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The literary life

Thank you, Alison Scott, for letting me know that the Guardian has put up an archive of Posy Simmonds' Literary...

The literary life -- comment #1 from Jonathan Vos Post

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:18:54 -0500

These are wonderful! Thank you for the link.

I saw this just after reading "In Iraq, Flag Design, Too, Comes Under Fire", by Ernest Beck and Julie Lasky in The New York Times, Thursday April 29, 2004, p.D9.

What hooked me was the line: "'They had apparently wanted to create a symbol first and then build a consensus and a democratic society around it,' Mr.Bierut said. 'But it's a symbol for something that doesn't exist yet.'"

So, is the new Iraqi flag science fiction?

Can we see a cartoon about that? Is it part of the Literary Life? I laughed, wincing, at the Mathematics cartoon.

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Posted April 30, 2004 12:18 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

The literary life -- comment #2 from Scorpio

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:21:09 -0500

"Disgusting Book" was especially funny after the online discussions of the new Neal Stephenson book. Its binding is alleged to be garbage, with copies falling apart in mid-read more than once.

Scorpio
Eccentricity

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Posted April 30, 2004 12:21 PM by Scorpio

The literary life -- comment #3 from Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:21:14 -0500

Jonathan. Sit down and breathe into a paper bag for a while. You've been free-associating for days.

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Posted April 30, 2004 12:21 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The literary life -- comment #4 from Jonathan Vos Post

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:30:15 -0500

... which reminds me of a story *pant* *pant* ...

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Posted April 30, 2004 12:30 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

The literary life -- comment #5 from Jonathan pant Post

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:51:56 -0500

On second breath this syllogism came to me:

Data want to be free.
Associations want to be free.
Therefore Data want to be Associations.

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Posted April 30, 2004 12:51 PM by Jonathan *pant* Post

The literary life -- comment #6 from Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 13:01:11 -0500

I especially liked the lovingly drawn slushpile in the upper-right corner of "On reading slush Three."

The strips are rendered just a bit too small for these old eyes. Also, since they're line art, perhaps the Guardian should convey them as GIFs instead of JPEGs.

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Posted April 30, 2004 1:01 PM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

The literary life -- comment #7 from Janet Brennan Croft

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 13:01:57 -0500

"Overdue? the danger signs" -- man, I need to read that!

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Posted April 30, 2004 1:01 PM by Janet Brennan Croft

The literary life -- comment #8 from Madeleine Robins

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:39:09 -0500

Oh, Teresa, how did I miss this before. Thank you so much! Your New Baby and the three slush comics are particularly wonderful, but they're all splendid.

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Posted April 30, 2004 2:39 PM by Madeleine Robins

The literary life -- comment #9 from Xopher

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:51:21 -0500

BH--BJ: These eyes too. I cut and pasted them into a Word doc set to 150%. Helps.

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Posted April 30, 2004 2:51 PM by Xopher

The literary life -- comment #10 from slacktivist

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:18:40 -0500

Delightful stuff.

The British use of "literals" for "typos" was new to me -- separated by a common language and all that.

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Posted April 30, 2004 4:18 PM by slacktivist

The literary life -- comment #11 from Zara Baxter

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:41:07 -0500

Oh dear, there goes my saturday.

Pet peeve: rendering line drawings as .jpg -- can't people *see* those little glitches that appear?

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Posted April 30, 2004 4:41 PM by Zara Baxter

The literary life -- comment #12 from Claude Muncey

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 21:39:04 -0500

Pasting into Word? Bah! I love reading comics holding my glasses four inches in front of my face. Makes me feel happy to be 50.

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Posted April 30, 2004 9:39 PM by Claude Muncey

The literary life -- comment #13 from Henry Wessells

Sat, 01 May 2004 12:13:14 -0500

Thanks, Teresa, for the Posy Simmonds link -- funny, good use of panels, and acutely observed.

(Though there were only _nine_ people at my last reading on a rainy evening . . .)

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Posted May 1, 2004 12:13 PM by Henry Wessells

The literary life -- comment #14 from Rachel Reiss

Sun, 02 May 2004 12:21:38 -0500

Re: Disgusting Book--

Because some idiot non-book person at the upper management level has shipped all design and production overseas, that's why!

(Very funny stuff, the rest of it...)

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Posted May 2, 2004 12:21 PM by Rachel Reiss

The literary life -- comment #15 from Paula Helm Murray

Mon, 03 May 2004 00:39:06 -0500

Can anyone suggest the browser that works best? In Safari, the drawings are rendered so small on my laptop that I can't read the f-ing word bubbles.

Help. The drawings suggest humor, but I think most of the humor is in the words.

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Posted May 3, 2004 12:39 AM by Paula Helm Murray

The literary life -- comment #16 from Brooks Moses

Mon, 03 May 2004 02:02:41 -0500

Paula: The images will be rendered exactly the same size on all browsers, since they get specified in terms of pixel widths. The main exception to this is browsers which have some sort of "zoom" option to override the specified image size; an example of one is Opera, which I use.

(The other exception is Internet Explorer, which resizes at least some images to smaller sizes when they don't fit on screen; this is not only Not Helpful for this particular problem, it seems to me to be distinctly Not Helpful in general.)

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Posted May 3, 2004 2:02 AM by Brooks Moses

The literary life -- comment #17 from Jill Smith

Mon, 03 May 2004 07:26:44 -0500

Paula - shift, command, 4 on a mac will turn your pointer into a crosshairs. Position the cartoon so you can see it in its entirety on the screen, select the image with the crosshairs, let go and "click-whirr" you will have a .pdf file of what you selected on your desktop (or wherever you default-save to) called "Picture 1." Adobe Acrobat has a very easy-to-use zoom feature at the top of the screen. The image will be a bit pixel-lumpy, but hopefully easier to read. Have fun!

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Posted May 3, 2004 7:26 AM by Jill Smith

The literary life -- comment #18 from Bill Blum

Mon, 03 May 2004 09:02:36 -0500

Scorpio:

The binding on my copy of Quicksilver has held up fairly well, in spite of the supposed binding issues... but my copy of the second book in the trilogy?

Binding failed upon arrival. Pages were coming out while it was still in the original packaging...

( note: I would have had to wait a full two weeks past release date to see the book in my local bookstore, as they were in the middle of a move. )

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Posted May 3, 2004 9:02 AM by Bill Blum