harvey would be amused that his…
Svalbard
(249 Words. April 16, 2010, 08:57 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, I finally got around to reading Philip Pullmann’s celebrated “The Golden Compass,” and did enjoy it. It was a little odd reading a book that was clearly intended for a pretty young audience for the first time in many years, but it was carefully written and a story that would surely have struck powerfully had I read it…
All along the Watchmentower
(222 Words. March 06, 2009, 04:41 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’ve been amusedly following the reviews for Zak Snyder’s “Watchmen.” The news, it seems, is not so good. Most of the negative reviews have been by relatively thoughtless reviewers, a few have been reviews that contained worthwhile critiques, and a vanishingly small number have been by folks who understand the brilliance of the original comic and have consequently approached…
Endless
(30 Words. February 16, 2009, 09:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As a child, I intensely desired the Endless Book. Now that it flows through my computer hourly, I see that I was quite mistaken in my desires, exactly as forewarned….
Reread redeemed
(94 Words. September 19, 2008, 07:07 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
For reasons unknowable to myself, I was drawn to excavate the Sherman Alexie short story What You Pawn I Will Redeem first from the recesses of my mind and thence from the archives of the New Yorker. It remains as astonishing and moving as it was on first reading. I so want to read it aloud to Viv, but…
Independence Day
(100 Words. July 06, 2008, 04:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Endzone was the livejournal of SF writer Tom Disch, a master of dystopian SF and a treasured early reading companion of mine. The books that I remember best are 334 and Camp Concentration. Appropriately, he also executed the novelization of The Prisoner. His perfect cynicism and hopeless view of the human condition are certainly the aspects of his work…
“But he would not stop screaming.”
(123 Words. June 16, 2008, 06:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The New Yorker’s fiction issue includes a longish, elegantly written tale of the baby-trade which interweaves themes of new life, death and loss, sex, and the things we Americans do in service of our desires. It seems unlikely that the piece, written in the form of a companion’s memoir of the expedition to Addis to save some tot or…
3312
(27 Words. June 02, 2008, 05:22 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Since I know at least two of the authors in the series, and love the idea, I suppose I should really man up on 33 1/2….
Ant King
(99 Words. December 31, 2007, 06:12 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I chuckled myself to sleep last night reading the 2001 Hugo-nominated (man, I have no concept where the hell that idea came from) short story “The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale.” I found the story via manybooks.net, or rather, via mnybks.net, the mobile-oriented skinning of the site. The author, Benjamin Rosenbaum looks to be a fairly celebrated current SF…
Josh Bell rocks (?) the DC Metro
(450 Words. April 07, 2007, 08:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
WaPo recasts Josh as busker. He’s game. DC commuters? um. Point: JOSH! I really, really liked this. I sent this note to the WaPo team responsible for the piece. Thank you all for making my day. I knew Josh, distantly, as a kid when we were growing up in Bloomington. I haven’t seen him except to be aware of…
shiny shiny leather
(24 Words. March 22, 2007, 07:54 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(via <>MoFi<>): The Right Kind of Pain, a look at The Velvet Underground by Richard Witts at the London Review of Book….
Attention Seafarers and Chanteyists
(210 Words. February 18, 2007, 10:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I regret to report that the New Yorker double-issue of this week, Feb. 19-26, 2007 contains a dynamite main course in Mark Singer’s long piece, The Castaways. Why the regret for a terrific piece? Well, it ain’t online, so I can’t extract or link. You, dear reader, will be forced to the extremis of commerce to chime with or…
Bumpy Headed Greek
(709 Words. February 16, 2007, 08:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Nouri posted an intriguing look at Alcibiades that caught my attention. I wrote this as a comment for his blog, but my age must be showing as the spam-defeating measures were beyond my patience. I emailed it to him and eventually decided it was a blog post in-and-of, etc. I assume the essay is something he posted in the…
Yoornalista
(166 Words. February 14, 2007, 06:44 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I totally missed the memo, but TCJ editor emeritus Dirk Deppey has bravely picked up the banner of the sorely missed Journalista chez fanta. Several years ago, Dirk launched the site embedded in the upolished confies of the Fantagraphics website and within months, due simply to absurd internet diligence, had transformed the site into not only the single-best comics…
You Don't Lethem Me Yet
(27 Words. February 11, 2007, 04:12 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As spotted on the Vulgar Boatmen listgroup: Jonathan Lethem’s upcoming novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, is titled after a justly-admired Vulgar Boatmen tune. Intriguing possibility!…
Finding Lost
(103 Words. April 08, 2006, 01:03 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
cityofsound: Why Lost is genuinely new media [via thingsmagazine.net] Far out. The author notes that there is a book for sale on Amazon seen on the show as a manuscript being read by Hurley, and cites the author bio from the online bookseller’s listing: “About the Author: Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary…
All in color for the reading
(57 Words. March 29, 2006, 06:31 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Eric at Fanta points out that Penguin is offering some old great stuff in the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions line with excellent covers by cartoonists of excellence that rivals the works themselves. Chis Ware / Voltaire. Frank Miller / Thomas Pynchon. Etc. What cool idea. Note to self: stay out of bookstores for the next 18 months….
V
(22 Words. March 23, 2006, 08:05 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The Greatest Bus Driver in the World has a heartfelt rant inspired by the Alan Moore disowned V is for Vendetta….
La Perdida
(41 Words. March 22, 2006, 06:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Eric at Fanta noted this village voice feature on Jessica Abel’s La Perdida, which struck me as a unique and successful piece on initial publication. I never read the last couple of issues - maybe I’ll pick the book up….
Chaucer's Bloggetrye
(12 Words. March 18, 2006, 01:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog, via MeFi. Laugh out loud hilarious….
Vidpod
(236 Words. March 12, 2006, 11:06 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I have spent a portion of my weekend messing with RSS and The Democracy Player, per the instructions linked, and so far, so good, although my DSL speed is slow enough to consign this to permanent experiment until I finalize the LAN setup and shanghai one of the G4s as a dedicated media server. The Times has a look…
Seattle and ashes
(60 Words. February 27, 2006, 08:02 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Charles D’Ambrosio sketches scenes from a pre-boom Puget Sound - my good old days, chilluns - in The New Yorker. UPDATE: I found the story, as I often do with D’Ambrsio, beautiful and evocative. Interstingly, I distinctly felt that this story was written in conscious dialogue with Alexie and Vollmann. Perhaps someday Vollmann will write of the Northwest directly….
Reading
(148 Words. February 16, 2006, 08:27 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Of late, I have been breasting my way through the purple prose of Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk (almost nothing, it seems, to do with the Errol Flynn flick of 1940 despite the distinct probability that the film is an adaptation) on my superannuated, but happily green-glowing, Palm Vx. Sadly, as I have come to enjoy reading material in…
Game
(9 Words. February 15, 2006, 09:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Enki Bilal and Pierre Christin’s The Hunting Party….
Olive live
(7 Words. February 03, 2006, 08:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Olive, a “console mode RSS aggregator.”…
Rats!
(11 Words. February 01, 2006, 09:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Stacey helps me to understand some things about pests and parasites….
Bear with me
(14 Words. January 31, 2006, 08:51 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
BoT redux! Better let ‘em in on this bit of Bears on Textalia….
Al Ghoul
(171 Words. January 30, 2006, 07:29 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
An idle witticism by a friend led me to look, briefly, into the etymology of “alcohol.” As he jokingly suggested, the word comes to English via Arabic: In general usage, alcohol (from Arabic al-kukhūl الكحول = “the spirit”, “the chemical”.) The wikipedia entry takes a pleasant jaunt into free association, worth examining: However, this derivation is suspicious since the…
FREE AS IN BEER
(23 Words. January 18, 2006, 05:34 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Spence most kinely points out that a Seattle Public Library card entitles the bearer to free online access to certain tech books. Sweet!…
Things on Ballard
(34 Words. January 04, 2006, 08:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The UK’s ever-delicious Things muses on the (personally much beloved) works of J. G. Ballard. There’s nothing like reading a Ballardian landscape in the world; it’s as delicious and dizzying as ancient Scotch….
You Rope Central
(124 Words. November 21, 2005, 10:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On the phone the other night, Mom mentioned that my current bedside tome, Bill Vollmann’s Europe Central, won the National Book Award for fiction. It clearly deserves it, as thus far I find it to be the most accessible thing of his I’ve yet read. It may be a tad too accessible in a way, as I so enjoyed…
Ha!
(52 Words. November 18, 2005, 06:50 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Several months ago in Now Playing I published a long piece about Star Trek fan films, for which I spoke with several persons from various Trek fan projects. Today, when Wired arrived, I was amused to note a cover-featured story about one of these projects in particular, the East Coast-based New Voyages….
Nemo
(51 Words. October 17, 2005, 06:47 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
NYT: Restoring Slumberland. Peter Maresca’s quixotic reprint project restores a selection of Winsor McCay’s amazing comic strip to full-size, on newsprint-like stock. The 21” x 16” book is priced at a bargain $120 and was printed in an edition of 5,000. The books are available for purchase via sundaypressbooks.com….
ESF on RM
(37 Words. September 21, 2005, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Big Bosoms and Square Jaws is E. Steven Fried’s epic review of a Russ Meyer bio. Word on the street is that Mr. Fried will be making the scene at the too-happenin’ NWFF 10th anniversary party tonight….
Dhalgren redux
(227 Words. September 13, 2005, 03:15 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Editor B sends along a link to this essay on Delany’s Dhalgren and New Orleans by Bishda Bannerjee at reason.com. As Americans struggled to grasp what was unfolding in New Orleans, the word “unimaginable” recurred frequently—even though the catastrophe had been imagined, and envisioned, many times. Thirty years ago, science fiction writer Samuel Delany wrote, in high detail, about…
A minor issue
(162 Words. September 10, 2005, 10:43 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The September 12 issue of the New Yorker arrived today. The issue features a deal of writing concerning the flood in New Orleans, as may be expected. However, the cover, depicting a sax player on the roofs of the French Quarter, is quite weak by comparison to Speigelman’s amazing black-on-black cover of four years ago, depicting the memory of…
Free Conference Calls
(7 Words. September 10, 2005, 09:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
TidBITS covers FreeConference.com, a free conference-call service….
Time to reread
(65 Words. September 07, 2005, 09:23 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
J. G. Ballard’s The Drowned World and Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren seem to offer some twentieth-century perspectives on the events of the past week. I have been thinking of Dhalgren in particular all week. This NYT sketch of the evacuated city certainly echoes it. I certainly hope Delany takes the time to write about what we’ve just watched. Here…
Castle Rock
(357 Words. September 05, 2005, 11:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Last night I had the deep pleasure of reading Alice Munro’s recent New Yorker piece, The View from Castle Rock, to Viv aloud. Man, such fine writing! It’s so precise and finely crafted, pivoting from scene to scene with the grace of a dancing master. (My reading order for the mag got scrambled as I had picked up the…
Washed away
(60 Words. August 20, 2005, 09:26 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
As a child, when overwhelming waves of sourceless sadness and pain would erode my interest in the world, once I had learned to read, I could project my consciousness into books. I subsequently did so for really the majority of my time here on Earth. Of late, however, I have noted that the web appears to have diminished this…
Brilliant neighbors
(188 Words. July 01, 2005, 08:09 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
From the Greatest Bus Driver in the World: Poultry notes, featuring a thoughtful exegesis of soon-to-be-ex Justice Connor and her memorable career in the entertainment industry. His Back to the Blog combines some excellent writing on antidepressant medications with careful observations of Jon’s cat and the environment. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, B^2 breaks radio silence with one of his patented,…
Paintnins
(29 Words. June 13, 2005, 09:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This AskMe thread begins with a plaintive cry into the dark void of space concerning a series of late seventies sci-fi coffeetable books, and uncovers a secret universe….
Piratical!
(69 Words. May 18, 2005, 10:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I read this amusing NYT piece to Viv aloud because she was asking why I was chuckling. Extra points to the author for assiduously avoiding the Napoleon Dynamite and Pirates of the Caribbean referents the photographer so carefully captured. While a tad glib, I am filled with admiration for the writing itself in this article. Geez, 2-for-2 from the…
Flight
(236 Words. May 17, 2005, 04:11 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
JG Ballard reviews The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination 1920-1950, by Robert Wohl, in the Guardian. I have read, and deeply enjoyed, Professor Wohl’s previous book on the subject of the cultural symbology of aviation, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908 to 1918. I am quite looking forward to reading this newer…
Aldiss in his Quicktime
(375 Words. April 12, 2005, 06:16 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Meet the Author | Book Bites - Brian Aldiss: Greybeard. (Quicktime autoload) I just started plowing through some early work by one of may favorite UK New Wave SF authors, Brian Aldiss. I have never really plumbed what attracts me to his work, but he shares a commoanlity of tone and certain interests with his peer J. G. Ballard….
Men of Yesterday
(496 Words. January 23, 2005, 10:01 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I recently read - more devoured - Gerard Jones’ breezy, sprawling Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. Here’s a Comics Journal discussion thread about the book - it looks like I’m not the only comics lover that found the book gripping. Jones charts the rise and diffusion of the contemporary American comic book from…
A Two-way
(62 Words. December 10, 2004, 04:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The Soviet Exploration of Venus and the debunked Lost Cosmonauts. Also, this week, the New Yorker is running a long piece by David Grann on the death of R. L. Green, “the world’s foremost expert on Arthur Conan Doyle.” Oldtimey wrote about Green’s bizarre death at the time of his passing, having had interactions with the chap via her antiquarian…
Mo words
(13 Words. December 04, 2004, 12:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary is MeFite Mo Nickels’ wondrous playground of the word….
Aztecs, the Clash, the Presidency and the Bible
(850 Words. October 31, 2004, 01:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Occasionally, I mention that one piece or another in a given issue of The New Yorker has particularly struck me. In general, though I try to avoid doing so, mostly because the magazine appeals to me so consistently that if I did not deliberately choose to exclude it from my blogging, I’d be repeating myself weekly. This week, however,…
Iphigenia at Aulis
(233 Words. August 27, 2004, 07:27 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Having managed to view fragments amounting to one half of the final episode of the decidedly average The Spartans, I variously learned or was reminded that: Upon the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, about 7,000 Athenian invaders were imprisoned for a fair period of time in a quarry at Syracuse, exposed to the elements and fading fast. According to the transcript…
Bittehouse
(18 Words. August 26, 2004, 10:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The PG Wodehouse Library: public domain Wodehouse. Aaaaah. 36 Wodehouse titles, all free, all for Palm….
six feet from the O. P. to the Prompt Side
(189 Words. August 24, 2004, 11:02 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I’ve embarked on my annual peregrinations in the company of that amiable nitwit Bertie Wooster, and for some reason, the voices of the excellent Fry and Laurie are echoing in my head more clearly than they have in the past. Wodehouse casts the whole oeuvre in Bertie’s wildly flighty voice, and consequently I hear Hugh Laurie’s piping, bug-eyed take on…
in the whale's eye
(71 Words. August 22, 2004, 07:13 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Pursuant to an interesting discussion, In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick is hereby bookmarked, or rather linked. The book is said to be based upon the incident that became the basis for Moby Dick. I’m starting to lean into nineteenth-century readings again and this sounds tasty. Given my towering pile of on-deck matter, however, it may be…
in a lonely place
(244 Words. August 16, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Saturday night, I caught two Bogart films on TMC, 1951’s uneven The Enforcer, a fictionalization of the discovery and prosecution of the notorious Murder, Inc., and a great film I’d unaccountably missed in my peerings at and mumblings on the era’s work. That film is In a Lonely Place (1950), based on the recently-republished Dorothy Hughes title of the same…
ividly
(594 Words. August 15, 2004, 11:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent a big chunk of today finally exploring the integration features in iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. I’m working from a mixed base of assets representing the two most recent camping trips we went on (to Mount Baker in June and to the Olympic Peninsula this month). As it happens, long-time MacWorld editor Jim Heid saw a prior entry…
Annabel Lee; The Banjo - grotesque fantasie; and so forth
(221 Words. August 04, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The eagle eyed Manuel linkied me via email with ye olde Duke U. repository of American sheet music cover pages, covering the years between 1850 and 1920. Each decade is presented in its’ own browsable gallery, although it takes a few clicks to get to the good stuff. But the good stuff, well, it’s good. A typographical horror representing the…
Achangled Bodificises
(20 Words. July 26, 2004, 08:45 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Runtalthreentomoutesometry: ing custoppection hes. Tings, gicarderasseard efins. Iveld unicanectivemeness lationslate insuspa — dulablocken! Guarpes, destation, winnedate, tus. Updang!…
Collective
(269 Words. July 09, 2004, 07:01 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I chuckled my way through Tad Friend’s Letter from California, “Naked Profits,” in the July 12 and 13 issue of The New Yorker, unfortunately not online. Friend is (or was) a staff writer at the magazine, and wrote the interesting “Jumpers” for a 2003 issue of the magazine, in which institutional resistance to jump-proofing scenic landmarks was dissected. Here, Friend…
History
(279 Words. May 21, 2004, 02:59 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I very recently read A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, and I heartily recommend it. This general-interest survey of the current state of scientific knowledge concerning, well, nearly everything, is lucid and highly entertaining. Bryson’s interested-observer role is well played; as I read the book, I have to admit I wondered how long it would be until…
Skeleton Island
(143 Words. May 20, 2004, 03:34 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Click the closeup to see the whole map. Scanning this, I noticed some killer engraved illustrations in the book. But I really must move on today. UPDATE: Hmm, I had noticed this as I was working on the prior entry, but there’s an odd chiming between this new look of mine and the recent redesig over at Josh’s Communications…
On Identity
(266 Words. March 19, 2004, 09:46 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The Statesman claims that Don Foster has fingered exposed unmasked uncovered revealed the author of Belle de Jour. Foster used computer-based linguistic analysis to deduce that Joe Klein wrote Primary Colors. [via Boing Boing] USA Today Says Reporter Faked Stories [NYT]: Five-time Pulitzer nominee fired. Jack Kelley spent 21 years at USA Today, and judging by the fabrications cited in…
When pressed
(219 Words. March 06, 2004, 01:24 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Rising Up and Rising Down: Vollmann’s Anatomy of Violence. [NYT] See? Din’t I tell yez ta pick this up? I do not know if the NYT guy got a different edition than I - but I wouldn’t call the thin-cotton cased boards that form the covers of these books ‘luxurious.’ It’s more ‘respectful,’ a minimum effort to provide a physical…
Congruent Orbital Paths
(100 Words. February 28, 2004, 11:20 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, by now we all know that the end of the world was barely averted recently when an asteroid just missed the planet. Shortly thereafter, I found it peculiar to read a story whose central metaphor for the loss of a child is asteroidal impact and variations thereof. The story was posted online February 23. The actual events took place…
Leo Gursky
(62 Words. February 08, 2004, 02:23 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The Last Words on Earth, by Nicole Krauss. Feb 9, 2004 issue of the New Yorker. A funny little old man tells us about some of the buffeting the century dealt him. He’s hilarious; the story is heartbreaking. I loved it. I laughed, I cried, right? Well, yeah. (I should clarify that the story is a short work of fiction.)…
the Ice Storm
(886 Words. January 25, 2004, 12:15 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Hollyism notes that an ice storm is inbound to my hometown of Bloomington, and as I’ve been looking for an opportunity to elevate the level of discourse here by running a neglected citation by Mr. Twain, here it is. I was pretty much killed by this when I read it - it’s a bit over the top by modern standards,…
Rising up and Rising Down Nominated by NBCC
(36 Words. January 21, 2004, 09:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
National Book Critics Circle chooses awards nominees, sayeth the press release. At the risk of repeating myself, what are you waiting for? Step it up, biblomanes - it’s gonna sell out. Other Vollmann entries here….
Wolfe
(71 Words. January 15, 2004, 09:25 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Latro, Cerebrus, Suns New, Long and Short - Gene Wolfe | Metafilter, from the reliable hand of y2karl. Gene Wolfe roundup, thorough as ever from the redoubtable. Wolfe also is interviewed of late by Neil Gaiman on the occasion of his current book, The Knight, just out. I must be out and about for some portion of my day. Will…
more on RURD
(220 Words. January 05, 2004, 11:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: William Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down, an oral history. After reading this, I am antsy for the book to get here. Ken mentioned that he’d heard Eggers mention a) they were publishing the book and b) it was going to be reasonably priced. It was on the phone or something, instant messaging, I don’t recall….
Rising Up and Rising Down
(23 Words. January 05, 2004, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Rising Up and Rising Down, by Bill Vollmann. Published by McSweeney’s, seven volumes, one C-note, 3500 copies. What are you waiting for?…
Craig Thompson transcript - Contents
(87 Words. December 28, 2003, 07:20 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
This provides a Table of Contents that presents the eight parts of my conversation with Craig Thompson in order (and, being posted last, sits at the top of the Category listing for the material) Craig Thompson transcript - Contents Craig Thompson transcript - Part 1 Craig Thompson transcript - Part 2 Craig Thompson transcript - Part 3 Craig Thompson transcript…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 8
(2338 Words. December 27, 2003, 07:20 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Seven, we’d just discussed the possibility of comparisons between Thompson’s book and the…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 7
(1493 Words. December 26, 2003, 07:20 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Six, Craig had just said he didn’t feel he had the right to…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 6
(2174 Words. December 25, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Five, we’d begun discussing autobio comics as a genre and how Blankets related…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 5
(1719 Words. December 24, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Four, the tape cut off just as we began to discuss the influence…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 4
(2321 Words. December 23, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Three, Craig had just identified some period songs that were appropriate as a…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 3
(2161 Words. December 22, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part Two, I’d just spoken with Craig about Blankets’ resemblance to another huge book…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 2
(1846 Words. December 21, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf. In Part One, I’d just observed that Craig had traced a series of interests in…
Craig Thompson transcript - part 1
(1984 Words. December 20, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels . Thompson won a Harvey Award for his debut, the fanciful, yet melancholy Goodbye, Chunky Rice, and two years later, in the summer of 2003, followed up with his remarkable 600-page graphic novel, Blankets….
The old prof and the new one
(51 Words. December 18, 2003, 02:13 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Wormtalk and Slugspeak: Michael Drout is a medievalist and Tolkien scholar at Wheaton. His blog, lately, well, it’s about what you might expect. As someone who has attempted to bring a measure of depth to my own writing about the professor and his current avatars, his material holds my attention….
White Elephant I
(570 Words. December 14, 2003, 10:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We attended our second White Elephant gift exchange last night. Tonight as we were eating or out shopping or someplace, Viv asked me where the term and the tradition came from. I told her that I understood it to refer to a tradition in an Asian country, possibly Thailand, where white elephants are a sacred symbol of the king, and…
Fruit Detective update
(261 Words. December 08, 2003, 09:34 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Yesterday, I promised to drop a line to John Seabrook, the author of that amusing New Yorker article about David Karp, the Fruit Detective, in support of an enquiry from a random web surfer concerning information obtained through CBS Sunday Morning concerning a book about the legendary fruit-hunter. To my surprise, I received an email from none other than the…
Craig Thompson piece up at TABLET
(269 Words. December 06, 2003, 02:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Ink and Pixels for Tablet’s 82nd ish is based on a long, long, loooong telephone conversation I had with the gifted creator of Blankets and Goodbye, Chunky Rice. It seems pretty clear to me that the publication of Blankets could be the most important thing that happened in American independent comics this year, because it presents a potential direction for…
Roberta Gregory transcript
(3404 Words. November 20, 2003, 12:14 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I interviewed comics vet Roberta Gregory via email for Ink and Pixels at the end of October. The column that resulted is up at Tablet currently. This is the transcript of our correspondance. I edited it to add links, expand some abbreviations, and remove an intro I included with the questions so that Roberta would have some background on Ink…
What a Bargain!
(16 Words. November 12, 2003, 02:38 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
From a local ad circular in the paper a few days ago. Man! Hold me BACK!…
full text
(180 Words. October 23, 2003, 06:51 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Amazon.com: Books / Search Inside the Book” href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197021/ref=sib_merch_gw/103-5613508-9647049”> Amazon.com: Books / Search Inside the Book: Amazon announces full-text search on books (not every book, mind you). What are the limitations, I wonder? Damn, this could be cool. Does this imply, then, that Amazon might become the de facto electronic publisher of choice for desktop delivery? The FAQ, linked above,…
Steamboats
(151 Words. October 22, 2003, 06:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
More Twain-related links for my own satisfaction. I’m currently completing “Life on the Mississippi” and figured I should supplement my imagination and Twain’s recollections with hard links. Regarding “Life on the Mississippi,” two passages have stood out. In one, Twain modestly describes the peculiar experience of seeing a steamer named after him. He’s writing in the 1880’s, and it’s interesting…
Attn: Poupou
(10 Words. October 15, 2003, 06:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Hello Kitty - The Remarkable Story. That is all….
the Twain
(561 Words. September 25, 2003, 07:55 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, speaking of Mark Twain, the exceptionally obsessive out there will recall that I plunked down nearly five bucks for the complete works of Mark Twain in Palm-compatible formats about a month ago. It’s a formidably huge amount of data, as I noted. There’s something singularly delightful in the act of reading the material on the Palm - Twain once…
B'shoot
(424 Words. September 01, 2003, 01:09 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Went down to Bumbershoot to cover the cartoonists’ panel at InkSpot and met a number of folks that I’ve been corresponding with. I also saw Scott K., who wanted to know why I wasn’t working for him (he’s an event security manager). One hundred simoleans a day. “Hmm”, I had to tell him, “there was no valid reason, in fact,…
More on Palm ebooks
(321 Words. August 27, 2003, 07:22 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I briefly noted some palm ebook resources. Motivated by curiosity I purchased the Mark Twain set - it weighs in at about 8mb, and, yes, it appears to be the actual complete works of Mark Twain. I know, of course, that the material for the Twain books - and most of the rest of the free classics available digitally -…
Free Palm ebooks!
(26 Words. August 25, 2003, 10:07 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
.:: chuggnutt ::. | Free Palm Reader eBooks - I’d say this is, like, self-explanatory. Of course, I should note the $4.95 Complete Mark Twain….
A New York Trio
(1122 Words. August 11, 2003, 08:32 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent the past few weeks plowing through a double-feature, prompted initially by the release to DVD of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. About the time that the disc hit shelves a few weeks ago, I found myself, like others, reflecting on the film. In the theater, it was a frustrating viewing experience; it was clear that there was…
Coloring Outside the Lines: a punk rock memoir
(1021 Words. June 12, 2003, 07:54 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Coloring Outside the Lines: a punk rock memoir Aimee Cooper, 132pp, published by Rowdy’s Press Back in January or February, author Aimee Cooper sent me an email, asking if I’d like to review her self-published book, Coloring Outside the Lines, apparently in response to a dual review of Please Kill Me and American Hardcore I’d posted under the title “I’m…
A True Relation of William The Blind's ARGALL
(1571 Words. June 06, 2003, 08:30 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Argall William T. Vollmann 746 pp. Viking, 2001. ISBN.nu listing I already ran a quick piece on Vollmann’s Argall, and noted, foolishly, that I hoped to complete a formal book review of the work before going on about the book for another five hundred words, which permitted me to start to say what I wanted to without expending any particular…
McSweeney's 10: McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
(1153 Words. June 05, 2003, 08:22 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Edited by Michael Chabon ISBN.nu I picked this up at the same time as I did McSweeney’s 9, thinking it was a McSweeney’s spinoff or one-shot like the Hornby music thingy. It’s a stunt book, guest edited by the reigning high priest of high-and-low-brow, the Pulitzer-prize-winning Spider-man scribe (HA! that was fun to write) Michael Chabon, and it delivers exactly…
I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down
(196 Words. June 04, 2003, 08:27 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Ed Emmer’s Wolfe essay from BOT is now available as scanned images hosted on my imageserver. Ed, a fast talking brainslinger of no mean wit, wrote the nine-page stemwinder, a hilarious, withering dismissal of a specific essay that Mr. Tom Wolfe published in Harper’s just as the hardback edition of “The Bonfire of the Vanities” hit shelves. Here’e how Mr….
The Mall at Borges Grove
(52 Words. June 02, 2003, 10:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Goliard Dream: The Mall Hungers for Fresh Meat. In which Felicity stewards Brittany and Sarah to the mall. There, the girls find they can’t find what they seek, for a time. How long a time? How long indeed, for the mall is large, and they are but Brittany and Sarah….
OUR LIBRARY OPENS!
(35 Words. May 31, 2003, 08:39 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The Capitol Hill Branch of the Seattle Public Library opens today, finally, after a two-year construction process that sadly exactly coincided with the depths of the recession here. We might go have a look-see….
Going Down in the Magic Kingdom
(1049 Words. April 10, 2003, 04:53 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
(Dear god, I fear the search referrers this entry will garner. Cher googleurs: no Disney porn here, nuh-uh, just an over-clever title.) Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is, of course, boingboinger Cory Doctorow’s novel, released not too long ago in print and online in a plethora of free formats. Just about at release, I grabbed it in a…
The Stranger Awakens
(647 Words. April 03, 2003, 12:21 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Was This House Worth Her Life?: Eli Sanders reports from the Gaza Strip on the death of Olympia’s Rachel Corrie. With this long, well-written, and unsentimental news feature, which anchors this week’s issue of The Stranger, Seattle’s once-beloved but lately somnambulant weekly, it’s clear that long-time editor in chief Dan Savage is now once again paying attention. The article is…
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 4
(1779 Words. March 20, 2003, 07:33 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This is the fourth part of my interview with Michael Moorcock, the next to last part. In his work, there are several themes that stand out. Foremost among them are the setting and importance of urban civilization; the use of three-part characters – three persons locked in a relationship, often of both blood and sexual love, two partners male, and…
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 3
(986 Words. March 19, 2003, 01:13 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Beginning in Mr. Moorcock’s New Worlds days, he began producing formalist pranks and serious high-modern pieces that eventually combined into one continuing work, the Jerry Cornelius books (if I have my history right). All four were recently reissued in the book A Cornelius Quartet, and from a formal perspective they are the trickiest of Moorcock’s work. He went on to…
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 2
(718 Words. March 18, 2003, 12:36 PM, Comments: 32) MORE >>>
This is part two, a day late, of my Michael Moorcock interview. In this section, Mr. Moorcock responds to my questions about the original series of Elric novels and stories. In the late nineties, White Wolf Publishing issued a 15-volume series that collects nearly all of Mr. Moorcock’s fantasy and science fiction, including two volumes of Elric stories and novels….
Michael Moorcock Interview, Part 1
(1251 Words. March 17, 2003, 01:58 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Michael Moorcock is one of the most prolific F&SF authors of all time, and his work is not easily collected because it spans media. Personally, I’m always discovering new bits and pieces of stuff by him that I haven’t yet read. Moorcock is one of my all-time favorite writers, and I’ve devoured his works since I first discovered them as…
Also overdue
(591 Words. March 16, 2003, 03:40 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I noted a ways back ago that I’d come across Argall, by William T. Vollmann, in my peregrinations and snatched it up with greed. I read the book in about four sittings; it’s Vollmann’s crack at the Pocahontas story. It’s also one of his Seven Dreams, seven books that undertake to re-envision the encounters between Native American and European cultures…
The Iliad and The Odyssey
(541 Words. March 16, 2003, 02:43 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I have been casting about, unsuccessfully, for the next read-aloud book to share in bed, after this past years successful journey through The Lord of the Rings . We tried some of my favorite literary SF and fantasy, which was an utter bomb - instead of trusting the book to provide the visualization of the alternate world, Viv…
Borges, Selected Non-Fictions
(1064 Words. February 20, 2003, 07:48 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I spent a considerable portion of my recent leisure reading time recently with one of three recent American collections of Jorge Luis Borges in fresh translations (by Eliot Weinberger). The Selected Non-Fictions, according to the volume proper, are relatively less well-known than his fiction writing. Given that’s true, allow me to commend your attention to these works. Amazon is also…
Michael Moorcock
(30 Words. January 20, 2003, 03:33 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I just emailed Mr. Moorcock a largish interview which will form the basis of an article for Cinescape soon… and then see the light of day here. I can’t wait!…
Golly!
(299 Words. January 03, 2003, 07:08 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
Goliard Dream: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is felicity’s thumbs up for the remarkable Michael Chabon novel. I expect she knows I’ve read it, although it was in pre-blogging days (I saw it in a bookstore as i was preparing for a trip and grabbed it - the trip may have been my first to NYC, but time…
Interesting or Boring? Promising or Scam?
(263 Words. December 31, 2002, 08:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
New Tolkien book discovered at news.com.au. A US academic, Michael Drout, found the Tolkien material by accident in a box of papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. An assistant professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, Dr Drout was researching Anglo- Saxon scholarship at the Bodleian, and asked to see a copy of a lecture on Beowulf…
lower-case i
(492 Words. December 28, 2002, 11:50 AM, Comments: 17) MORE >>>
Who Owns the Internet? You and i Do at the NYT looks at Joseph Turow’s campaign to encourage journalists to, er, decapitate the word “Internet” when used in copy. Much to my frowniness, the article educated me on the widespread misuse of the capitalization of the word. That’s thanks in part, as the story notes, to Word’s insistent auto-capitalization of…
The gathering storm
(139 Words. December 24, 2002, 07:27 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Propaganda and ‘Lord of the Rings’ "I don’t think that ‘The Two Towers’ or Tolkien’s writing or our work has anything to do with the United States’ foreign ventures," he told Mr. Rose, "and it upsets me to hear that." —Viggo Mortensen in an appearance on Charlie Rose And, less than two days after my prediction we’d see debates concerning…
The girl you love in that merrie green land
(1301 Words. December 20, 2002, 07:00 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
While this week’s series of entries has thus far deliberately excluded the experience of seeing the films for the most part, and may do so for the balance of the week, I’ve admitted their role as catalyst in prompting my renewed acquaintance with the books. In the weeks leading up to the release of last year’s The Fellowship of the…
Rereading Middle-Earth
(1550 Words. December 19, 2002, 07:19 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Rereading the novels was a fascinating, and unique experience. I believe that the last time I read them was at around age 19 or 20, before I completed college, possibly before I declared a major. Therefore, it’s probable that I read them naively, that is, in ignorance of literary devices and critical techniques, solely as story-oriented entertainments. This time, I…
Preparing the ground
(756 Words. December 18, 2002, 07:10 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I first heard of the Peter Jackson film adaptation of Lord of the Rings the way almost everyone else in the computer industry did – online. I knew Jackson as a filmmaker for both over the top kookery the likes of Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive – which are among the most extreme, yet good humored, films ever made…
Two years before the thesaurus
(258 Words. December 07, 2002, 03:38 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Then the starboard watch board the main tack, and the larboard watch lay forward and board the fore tack and haul down the jib sheet, clapping a tackle upon it if it blows very fresh. and When all was right, the bunts were triced well up, the yard-arm gaskets passed, so as not to leave a wrinkle forward of…
Dale on New Orleans
(59 Words. October 30, 2002, 07:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dale Lawrence dropped a line to note that an editing error had dropped a graf from the website posting of his article on New Orleans. Its the third graf, and it’s about the beat. Dale noted it was ‘crucial’, and I see what he means. Tomorrow night, he’ll be channelling Lou Reed in Bloomington. Wish I could be thre….
Books, part two
(1231 Words. October 14, 2002, 07:22 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
On Sunday, the four of us (Eric and Anne, visiting from Chicago; and my wife Vivian and myself, for those keeping score at home) engaged in one of the umpteen mandated activities for out-of-town visitors and took our city’s lovely, 60’s vintage monorail from downtown a whole mile to Seattle center, where the Space Needle and the Experience Music project…
Books, part one
(748 Words. October 12, 2002, 05:54 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Eric and I began our friendship because of a book. It was one of those ’70s Star Trek paperbacks. Since then both he and I have perpetually crammed our living spaces full of other books. Vivian occasionally tries to cull the herd, as it were, but I’m agin it. Thus it was appropriate that today we worked our way from…
Hurricane Ridge
(164 Words. October 11, 2002, 05:49 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Eric, Anne, Vivian, Eric’s cousin Ilse, and I went to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympics for a picnic today. Eric has one of them new fangled micro-wireless doohickeys, a Danger hiptop, I think, that allows you to check email, reply, websurf, and so forth from a thing about the size of an overweight palm pilot. I tried to post to…
Drummond & Son
(460 Words. October 04, 2002, 08:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Drummond & Son, in the October 7 ish of the New Yorker, spins a sodden tale of my town, and I thought it was nailed. The geography is right, for example; and while Mr. D’Ambrosio locates his typewriter shop in Belltown, there was just such a shop about four blocks from where I live, that’s now become a fine drinking…
The Pirate Hunter
(1000 Words. June 21, 2002, 12:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Capatin Kidd by Robert Zacks. ISBN: 0786865334. Zacks is also the author of “An Underground Education”, kind of contrarian trivia book that I had read and pretty much forgotten about - one of those mind-candy trivia books that includes details about inessential but interesting bits of historical trivia such as the role…
Sky Ships, a review
(1160 Words. May 04, 2002, 07:15 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Sky Ships, a history of the airship in the United States Navy, published 1990 by Pacifica Press. By William Althoff, 304 pp. Out of print. Buy it from the NAS Lakehurst gift shop online or used from Amazon. Here’s an excerpt concerning the consruction of the Shenandoah at NAS Lakehurst, New Jersey. Finally, it should be noted that Lakehurst is…
Gene Wolfe, part two
(348 Words. April 05, 2002, 12:59 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
After the “Book of the New Sun”, Wolfe went on to write many other books, including the undeservedly obscure “Soldier of the Mist” and “Soldier of Arete”, historically rigorous novels of a wandering mercenary in Greece at the time of the wars recounted in Homer. The soldier, who is nameless, has the same brain problem that the Guy Pearce character…
Gene Wolfe, part one
(192 Words. March 30, 2002, 12:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’ve been reading entire oeuvres lately, preferably in order of publication, and am currently taking a break from the incredibly prolific (and just hospitalized) Michael Moorcock by rereading Gene Wolfe’s work. I first read Wolfe in the mid-eighties as his masterwork, the four-volume “Book of the New Sun” was coming out. The tetralogy is highly influenced by the work of…
Smithsonian, April 2002
(473 Words. March 27, 2002, 12:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Lovely Lincoln portrait cover. My faves in the mag were the extremely cool photos by Edward Burtynsky of shipbreaking in India - the scale of the fragments of the ships, and their worn quality, reminds me very strongly of SF art that impressed me as a child. These images seemed to point out to me that what is really interesting…
the New Yorker, March 25, 2002
(454 Words. March 26, 2002, 08:29 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I really enjoyed the illustration for Malcolm Gladwell’s review of “The Myth of the Paperless Office” on page 92. I enjoyed the article itself, of course, which is a reflection on messiness in the workspace as an organizing principle. Both the review and the illustration appear to reflect the ideas of David Gelernter, CS guy at Yale, victim of the…
