From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I recently received a letter from Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist, who told me that he had a somewhat similar problem following a stroke: “The area affected,” he relates, “was my ability to read. I can write, but I can’t read what I’ve just written … So, I can write, but I can’t rewrite …”
After a stroke, he can write, but can’t read Read More »
In Clay Shirky’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007), he takes on the persona of someone talking about what new changes are coming with the Gutenberg movable type press. At one point, he says, “Such a change would also create enormous economic hardship for anyone whose living was tied to earlier scarcities.”
It’s not just writing and writers and publishers that now face that change. Scarcities drove the music and movie businesses, and those scarcities are disappearing. When music is no longer tightly controlled in terms of creation, availability, manufacture, and distribution, when it’s possible to download or listen to anything at any time, those businesses face rapid, discombobulating change.
Is it the government’s – or society’s – duty, however, to put those scarcities back into place, either through technologies or law?
Scarcities and the music, movie, and publishing businesses Read More »
From Douglas Rushkoff’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
But I think many writers – even good ones – will have to accept the fact that books can be loss-leaders or break-even propositions in a highly mediated world where showing up in person generates the most income.
Like music, authors will make more money from personal appearances Read More »
From Adam Parfrey’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
I like the internet and computers for their ability to make writers of nearly everyone. I don’t like the internet and computers for their ability to make sloppy and thoughtless writers of nearly everyone.
The Internet makes (sloppy) writers of nearly everyone Read More »
From Mark Dery’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
But we live in times of chaos and complexity, and the future of writing and reading is deeply uncertain. Reading and writing are solitary activities. The web enables us to write in public and, maybe one day, strike off the shackles of cubicle hell and get rich living by our wits. Sometimes I think we’re just about to turn that cultural corner. Then I step onto the New York subway, where most of the car is talking nonstop on cellphones. Time was when people would have occupied their idle hours between the covers of a book. No more. We’ve turned the psyche inside out, exteriorizing our egos, extruding our selves into public space and filling our inner vacuums with white noise.
The shift from interior to exterior lives Read More »
From Ask Yahoo (5 March 2007):
There are only so many ways to construct a story.
Writers who believe there’s only one plot argue all stories “stem from conflict.” True enough, but we’re more inclined to back the theory you mention about seven plot lines.
According to the Internet Public Library, they are:
1. [wo]man vs. nature
2. [wo]man vs. man
3. [wo]man vs. the environment
4. [wo]man vs. machines/technology
5. [wo]man vs. the supernatural
6. [wo]man vs. self
7. [wo]man vs. god/religionRonald Tobias, author of “Twenty Basic Plots” believes the following make for good stories: quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue, escape, revenge, riddle, rivalry, underdog, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, maturation, love, forbidden love, sacrifice, discovery, wretched excess, ascension, and decision.
All stories have the same basic plots Read More »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (I: 5):
TALBOT:
My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel;
I know not where I am, nor what I do;
A witch, by fear, not force, like Hannibal,
Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists:
So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench
Are from their hives and houses driven away.
They call’d us for our fierceness English dogs;
Now, like to whelps, we crying run away.euphuism: in English literature, a highly elaborate and artificial style that derived from the Euphues (1578) of John Lyly and that flourished in England in the 1580s. It was characterized by extensive use of simile and illustration, balanced construction, alliteration, and antithesis. Euphuism played an important role in English literary history by demonstrating the capabilities of English prose. The term has come to mean an artificial, precious, high-flown style of writing.
1 Henry VI: an example of euphuism Read More »
From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “Tough Guy: The mystery of Dashiell Hammett” (The New Yorker [11 February 2002]: 70):
There is one section of “The Maltese Falcon” that could not be filmed, and for many readers it is the most important story Hammett ever told. A dreamlike interruption in events, it is a parable that Spade relates to Brigid about a man called Flitcraft, dutiful husband and father of two, who was nearly hit by a falling beam while walking to lunch one day. Instead of going back to work, Flitcraft disappeared. “He went like that,” Spade says, in what may be Hammett’s most unexpected and beautiful phrase, “like a fist when you open your hand.” His narrow escape had taught this sane and orderly man that life is neither orderly nor sane, that all our human patterns are merely imposed, and he went away in order to fall in step with life. He was not unkind; the love he bore his family “was not of the sort that would make absence painful,” and he left plenty of money behind. He travelled for a while, Spade relates, but he ended up living in a city near the one he’d fled, selling cars and playing golf, with a second wife hardly different from the first. The moral: one can attempt to adjust one’s life to falling beams but will readjust as soon as the shock wears off.
The escape of Mr. Flitcraft Read More »
From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “Tough Guy: The mystery of Dashiell Hammett” (The New Yorker [11 February 2002]: 70):
In March, 1928, [Hammett] had written to his publisher, Blanche Knopf, about his plans to adapt the “stream-of-consciousness method” to a new detective novel. He was going to enter the detective’s mind, he told her, reveal his impressions and follow his thoughts … But a few days after sending the letter, Hammett received one himself, from the head of the Fox Film Corporation, asking to look at some of his stories. He promptly fired off a second letter to Knopf, informing her of an important change in his artistic plans: he would now be writing only in “objective and filmable forms.” In the finished novel, Spade is viewed from the outside only, … we are granted no access to his mind. “The Maltese Falcon” may have been the first book to be conceived as a movie before it was written.
1st book written to be filmed Read More »
From Jay McInerney’s “White Man at the Door” (The New Yorker [4 February 2002] 57):
[Matthew Johnson, head of Fat Possum Records, has] got a damaged lung, bad teeth, a couple of hernias, and a back catalogue of death threats. His dentist once held up a toothbrush and asked him if he’d ever seen one, to which Johnson answered, “I use one of those to clean my pistol.”
Cthulhu in ancient Rome
Tennessee farmer David Lang’s disappearance into thin air
Lovecraft’s victims’ tendency to write in diary/account as things happen to them: “It devours me!”
A forgotten skeleton
Thoughts for a Lovecraftian tale Read More »
From Patrick Smith’s “Ask the pilot” (Salon: 4 August 2006):
The wing is shorn off. It lies upside down in the dirt amid a cluster of desert bushes. The flaps and slats are ripped away, and a nest of pipes sprouts from the engine attachment pylon like the flailing innards of some immense dead beast. Several yards to the west, the center fuselage has come to rest inverted, the cabin cracked open like an eggshell. Inside, shattered rows of overhead bins are visible through a savage tangle of cables, wires, ducts and insulation. Seats are flung everywhere, still attached to one another in smashed-up units of two and three. I come to a pair of first-class chairs, crushed beneath the remains of a thousand-pound bulkhead. In the distance, the plane’s tail sits upright in a gesture of mutilated repose, twisted sharply to one side. High on the fin, the blue and white logo remains visible, save for a large vacant portion where the rudder used to be. …
I’m taking in one of the aviation world’s most curious and fascinating places, the “boneyard” at Mojave Airport in California, 70 miles north of Los Angeles.
The Mojave Desert is a barren place, a region of forbidding rocky hills and centuries-old Joshua trees. But it’s also an area with a rich aerospace history. Edwards Air Force Base and the U.S. Navy’s China Lake weapons station are both here, as well as the airport in Palmdale, where the Lockheed L-1011 was built. The Mojave Airport, officially known as the Mojave Airport and Civilian Aerospace Test Center, is the first FAA-licensed “spaceport” in the United States, home to a burgeoning commercial spacecraft industry. It’s a spot for ingenuity and innovation, you could say. But for hundreds of commercial jetliners, it is also the end of the road.
Of several aircraft scrap yards and storage facilities, including others in Arizona, Oklahoma and elsewhere in California, Mojave is arguably the most famous. …
There are upward of 200 planes at Mojave, though the number rises and falls as hulls are destroyed — or returned to service. Not all of the inventory is permanently grounded or slated for destruction. Neither are the planes necessarily old. Aircraft are taken out of service for a host of reasons, and age, strictly speaking, isn’t always one of them. The west side of the airport is where most of the newer examples are parked. MD-80s, Fokker 100s and an assortment of later-model 737s line the sunbaked apron in a state of semiretirement, waiting for potential buyers. They wear the standard uniform of prolonged storage: liveries blotted out, intakes and sensor probes wrapped and covered to protect them from the ravages of climate — and from the thousands of desert jackrabbits that make their homes here. A few of the ships are literally brand new, flown straight to Mojave from the assembly line to await reassignment after a customer changed its plans. …
The scrap value of a carcass is anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000.
“New arrivals, as it were, tend to come in bunches,” explains Mike Potter, one of several Mojave proprietors. …
Before they’re broken up, jets are scavenged for any useful or valuable parts. Control surfaces — ailerons, rudders, slats and elevators — have been carefully removed. Radomes — the nose-cone assemblies that conceal a plane’s radar — are another item noticeable by their absence. And, almost without exception, engines have been carted away for use elsewhere, in whole or in part. Potter has a point about being careful out here, for the boneyard floor is an obstacle course of random, twisted, dangerously sharp detritus. Curiously, I notice hundreds of discarded oxygen masks, their plastic face cups bearing the gnaw marks of jackrabbits. Some of the jets are almost fully skeletonized, and much of what used to rest inside is now scattered across the ground. …
Near the eastern perimeter sits a mostly intact Continental Airlines 747. This is one of Potter’s birds, deposited here in 1999. A hundred-million-dollar plane, ultimately worth about 25 grand for the recyclers. …
The airplane graveyard Read More »
From Tom Stites’s “Guest Posting: Is Media Performance Democracy’s Critical Issue?” (Center for Citizen Media: Blog: 3 July 2006):
In late 1980s the late Neil Postman wrote an enduringly important book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. In it he says that Marshall McLuhan only came close to getting it right in his famous adage, that the medium is the message. Postman corrects McLuhan by saying that the medium is the metaphor – a metaphor for the way we think. Written narrative that people can read, Postman goes on, is a metaphor for thinking logically. And he says that image media bypass reason and go straight to the emotions. The image media are a metaphor for not thinking logically. Images disable thinking, so unless people read and use their reason democracy is disabled as well.
Neil Postman: the medium is the metaphor for the way we think Read More »
From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “A Speech Delivered In The Committee of the House Of Commons On The 6th Of April 1842” (Prime Palaver #4: 1 September 2001):
It is the law of our nature that the mind shall attain its full power by slow degrees; and this is especially true of the most vigorous minds. Young men, no doubt, have often produced works of great merit; but it would be impossible to name any writer of the first order whose juvenile performances were his best. That all the most valuable books of history, of philology, of physical and metaphysical science, of divinity, of political economy, have been produced by men of mature years will hardly be disputed. The case may not be quite so clear as respects works of the imagination. And yet I know no work of the imagination of the very highest class that was ever, in any age or country, produced by a man under thirty-five. Whatever powers a youth may have received from nature, it is impossible that his taste and judgment can be ripe, that his mind can be richly stored with images, that he can have observed the vicissitudes of life, that he can have studied the nicer shades of character. How, as Marmontel very sensibly said, is a person to paint portraits who has never seen faces? On the whole, I believe that I may, without fear of contradiction, affirm this, that of the good books now extant in the world more than nineteen-twentieths were published after the writers had attained the age of forty.
Writers take a while to attain full power Read More »
From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “A Speech Delivered In The House Of Commons On The 5th Of February 1841” (Prime Palaver #4: 1 September 2001):
The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures. I admit, however, the necessity of giving a bounty to genius and learning. In order to give such a bounty, I willingly submit even to this severe and burdensome tax. Nay, I am ready to increase the tax, if it can be shown that by so doing I should proportionally increase the bounty. My complaint is, that my honourable and learned friend doubles, triples, quadruples, the tax, and makes scarcely any perceptible addition to the bounty.
Macaulay in 1841: copyright a tax on readers Read More »
I’m really proud to announce that my 3rd book is now out & available for purchase: Linux Phrasebook. My first book – Don’t Click on the Blue E!: Switching to Firefox – was for general readers (really!) who wanted to learn how to move to and use the fantastic Firefox web browser. I included a lot of great information for more technical users as well, but the focus was your average Joe. My second book – Hacking Knoppix – was for the more advanced user who wanted to take advantage of Knoppix, a version of Linux that runs entirely off of a CD. You don’t need to be super-technical to use and enjoy Hacking Knoppix, but the more technical you are, the more you’ll enjoy the book. Linux Phrasebook is all about the Linux command line, and it’s perfect for both Linux newbies and experienced users. In fact, when I was asked to write the book, I responded, “Write it? I can’t wait to buy it!”
The idea behind Linux Phrasebook is to give practical examples of Linux commands and their myriad options, with examples for everything. Too often a Linux user will look up a command in order to discover how it works, and while the command and its many options will be detailed, something vitally important will be left out: examples. That’s where Linux Phrasebook comes in. I cover a huge number of different commands and their options, and for every single one, I give an example of usage and results that makes it clear how to use it.
Here’s the table of contents; in parentheses I’ve included some (just some) of the commands I cover in each chapter:
I’m really proud of the whole book, but the chapter on the super-powerful and useful find command is a standout, along with the material on ssh and its descendants sftp and scp. But really, the whole book is great, and I will definitely be keeping a copy on my desk as a reference. If you want to know more about the Linux command line and how to use it, then I know you’ll enjoy and learn from Linux Phrasebook.
You can read about and buy the book at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672328380/) for $10.19. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me at scott at granneman dot com.
My new book – Linux Phrasebook – is out! Read More »
From Marc Weingarten’s “The White Album“:
To be sure, [Joan Didion] certainly tries. She goes on a little later in the essay [from The White Album]: “We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.â€Â
Joan Didion on writing & narrative Read More »
From John Swansburg’s “The Shawshank Reputation” (Legal Affairs: March/April 2004):
Yet even King didn’t think [The Shawshank Redemption] stood a chance at the box office-and he was right. Though the movie got good reviews, and seven Oscar nominations, Shawshank in its original release grossed only about half of the $35 million it cost to make.
The movie came back from the dead on video. It was the top rental of 1995, and its popularity has not much abated since. The new Zagat film guide, for instance, rated it higher than Annie Hall and a little picture called Citizen Kane. The movie is currently ranked second on the Internet Movie Database’s Top 250 movies poll, behind only The Godfather.
Success of The Shawshank Redemption Read More »
From John Swansburg’s “The Shawshank Reputation” (Legal Affairs: March/April 2004):
Fifty-eight movies have been adapted from his writing, not as many as from Dickens, but more than from any other living author.
More movies made from Stephen King’s books than anyone else Read More »