The Sound on the Page

I just finished the Yagoda book, even wrote him to tell him how great it was to read. He focuses on style, what it is, how it differs in genres, how we develop it. I was proud to recognize the writer of a nameless passage -- I won't give it away in case the gentle reader wishes to give it a try. If you like the writings of John Gardner on constructing fiction, you'll also like the Yagoda. Both two of the better more trustworthy writers on the subject.

What would be a mannerist style in writing? What would be a baroque style in writing.

Can you spin the world on style, or on a stylus, or with a stilis?

Upside Down Writing

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Yep, you can create text upside down too at this upside down translator.

Just what it's good for? Uh.....

The Future is Past

For all my fellow countrypeople, Happy Thanksgiving. It's meaningless up here for most people, but I remain connected to the un-military holidays.
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An article in the paper yesterday says, "...a mentally ill man who fatally shot a police officer in 20004..."

Peating?
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I'm reading a book on style by Ben Yogada -- he's mainly a non-fiction writer, terrific thinker. Central to his argument are two points:
1.) Post-structuralism is over and we can once again talk about art rather than who they are in what society under what authority. For the most part, these viewpoints left the "text" to rot in the gutter. (And yes I know there are great contributions to art via the post-structuralist approach.)
2.) Dialogue can once more focus on the how of writing. Yagoda makes a valid point that every literary (and I would say visual) subject has been engaged -- therefore it's not what you write about it's how you write it. He says great writers read for style, the civilians read for story. Again I wholeheartedly agree. I bet he's a great teacher.

Gender Genie

Here's a site where you can cut and paste text and the algorithm will make a guess whether it was written by a man or a woman. It boasts around success rate of 80% although recent stats indicate a correct rate of closer to 60%.

It appears the woman use personal pronouns more than women, and men use determiners and quantifiers more frequently. With, if, and not are used more by females while around, or are are used by males.

I copied and pasted a passage from Garbage Head and the algorithm guessed the writer was male within less than a second. Then I put in text from the first chapter of my novel in progress and it guessed the author was female. It's a bit addictive.

Alas poor fiction, I knew it well

Welcome to nearly as strange as fiction Friday.

OK....

Joakim Borgstrom gets the award for the
most innovative website I've seen in a long long time.

You HAVE to check this out -- you'll figure it out.

Ungracious Winners

What is it with Canadian award winners? I have personally witnessed a couple recent ones who act like they not only deserved, DESERVED, the award, but when they accepted they gloated and acted like it was years overdue. I hardly ever saw such three-year-old behaviour in the states where winners thanked everyone and recognized the quality of their competition.

In fact, and listen up all you Canadian award winners, In New York I had the opportunity to meet some of the biggest stars, yes personally, and I also saw them receive awards. They were also some of the most gracious aceptees you can imagine.

Learn some tact. And for those who award grants, how about you think twice about awarding to an artist/spokesperson who does your award or company absolutely no good with his or her behavior and attitude.

artistic process in a nutshell

"...In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ectasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

--T.S. Eliot

Scooby Doo dethrones Christ

Scooby Doo dethrones Christ at Box Office -- a headline referenced by Robert Charles Wilson -- (whoever he is.) A guest of honor (Wilson, that is) at Ad Astra (whatever that is.) He also suggests that curling pushes the boundaries of sport, saying it's what Picasso is to bylateral symmetry. For more of his half-sensical rambles click here.

The subtle things

I spent much of last week working through a book I have to write a review of. So this weekend I finally returned to Reading Lolita in Tehran.
I finally put it down too -- and asked a few other readers what they thought, and most came back with, comments indicating I wasn't the only one. For some reason I assumed it was a work of crafted fiction, not a memoir. Perhaps that explains it -- even so, there are a few passages that are solid. It's when the author drives down the road of political memory that things go awry -- then the story slips, then the characters are lost, then the focus changes.

I decided I have to read something good and thus returned to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. It's online here if you haven't seen it. I prefer the hard copy. Tomorrow I'll paste one of my favorite passages -- an incredible piece of writing that elucidates life and the artistic process.

Ring Lardner

Did I mention Ring Lardner? Let's back up. When reading Catcher in the Rye Holden is always saying things like so and so is not really that good a writer, but Ring Lardner, now there's a great writer. I made a point of looking Ring up once. He was a real writer, sports writer in Chicago, moved to NY, moved to short stories. And guess what he is a great, great writer. He became popular, had a large house on long island. Here is a great page of material on the man. Perhaps his most famous line is, "Shut up," he explained. Here's another one: "She gave him a look that you could of poured on a waffle." Got get a book of his stories and start reading.

Truman Capote quote

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Publish or Perish...Verified

Joseph Bednarik, Marketing Director of Copper Canyon Press did a survey in NY asking whether readers would prefer a physical book with 2,000 readers or a non-physical book with 20,000 readers -- acclaim and monetary reward equal. The majority said they wanted a physical book. Interested in reading more? Here is the link.

Nearly as strange as Fiction Friday

One of my favorite jokes:

A man's at a conference and the speaker says, "In about five billion years the sun will turn into a red giant and burn up the earth and everything around it." The man jumps up from his chair and says, "What did you say!!??" The speaker says, "I said the sun will turn into a huge red giant and burn up the earth in about five billion years." The man says, "Oh, that's a relief. I thought you said two billion years!"


Here is a site that logs every visit in order to count down from a billion. Knock yourself out!

Face Painting -- One Buck

Who are you, what are you, what do you want to write about? Eileen Myles says:

"Time is my real subject..."

It may well be however I notice she want's to fry an egg on Blake's ass. Now that's a concept we can get behind.

Link to her poem here.

The origin of Creepy

Last night I was discussing with a friend and writer the shift in thinking that propelled English society at the end of the 18th Century to embrace the gothic novel -- ideas ranging from the angst caused by a cultural revolution, to the more insular family and occurences of incest ( a theme in many gothic novels) and even to the invention of the hallway -- previously nonexistent in houses.

Contemporary society embraces the gothic in phases, we're in one right now in fact if you want my assessment of the many tv shows and movies dealing with the paranormal. But since that is not my area of expertise I'll recommend an earlier 18th Century book -- if you haven't read it then do so: Evelina by Frances Burney -- get the Norton Critical Edition -- the essays in the back are invaluable.