31. July 8, 1999. Florida. Allen Lee Davis. "Before he was pronounced dead ... the blood from his mouth had poured onto the collar of his white shirt, and the blood on his chest had spread to about the size of a dinner plate, even oozing through the buckle holes on the leather chest strap holding him to the chair."45 His execution was the first in Florida's new electric chair, built especially so it could accommodate a man Davis's size (approximately 350 pounds). Later, when another Florida death row inmate challenged the constitutionality of the electric chair, Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw commented that "the color photos of Davis depict a man who--for all appearances--was brutally tortured to death by the citizens of Florida."46 Justice Shaw also described the botched executions of Jesse Tafero and Pedro Medina (q.v.), calling the three executions "barbaric spectacles" and "acts more befitting a violent murderer than a civilized state."47 Justice Shaw included pictures of Davis's dead body in his opinion.48 The execution was witnessed by a Florida State Senator, Ginny Brown-Waite, who at first was "shocked" to see the blood, until she realized that the blood was forming the shape of a cross and that it was a message from God saying he supported the execution.49

Increasingly, the rest of the world thinks America is run by insane barbarians. They're right, too.

Posted March 29, 2004 12:30 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

More fun than it has any right to be:

http://www.potterpuppetpals.com/index.html

Posted March 29, 2004 12:37 AM by Stefan Jones

Ugh. Blog Lag leads to a startling shift in tone. Sorry about that.

* * *

Patrick, I think you have some bad references there.

Posted March 29, 2004 12:41 AM by Stefan Jones

Sorry, it was just copied from this link in Teresa's Particles. the one marked "The US execution blooper reel."

Posted March 29, 2004 12:46 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

47 days till graduation.

Holy crap.

Posted March 29, 2004 1:18 AM by Bill Blum

Hmmm. When I go to give talks about the death penalty in schools for Amnesty International, the kids do tend to bring up the US, true. And the US makes a nice example of exactly why the death penalty is a bad idea even in the best circumstances (relatively, of course). But part of the reason they bring it up - apart from general anti-americanism, which is ingenerated by other kinds of behaviour, and other complex factors - is that the US is not a barbaric country. And most of them are correctly amazed at the incongruity of it still having the death penalty.
This is why the US makes such a good debating point: you can point out why it's such an expensive (relatively), unfair penalty. In other countries, it's cheap and so indiscriminate that it ends up being horribly fair...

Posted March 29, 2004 1:26 AM by Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

Don't we know archaic barrel?

Posted March 29, 2004 1:32 AM by Tom Whitmore

Someone over on raph.com (a 3d artists site) has done a nice rendering of _Perdido St. Station_.

http://raph.com/3dartists/artgallery/6205.jpg

Nice to see someone using a literary reference - especially as the site, while technically excellent, often carries some very cliched material.

Posted March 29, 2004 1:44 AM by Steve Taylor

I'm assuming you mean raph, not nielsenhayden....

Posted March 29, 2004 1:54 AM by Tom Whitmore

Ghost Town

This is one of the most haunting and weirdly beautiful websites I've ever seen. Elena, a Russian motorcyclist, has documented her travels through the hot zone of the town of Chernobyl with photos and commentary.

Posted March 29, 2004 1:54 AM by Cassandra Phillips-Sears

Tom Whitmore wrote:

> I'm assuming you mean raph, not nielsenhayden....

Indeed! Making Light is rarely predictable.

Posted March 29, 2004 2:04 AM by Steve Taylor

The Ghost Town website is impressive - I ran into a link on another blog earlier today. Amazing how stuff like this spreads...

One of the things that struck me was what she said about people being afraid of something because it was indetectable - I'd heard the same thing, in almost the same words, on the NPR piece this morning for the anniversary of Three Mile Island.

Posted March 29, 2004 2:10 AM by Julia Jones

I'm shocked, shocked to discover that you've looked at those Trojan ads, Teresa.

After all, you're not supposed to click through unless you're a resident of the UK.

Posted March 29, 2004 2:24 AM by Alter S. Reiss

The Ghost Town pictures are quite eerie. Puts me in mind of low budget New Zealand film called Quiet Earth, in which for reasons, almost everyone dissapears one day.

Posted March 29, 2004 2:34 AM by Steve Taylor

Holly and her parasite pals were disturbing in the right way.

They couldn't quite shake the impression the execution link left on me, though.

Posted March 29, 2004 3:23 AM by Vassilissa

Nora’s freezing on the trolley.

Serves her bloody-well right for leaving Torvald!

Posted March 29, 2004 5:31 AM by Simon

I was pointed to the Ghost Town link by some blog or other a couple of weeks ago, so it's been diffusing through the blogosphere for at least that long.

Given the time period compared to the usual diffusion rate in the 'sphere, I suppose that either Ghost Town comprises particularly large blog particles (blogons? blogomers?) or that the topology between Making Light and some of the other blogs I read has some especially viscous patches.

Hmm, I wonder what would constitute blog electrophoresis?

Posted March 29, 2004 5:33 AM by plover

Don't we know archaic barrel?

Posted March 29, 2004 5:35 AM by julia

I always seem to be the guy here who brings up a J-link, but Japan has the death penalty as well. There, it's a Kafkaesque procedure, done in secret, the prisoner usually only notified a few hours before the execution. The false conviction rate has been admitted to be absurdly high, appeals are rarely successful, and there hasn't been a pardon since the 1970s. On the other hand, usually the prisoner is older than in the US, even elderly, having stayed on Death Row for some decades.

Hanging is used, no information available on botches.

C.

Posted March 29, 2004 7:45 AM by Carlos

It scares me that there exists an industry such that a government warning on how to not die when working in a manure pit is actually necessary!

(Although, combining that with the "botched executions" list yields some pretty dark thoughts....)

Posted March 29, 2004 7:49 AM by Jaquandor

Swaller dollar cauliflower alley ga-roo.

Posted March 29, 2004 7:53 AM by Andrew Willett

As it's an open thread, I'll toss in my appreciation of the new HBO series, Deadwood. Ignore the hype about the bad language. Yep--there's salt in them words, but not over the top and not wrong for the context. Our good friend Yog can tell you that the modern navy is at least as bad.

The show proper has an unexpectedly fine nineteenth-century quality to its language and sense of humor. There are some excellent performances, and the show is doing some really interesting character interpretation of the familiar historical figures. Keith Carradine makes an astonishingly good Hickock, and the woman playing Jane is doing an amazing job.

Somewhat related, on a board having to do with the show I just found this link to Digital Deadwood, which takes the history of the town and makes it into an interactive game of sorts. I just need to find time to really explore it....
http://www.digitaldeadwood.com/

Posted March 29, 2004 8:13 AM by Elric

I watched part of the first Deadwood. I might dip into it again--parts were very good--but what bothered me about the "bad language" wasn't its vigor but its anachronism. I question whether 19th-century roustabouts said "cocksucker" quite so often.

In other news, Lullaby Lilly Boy, Louiville Lou!

Posted March 29, 2004 8:40 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Open thread, so here's something apropos of nothing...

I just achieved a personal best for Strange Things My Family Thinks About Me. One of my cousins heard "from someone else in the family" that I was a Scientologist, and has been spreading the tale.

Posted March 29, 2004 8:57 AM by Stephan Zielinski

Walla Walla Wash. and Kalamazoo!

OMG, I can't believe I found a blogful of folks hip to Pogo! My family sings that damn song every Xmas and my aunt even dated Walt Kelly for a while in college.

I have a niece born on Groundhog Day and I call her what? Li'l Grundoon, of course.

Wow. Ya'll made my day.

Posted March 29, 2004 9:07 AM by Mad AZ Monk

I have a pretty strong stomach when faced with gruesome things, but some of the pics on that body modification risks link were quite disturbing.

Why in the world would anyone want to split the head of their penis in half??

shudder

Posted March 29, 2004 9:18 AM by Tamara Siler Jones

Tizzy seas on melon collie.

Posted March 29, 2004 9:47 AM by Derek Lowe

Sadly, Tamara, it can be worse. I've seen pictures of 4 way splits...

I can only assume it would be done out of some bizarre desire to properly fill a Cthuloid codpiece.

Posted March 29, 2004 9:47 AM by Skwid

Pogo for President!
I'm sure you all could easily Google the site, but here's a link to lots of Pogosive goodness.
http://www.igopogo.com/pogo_for_pres.htm

Posted March 29, 2004 9:52 AM by Christy Zimmerman

Oom, oom, I'm deranged! Where the beer and the cantaloupe play!

Hey--can anyone tell me the name of the vulture in Pogo? Something Sarcophagus.

Posted March 29, 2004 10:31 AM by Mad AZ Monk

... surprisingly, I'd never heard of pogo until now.

But then again, I've missed out on a lot of things the past few years because of work and school... finally bought a few new CDs the other day.

Posted March 29, 2004 10:38 AM by Bill Blum

Ah. Got it. "Sarcophagus Macabre".

Posted March 29, 2004 10:46 AM by Mad AZ Monk

My mother, a college freshman in '52, was involved with the Pogo presidential campaign on campus. She still has her I Go Pogo button and everything. I was raised knowing that catterpiggles turn into butterflies and that it's particularly unlucky when Friday the Thirteenth falls on a Thursday.

Anyone up for a round of "Good King Sourkraut"?

---L.

Posted March 29, 2004 10:52 AM by LNHammer

I'm probably showing my age when I remark that it doesn't seem to me unusual to be "hip to Pogo."

Scratch that; I'm definitely showing my age.

Posted March 29, 2004 11:22 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Julia wrote:
Don't we know archaic barrel?

Perhaps she's a midlist author?

Posted March 29, 2004 11:24 AM by Andy Perrin

Angry! Angry!

I just finished reading this article over at Salon - http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/29/willows/index.html

How can they do this to great classic books? _Wind in the Willows_ is still my all time favorite book, and one of the ones that made me want to be a writer.

Why oh why would someone want to make it into crap?

(excuse me while I grrr and huff and sigh and make angry faces at the folk around me)

Posted March 29, 2004 11:47 AM by chance

Bark us all bow-wows of folly?

DON'T LEAVE ME WITH A LINE LIKE THAT!

New pictures of Sarah are up. Saturday I was at the playground with her, and I traced the letter S that was engraved on a board with a couple dozen other letters (one of them was a baker's dozen). "S is the first letter in Sarah," I announced. "Da-da," she replied, so I traced the D. "D is the first letter in Da-da." She put her finger on the M and said, "Mama." I was speechless after that, and neglected follow-up questions.

Wednesday was the anniversary date of Sarah being our daughter. I handed out Tootsie Pops at work as cigars, and we had carry-out from Plaza Azteca that night. (I'm also contributing a thread to RASFF called "One Year Ago" where I look at my journal and photos and try and think what else I should have said, and post on the result each day.

"Here is the Prince on manly guard
Patroling his post and breathing hard...

Then here is the victory and here is the feast.
Sing songs for the mighty, the foes of the beast."
--same guy

Posted March 29, 2004 12:06 PM by Kip W

I was most amused, when reading Orson Scott Card's Rebekah, to find Isaac offhandedly mentioning in passing that the 'holy writings' in the posession of his father Abraham talk about a creature called a curelom, though nobody alive had any idea what such a creature was. :->

It's true: education greatly increases the number of in-jokes one gets and giggles at.

Posted March 29, 2004 12:20 PM by Eloise Mason

trolley molly don't love harold

Posted March 29, 2004 12:27 PM by pericat

I purchased and ate my first Quiznos sub last night.

I'm not sure what ingredients were involved, but I strongly suspect a high percentage of spongemonkey.

Posted March 29, 2004 12:32 PM by Stefan Jones

"I question whether 19th-century roustabouts said 'cocksucker' quite so often."--PNH

Ah, here it is--according to Webster's Tenth Collegiate, first appearance of "cocksucker" in print is 1891. Given the rarity of hardcore obscenity in print before the 1950s or so, I think we can assume that it was widely used prior to that.

My sense is that real, hardcore obscenity is a pretty stubborn element of the English language. Listening, say, to Jelly Roll Morton's LoC recordings, the sexual slang is all turn-of-the-century (e.g. "stavin' chain"), but the hardcore obscenity is identical in tone and vocabulary to obscenity used today. I'd provide examples, but I don't want to get disemvowelled (Morton gets pretty rough).

Posted March 29, 2004 12:39 PM by HP

Ah. Got it. "Sarcophagus Macabre".

Wow. That Walt Kelly knew his Greek, didn't he?

chance, your anger strikes me as entirely righteous. I note they left out the most Pagan chapter...I've used Piper at the Gates of Dawn as an invocatory title for the god ever since reading that book.

But there's worse. They made The Wind in the Willows into a Broadway show a decade or so ago. They changed Mole into a woman in a blue dress. This was to have a romance subplot.

Fortunately, this travesty ran for only a couple of days (or so) before closing.

Posted March 29, 2004 12:48 PM by Xopher

Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Sarcophagus MacAbre was a sidekick of Simple J. Malarkey...

Posted March 29, 2004 12:59 PM by Theophylact

Good King Sauerkraut looked out
on his feets uneven.

Posted March 29, 2004 12:59 PM by Dan Blum

I read my parents' Pogo books when I was too young to understand them, but loved them anyhow--will have to dig them out next time I go home. Remember the character who spoke in black letter? Rather ominous to a child, really.

So, one of the letters responding to that article on Salon (J. A. Doe is known as SIA (for self-important author) on another list) commented that it's really hard to get a low-paying job in publishing. I'm a newbie around here, so please pardon if I overstep my bounds, but anyone have any hints for getting one of those low-paying publishing jobs?

Posted March 29, 2004 1:04 PM by Elisabeth

Heck, when I first read "Little Women" it was a version which was abridged so Beth didn't die and Jo didn't go to New York.

Years later I was talking books with a friend of mine who read the same version, but also wrote a book report on it. She had to produce the Bowdlerized POS for the teacher to prove she wasn't trying to pull one over on him!

Posted March 29, 2004 1:04 PM by Jill Smith

note: Neither of us "Little Women" readers knew we were reading an abridged work. I remember looking for some notation on the copy I had been given after I found out there was much more to the book than what I had read. I never could find any such notation, but I was about 12 and probably looking in the wrong places.

Posted March 29, 2004 1:21 PM by Jill Smith

Sarcophagus MacAbre was a sidekick of Simple J. Malarkey

Yeah, I remember that. Very dark and creepy. SJM was Senator Joe McCarthy. Didn't they terrorize Deacon Mushrat? Was Wiley Cat also involved? And what was the mole's name who constantly sprayed pesticide at everyone?

Posted March 29, 2004 1:40 PM by Mad AZ Monk

I'm looking for an article. A few months ago there was a minor online stink about an article written by Anne Rice, in which she stated that she wouldn't let editors change any of her prose, because she wrote it so perfectly the first time. Does anyone have a link to said article?

Posted March 29, 2004 1:43 PM by Holly M.

Abridging a book- and without making it obvious so that you can avoid it- there's your death penalty offense right there!

Posted March 29, 2004 1:49 PM by Samuel Kleiner

here ya go - http://www.annerice.com/sh_MessagesBeach2.htm

Posted March 29, 2004 1:53 PM by chance

Re: the Anne Rice article - oof. Yow. I must admit I've never been a fan of hers. IMO, her work is overwrought. Now I know why. ("I go back and back over that last paragraph countless times, getting up out of bed in the middle of the night to go in and redo that last paragraph, but all the rest is polished and edited right down to the last.")

I'm left with an image of Anne Rice as an auctorial Martha Stewart, obsessively, relentlessly polishing...

Posted March 29, 2004 2:15 PM by Jill Smith

I am now living for the day when I can tell an editor who makes a change:

I asked this due to my highly critical relationship with my work and my intense evolutionary work on every sentence in the work, my feeling for the rhythm of the phrase and the unfolding of the plot and the character development. I felt that I could not bring to perfection what I saw unless I did it alone. In othe words, what I had to offer had to be offered in isolation.

Posted March 29, 2004 2:42 PM by Joy Rothke

Abridgment of _Wind in the Willows_ was new to me, though after reading the article I think the worst part was that they're hiding it: the abridgment itself seems more inept than criminal.

A true history of the abridgment and bowdlerization of children's books would include the racial sensitivity wreaked upon Dr. Doolittle and Mary Poppins. Not saying whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, just saying.

Posted March 29, 2004 2:49 PM by Simon

Xopher - wow. I just remembered for the first time in over 30 years that I was cast in an original stage version of WWTW many, many years ago. I had a bad knock on the noggin in '74 that made a lot of things leave my brain and this is a pleasant recovery of one of them. We were all young and so thrilled that as original players our names would be published in all future copies of the script. A blue dress doesn't ring any bells, though.

PS does anyone know for sure if that whole deal with Jay and Silent Bob is true, I mean the part about owning the rights to your true-life persona? The reason I ask is this: We're thinking of putting together a comic book and including stories a la American Splendor of the people we get to meet. But our budget doesn't include funds for attorneys...

Posted March 29, 2004 3:02 PM by Karen Junker

OK, again, nevermind. It's Mole MacCarony, which I never knew. My favorites always, tho, were the three card-cheating bats, Bewitched, Bothered, and Bemildred.

Posted March 29, 2004 3:27 PM by Mad AZ Monk

For our birthdays, my parents and all my siblings call the birthday child/adult and sing "Once you were two dear birthday friend". It can make quite an impression when there are 7 renditions of the song on the machine. My parents have the record and also the songbook. For christmas I bought us all Pogo cds. http://www.igopogo.com/pogosongs.htm

Posted March 29, 2004 3:57 PM by Sara

I can't be the only one here whose only association with a character named Pogo is Pogo The Monkey(requires popups), can I?

I'm not that young, really!

Posted March 29, 2004 3:57 PM by Skwid

So, one of the letters responding to that article on Salon (J. A. Doe is known as SIA (for self-important author) on another list) commented that it's really hard to get a low-paying job in publishing.

Based on what little I know of the industry I'd have said it's really hard to get a HIGH-paying job in publishing.

Posted March 29, 2004 4:02 PM by Dan Blum

Joy said:

I am now living for the day when I can tell an editor who makes a change:

I asked this due to my highly critical relationship with my work and my intense evolutionary work on every sentence in the work, my feeling for the rhythm of the phrase and the unfolding of the plot and the character development. I felt that I could not bring to perfection what I saw unless I did it alone. In other words, what I had to offer had to be offered in isolation.

Posted March 29, 2004 4:03 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Sara--Was it a family requirement to call chocolate "chonklit"?

Skwid--Yes, I'm sorry, you're the only one.

Posted March 29, 2004 4:32 PM by Mad AZ Monk

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Posted March 29, 2004 4:42 PM by John M. Ford

re: Anne Rice - Well, that explains it.

I confess I was once an avid reader of Ms. Rice's. I came to my senses, fortunately.

I don't care HOW many copies of each book she sells. She is NOT going to make me swallow a word of that.

The most offensive part being that she thinks it's all right to write in a vacuum, with no feedback except from the copyeditor.

Doesn't the fact that she missed spelling, grammar, and 'minor' details like a character's height mean that the draft she submits to the editor is far from perfect?

She's obviously not looking hard enough. It is no longer my job, as a reader, to look for her.

Posted March 29, 2004 4:49 PM by Alice Keezer

Mad AZ Monk--Why yes, it was! LOL! We also sang the Pogo lyrics in sotto voce at public gatherings where the more popular versions were being sung.

Posted March 29, 2004 4:50 PM by Sara

Dan: Strangely enough, that gives me hope.

Posted March 29, 2004 5:34 PM by Elisabeth

*sigh*

It has been pointed out to me that Pogo The Monkey is Somewhat obscure.

Personally, I must have heard that commercial 8000 times...but I have no idea what the rest of you are talking about.

Posted March 29, 2004 5:39 PM by Skwid

Dan, Elizabeth --

I believe it's one of those cases where it's really hard to get a low paying job and impossible to get a high paying job.

Posted March 29, 2004 5:42 PM by Graydon

Thanks, chance. Last time I looked at Rice's website, that page was unavailable; maybe the site was overwhelmed with traffic.

Having read it, now... well, there are probably a lot of writers who think that their finished drafts are perfect and inviolate. In fact, I know a lot of them--they're unteachable. I tend to think that *my* latest oeuvres are perfect, at least for the first couple of months after I finish them.

It may be possible to get a piece "perfect," if beautiful writing is what you strive for. But even if you're a compulsive, obsessive, anal-retentive outliner (which I am not, and I don't know many writers who are) I can't imagine forcing a storyline into a completely smooth arc, with no lumps or bumps, the first time around.

I know I hate breaking the smooth transitions between paragraphs in order to straighten out a character who went off on a sudden bender, or to extract a subplot that didn't play out. But it's like ripping out stitches--if you don't do it, you're going to have a lump over your hip and the dress won't fit.

Ah well. It's not in my nature to get angry about such things. But thanks for finding it for me.

Posted March 29, 2004 5:45 PM by Holly M.

Alice, Jill-- I like Anne Rice, but I agree that her prose is overwrought verging on overwrotten. Her last two books were superior to what she has been writing recently. If she has ejected her editor (picture flying editor with bootprint on rear) it explains a lot, except for the last two books.

Posted March 29, 2004 5:54 PM by Andy Perrin

"I believe it's one of those cases where it's really hard to get a low paying job and impossible to get a high paying job."

Shucks. I will refrain from plugging myself and and hope my restraint when surrounded by so many publishing types apparently in-the-know is admired. [returning to lurkdom]

Posted March 29, 2004 6:04 PM by Elisabeth

Haven't seen Deadwood (no HBO), but if we're open-threading, USA's Touching Evil (Friday nights and repeated ad nauseam) is all kinds of marvelous. I haven't seen its British predecessor, so I can't compare, but this version is dark and funny and understated, and Creegan is mad charismatic.

Watch it.

Posted March 29, 2004 6:19 PM by Hannah Wolf Bowen

Ah, Skwid, what a sad life you have had, if nobody ever let you look at their Pogo comics by Walt Kelly.
Funny, satirical, political, punnical, topical, anthropomorphical animal comic strip from the 40s to the mid-70s. And nonsensical new words to old songs, bits of which have been confusing you in entries above. A quick look at my online library union catalog was quite fruitful, and I now have ILL requests for some cool memories.
"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Posted March 29, 2004 6:20 PM by John Houghton

Sniff, Elisabeth, don't go away! Your question about how to get a job in publishing has the same answer as how to get a book published, really: Write (in this case a resume). Finish what you've written, to the best of your ability. Send it out. Keep sending it out. Don't revise unless someone's willing to pay... oops, that one doesn't apply.

You know who the players are who publish what you like to read. You can find the other folks. If you really want to get into publishing, it's possible. Just don't expect it to be exactly what you hoped.

Kinda like bookselling.

Posted March 29, 2004 6:27 PM by Tom Whitmore

Elisabeth --

Regarding me as a publishing insider is a lot like counting the garden shed in the square footage total of the house, only sillier.

Posted March 29, 2004 6:38 PM by Graydon

I've read enough books that desperately needed editing (or better editing) to understand why editors are necessary. But I can certainly understand Rice's point of view. Composers and visual artists don't have editors. Should they, or is there something genuinely different about writing?

Posted March 29, 2004 6:46 PM by Tim Walters

Composers have the equivalent of editors in conductors. Visual artists, in order to sell other than at craft fairs, have to please the gallery owners.

I repeat my recommendation that everyone interested in the way art is done read Howard S. Becker's fascinating book ART WORLDS. Highly readable sociology of art.

Posted March 29, 2004 7:06 PM by Tom Whitmore

Gallery owners are too often the audience, but they're not editors. And conductors don't come into play with electronic music, for instance.

I don't know about composers, but visual artists often have friends who drop by the studio and make fun of their work in progress every once in a while. This valuable experience is more difficult to reproduce with writing. There is one genuine difference between visual art and writing: it's generally easier to see visual artwork in overview, all at once, and thus check on its progress. It's much easier to overlook some detail in writing by just not rereading it, or skimming under the impression that you're actually reading. I don't know how musical composition fits into this comparison, but I would suppose that it, like visual art, has a more immediate visceral impact than writing, which in my experience makes it the author easier to maintain perspective. YMMV, of course.

By the way, Tim, I like your Shalmanezer stuff. Dynaflex is part of my iTunes random-stuff-from-around library now.

Posted March 29, 2004 7:15 PM by Seth Ellis

Composers have the equivalent of editors in conductors.

They don't seem very equivalent to me. Readers don't usually have to decide which of several well-known editors' versions of their favorite novel to buy, and conductors don't usually say, "Hey, Ludwig, could you tighten up the second movement?"

Gallery owners mimic the thumbs-up/down function of editors, but AFAIK they don't get involved with the details of the art. Maybe I'm wrong there.

I don't know about composers, but visual artists often have friends who drop by the studio and make fun of their work in progress every once in a while.

The difference here is that no one would consider an artist uppity if he didn't listen to them.

I don't mean to imply that non-writing artists don't get or shouldn't get input from others, just that they don't seem to have professional minders.

Come to think of it, though, pop musicians have producers, and magazine photographers and illustrators have art directors. So maybe it's a function of the commercial nature of the work rather than the medium.

By the way, Tim, I like your Shalmanezer stuff.

Thanks! The album is coming out Any Day Now.

Posted March 29, 2004 7:43 PM by Tim Walters

I think we writers are lucky to have the editing process. I mean, Olympic gymnasts get to do their vault twice for points, and if they don't nail it then, too darn bad. We can make as many running starts as we need at our "best vault." We can even have a herd of nice people saying, "Oh, cool idea for a vault. You've almost made it, but you're about to fall on your head. Here, let me magically yank your butt into the air another foot or so." "Yeah, and let me pull that arm out straight for you -- you've bent your elbow." The only one the audience ever sees is the best that we can make it, and having a crit group and an editor or team of editors is not seen as a weakness at all. And rightly not.

I don't think it's so much of a matter of whether other fields should have editor-equivalents as whether it's practically possible to do so within the form they're working with.

And frankly, Tim, I have known visual artists and musicians who totally refused all critique/input and then wondered why their work wasn't going anywhere new or reaching anyone else. I didn't consider them uppity, true; I considered them foolish. That's about what I consider Anne Rice.

People love to make adversarial relationships out of things that don't have to be adversarial at all. My non-writer friends delight in asking me how much I would compromise my artistic vision to get published. But my experience with editors is that they're more interested in refining someone's "artistic vision" (or, more to the point, their prose) than in mangling it.

Abridgement editors aside, I guess. I can see why you're angry, Chance, but not really why you're surprised. Classics have been bowdlerized, dumbed-down, and pruned to death since the Lambs at the very latest. The Salon writer's fear that the only thing left would be the abridged version sounded pretty short-sighted to me, as if these sorts of things were new. My mom was given Reader's Digest Condensed Children's Classics when she was a kid. The world didn't come to an end. The availability of classics didn't come to an end. And her interest in the real stuff didn't get killed. Suboptimal, sure, but not new or dire.

Posted March 29, 2004 8:22 PM by Mris

Perhaps she's a midlist author?

There's a list?

I believe that I have been unfairly excluded.

Probably the perfidy of the editing class.

Do I have to write something?

Posted March 29, 2004 8:25 PM by julia

Conductors usually don't say "hey can you tighten up" but in practice they have a lot of control over the tempo: similar, no?

"The commercial nature of the work" is indeed important. Part of Becker's thesis is that the vast majority of the art any one of us comes into contact with has a commercial nature. And all art involves a group of people who are necessary to making the work happen who do not happen to be seen by the public as artists. It's a really interesting analysis.

Posted March 29, 2004 8:26 PM by Tom Whitmore

somebodys posted this, right?

Some guy invented the dragon in a jar to get his book published.

Posted March 29, 2004 8:27 PM by julia

I think we writers are lucky to have the editing process.

I don't disagree. There are times when I would love to have an editor--provided he or she was good at it--and I have musician friends whose opinions I value that I run things by for exactly that reason. But while I often take their advice, sometimes I don't, and I feel that in the end it has to be my call.

Clearly one can be too closed to suggestions, but I also think one can be too open. Like the song says, you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself. If not, you run the risk of doing art by committee.

Conductors usually don't say "hey can you tighten up" but in practice they have a lot of control over the tempo: similar, no?

Similar enough that I can see your point, certainly. Is interpretation a good word for what editors do? Maybe so.

Posted March 29, 2004 8:59 PM by Tim Walters

It occurred to me after posting the last message that collaboration could also be seen as art by committee, and it often works very well. So I guess I'm lacking a coherent thesis.

Is there an editor in the house?

Posted March 29, 2004 9:12 PM by Tim Walters

well speaking as a visual artist most artists I know show their work to other artists in critique groups and some non-artists - feedback is always useful. Tim is correct that gallery owners give a yes/no response more often than anything more detailed.

Obviously editing artwork is a different process - for one thing unless one is doing posters, cards, book covers or some other piece that someone else prints the artist is handling the production issues themselves. When I've done graphics of any sort for a client I've always gotten lots of feedback. Fine art is a different world - ultimately one is edited by success in the market.

Posted March 29, 2004 9:18 PM by Leslie

I quote liberally from http://www.pogopossum.com/faq.htm:

There are many versions of this revered, classic carol and fist fights have been known to erupt when one person defends the sanctity and accuracy of the one he or she learned at Mommy's knee. People have been hospitalized as a result of such disputes, which is a heckuva thing to happen at any time of year, and especially around the holidays. That said, we can at least direct you to what scholars tell us is the most popular. Here it is...but we assume no responsibility if a rival Boston Charlie caroller takes issue with you and comes out swinging.

http://www.pogopossum.com/deckus.htm

Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!

There are more. Go look. Golly, Solly's cold and so's ol' Lou...

Posted March 29, 2004 9:22 PM by Glenn Hauman

"Fine art" as we know it is definitely a relatively recent construct. Think about the Renaissance studios. Think about folks like Currien and Ives. Think about the engravers who get their work printed by someone they trust (if you think all the prints in an edition of engravings look exactly the same, you really haven't compared a large bunch of them -- I have).

And, in fact, what most (professional) editors do is _suggest_ changes. The author then comes back with a new version. Sometimes the changes are in an _entirely different_ part of the manuscript, but the changes there make the original version work much better. At the novel level, any author can reject any individual change an editor asks for. That may mean that the novel doesn't get published by that editor. There have been cases, IIRC, where authors (mostly in nonfiction) sued and won because the editor changed their meaning without checking with them.

To reject _a priori_ any editorial influence is as silly as accepting as gospel everything an editor says.

At OCH, I often can't find a book, and I'll ask one of the other people working there to help me look. We call this "a second pair of eyes." This, to me, is the real function of the editor in fiction: a little parallax so I can see the problems in a sentence like "He picked up the hunks of meat in his fingers and gnawed hungrily at the steaming joints."

Posted March 29, 2004 9:31 PM by Tom Whitmore

If a good editor had looked at my last post before it went out, he or she might have suggested that "input" rather than "influence" in the third paragraph would be a more felicitous choice of word.

Posted March 29, 2004 9:35 PM by Tom Whitmore

Has anyone posted this one yet?

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html

Posted March 29, 2004 10:21 PM by Alice Keezer

Glenn Hauman having scotched the line-I-was-going-to-post-because-nobody-else-had, I'll proceed directly past Anne Rice. The last author I heard of doing that was John Norman, who walked when Ballantine wouldn't take that nonsense and (as I've been told) ended up helping DAW stay afloat while it acquired a reputation less ripe than Norman should have brought it.

To me the reason why text is always edited and music rarely is comes down to some obvious differences:
- The number of authors is huge compared to the number of ]serious[ composers; I would expect many novels-as-submitted to admit of editorial improvement simply because the authors are not 10th-dan masters of their tools. (I'm reading the discussion as looking at ]classical[ composers; I understand ]popular[ composers not named McCartney, Lloyd Webber, or Sondheim tend to be subject to "editing" to the same extent that requires dairy product to be sold as "pasteurized process cheese food").
- Words have established forms and structures; an editor can say a point is grammatically questionable (or unquestionably dreadful). Music has known tools, but the ]grammatical[ constraints have been largely overthrown; a would-be editor stands on much shakier ground.
- A composer who wishes to observe constraints can hear violations directly, where someone reviewing his own text has to put the words together to make chords or discords -- and can put them together as imagined rather than as put down in black and white. (See Tom's comment about parallax.) Note that composers who work with their own vocabularies can have glitches; I've sung a few premiers by modern composers and recall at least one typo (or at least a notation that wasn't as clear as we'd like).
- Words convey much of their information by an established code; an editor can say that this point contradicts that one, and even if he's wrong because he missed the correcting twist, that miss can suggest to the author that the twist needs to be clearer. Music is a direct connection to the parts of the brain that don't reason, so discordant "facts" are less clear where they can be argued at all. (I'm sure exceptions can be argued, but I hold that this is true in the main.)

And as noted above, art until quite recently \was/ subject to ]editing[; see the legends about premier singers complaining that Beethoven's part writing was too brutal, or the way singers could replace an aria with a personal favorite when opera was written in blocks instead of through-sung.

Posted March 29, 2004 10:36 PM by CHip

Of course, my favorite phrase in the Anne Rice article was:
the spelling corrrections, which I often need, [sic]
As I read between her lines, I think that she is probably trying to have her cake and eat it too. On the one hand, she says she doesn't use drafts. But she saves old versions of certain passages, and sometimes goes back to them. What are those if not drafts? And she listens to the editor's and copy editor's comments, at the same time doing further rewriting after the copy edit. If she feels as if she isn't being edited, and that makes her feel better, fine. But it sounds as if she's just found a way to reassure herself.

As far as editors go, i think there are various sorts of relationships between editors and authors, many of them good, and some of them not so good. Read, for example, of Heinlein's editor at Scribner, in Grumbles from the Grave. They don't seem to have had a good relationship. She bought his books, but she apparently didn't like or get them or him very much, and he didn't like her either. There are also--often the bane of my existence--"enabler"-type editors, who allow dumb things when they shouldn't. I agree that the author is the ultimate judge of how his/her book should be, but a good editor will be able to talk an author out of bad ideas--and they do have them on occasion.

The Chernobyl photos are great, and the Russified English commentary is even better.

Posted March 30, 2004 1:33 AM by Robert L

Patrick--Ginny Brown-Waite is not a Florida State Senator. She is a Congresswoman (Rep. [of course]--5th District)

Posted March 30, 2004 1:39 AM by Robert L

And let's not forget another piece of recent foolishness from Rep. Brown-Waite:

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, plans to introduce a bill today proposing that the families of the thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen buried in France and Belgium be allowed to dig up their remains and have them shipped home.

"The remains of our brave servicemen should be buried in patriotic soil, not in a country that has turned its back on the United States and on the memory of Americans who fought and died there," Brown-Waite said.

"It's almost as if the French have forgotten what those thousands of white crosses at Normandy represent," she said.

Which occasioned, among other things, these responses:

Just call 'em Freedom Femurs. Workers sorting mail in U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite's Brooksville office were startled by a strange odor coming from a box. Police examined the box, mailed from Germany, and found it contained bones. They concluded it was sent in response to Brown-Waite's sponsorship of a bill to have the remains of U.S. soldiers who fell in France or Germany returned in reaction to those countries' decision not to support the war in Iraq.

She couldn't do it, she's too busy fawning. E-mails skewering President Bush as a "terrorist" for invading Iraq flooded computers around the state. The name of the purported sender: Ginny Brown-Waite. --both from
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/12/31/Citrus/Stories_bizarre_and_b.shtml

Posted March 30, 2004 2:03 AM by Robert L

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, plans to introduce a bill today proposing that the families of the thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen buried in France and Belgium be allowed to dig up their remains and have them shipped home.

Before anybody gets too alarmed, that happened over a year ago and didn't go anywhere.

Posted March 30, 2004 9:41 AM by Lis Riba

Re: abridging/altering books

Last year my daughter, then in first grade, brought home a _very_ abridged version of Little Women intended for elementary school children. Since I abhor abridgements, I told her she could not read it, which made her very unhappy. However, more than the abridgement, I was concerned about how my rather emotionally sensitive child would react to Beth's death (books can make my kid cry) . . . only to discover, flipping idly through the abomination, that indeed Beth did not die. I went around making incoherent angry noises for several minutes.

Re: editing

"Second pair of eyes" is a really good description. On one book, I vividly remember saying to the author, but if you take these four really minor characters and combine them into two rather-less-minor characters, and take the subplot from one couple, which runs halfway through the novel, and the subplot from the other couple, which runs through the other half of the novel, and put them together, you'll have a novel with a strong pair of protagonists, a solid pair of supporting characters, and a main plot that is supported and contrasted by a subplot that paces it through the entire book. And she said, my god, you're right, I would never have seen that! And the result was a much better book. She was too close to see her own book's structure . . . and this was her most oft-repeated failing as an writer, and one she never overcame.

Re: getting into publishing

Sending out a resume isn't really enough anymore. It's like sending a manuscript to the slush pile--there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people competing for each entry-level position at the "here's my resume" level. Don't just send a resume to HR for them to keep on file. Send it again whenever you see a job you're interested in. Be willing to come to NY for a period of time to job hunt--it's easier to get interviews if you aren't coming from out of town.

Don't assume that having an English degree makes you employable--everyone who wants to work in editorial, it seems, has an English degree these days (though it wasn't a requirement when I started, and I in fact don't have one, nor do we require them at Tor/Forge). I've seen plenty of people with degrees in English who cannot write their way out of a brown paper bag.

Do things that will make you more attractive: work at a regional/small/college press, even as a freelancer; write articles/mock cover copy (I make applicants write cover copy as part of my interview process); read read read (when an interviewer asks you what the last book you read was, have an answer that is something not required reading for school); make sure you know something about the company you are trying to get hired by (in other words, coming to Tor and talking about your love of mainstream literary fiction is not likely to get you hired); try to get to know publishing people/editors in a non-job environment, for instance at a writer's conference or a convention.

There's probably more . . . but I can't recall anything else specific right now and I've got cover copy to write . . . .

Posted March 30, 2004 10:14 AM by Melissa Singer

Abridgement editors aside, I guess. I can see why you're angry, Chance, but not really why you're surprised. Classics have been bowdlerized, dumbed-down, and pruned to death since the Lambs at the very latest.

Well, I'm not really suprised, except in that way where I am surprised that people take good things and turn them into crap. (Because that continually surprises me.)

I am particualrly angry because these books masquerade as the real deal. They aren't clearly labeled on the cover that they are modified text.

Posted March 30, 2004 11:18 AM by chance

Hear, hear, Chance!

If food has to be labeled down to the last carbohydrate, if poison has to be labeled, "not for consumption," if a moisturizer bottle must read, "for external use only," an abridged work should be clearly labeled as such on the front cover.

We should be able to know as much about what we put in our minds as what we put in our bodies, and with the same ease.

Posted March 30, 2004 11:51 AM by Jill Smith

an abridged work should be clearly labeled as such on the front cover.

AOL, and also this reminds me--

How is it possible to get away with publishing books with dead authors' names on the cover, that the authors never wrote? V.C. Andrews, for instance.

Posted March 30, 2004 12:08 PM by Kate Nepveu

I was first alerted to the existence of abridged classics for children by, of all things, a bit of dialogue in Edward Eager's children's fantasy novel Half Magic, where the kids in the book are indignantly discussing the offerings of same available in their local library:

"The Three Musketeers with Lady de Winter left right out!"
"Excavated versions, I think they're called."

Thanks to that bit of public service, by the time I was out of elementary school I already knew enough to look for the real thing whenever possible.

Posted March 30, 2004 12:30 PM by Debra Doyle

I have one of those copies of Little Women mentioned--mine stops exactly halfway into the book, as near as I can tell. Meg is just about to get married, Beth is still pretty chipper, Jo has yet to go to New York, and Amy...well, Amy is Amy. Mr. March just got back, I think, from his stint in the Army, and the girls are clustering round his feet.

The other weird thing is that the book does its damnedest to seem as though that is not only the definitive copy of Little Women, but that neither Little Men nor Jo's Boys exists at all. I found out about them in sixth or seventh grade. And I felt rather betrayed when I read the full version of Little Women, as the copy I first read also perpetuates the Laurie-Jo love story, leaving you in no doubt that once you shut the book that Laurie and Jo will live happily ever after and produce tonnes of children. When Professor Baehr showed up, I hated him with the passion of a thousand angry ferrets. (Which I then proceeded to get over. But it's a real blow for a twelve year old girl to have her favourite character marry a guy with one perceived foot in the grave, let me tell you. I mean, what about Laurie, who was young and infinitely hotter? Okay, yes, I was shallow like that but I was also TWELVE.)

The first copy of The Three Muskateers that I read mentioned Lady de Winter, but not the full extent of her extra-curricular activities with D'Artagnan nor the fate that awaited Constance.

Posted March 30, 2004 1:12 PM by PiscusFiche

Truly, we do know archaic barrel. And eat it, too. On walking for the first time into Marc and Patty Wells' annual Portland SF Society New Year's Day Brunch (alone, nervous, and apparently singing to myself), I knew I had found My People when half the room chimed in on ol' Boston Charlie. Had I ever!! Brunch that year lasted until 11:00 at night.... I left having exchanged phone numbers with a certain short dark guy who hovered around all day and made me laugh. He's still at it. That was 1985.

Karen Junker said "wow. I just remembered for the first time in over 30 years that I was cast in an original stage version of WWTW many, many years ago." Does rewriting our own version in 5th grade count? Heavily abridged, needless to say, as is any translation from novel to stage. I was Rat. I had A Line. The next year, we did Romeo and Juliet. It was a bit longer.

Posted March 30, 2004 2:34 PM by Kate Yule

"Do things that will make you more attractive"

I should have that covered, what with internships, class projects, and good recommendations.

As for the English degree, I certainly hope it's not a requirement, since I don't have one. I'm hoping a master's in publishing will trump any measly English degree.

Posted March 30, 2004 3:00 PM by Elisabeth

Hi there, this is a newbie post and all that. OK.

Speaking of abridgements and the like, here's something that's been bothering me.

The renumbering of the seven books of Narnia, such that _The Magician's Nephew_ is presented first instead of sixth in these new boxes.

I had to replace my old copies that Mom bought me in the very early '80s; they sustained extensive water damage from the careless placement of a drippy houseplant. Picked up the colorful new boxes with the original artwork on the covers, and was astounded to see the tales presented in Strict Chronological Order According To The History Of Narnia rather than in the narrative order I was used to. Astounded further to read the claim on the copyright page that this is according to the author's original wishes.

Is this true? Have I just been duped by an *earlier* abridgement, and am now disgruntled that they are returning to the original order?

Or is it *not* just my imagination that the narration in _The Magician's Nephew_ actually makes reference to _The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe_, such that it wouldn't make sense to read _Magician_ first?

I think they changed some names on us, too - I could swear the captain of the secret police in _Lion_ used to be named after a prominent figure in Norse mythology, and now he's not.

So, at the risk of being horribly wrong about what's right, does anyone know the actual scoop on this? Y'all being literary types, I'd trust you.

Posted March 30, 2004 3:44 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Arrrgh. I was under the impression I had posted 2 comments to Making Light yesterday. But neither of them show up. Have I trespassed unknowingly on someone's good nature or have I just been forgetting to hit the button the 2nd time? I'm not having this problem on Electorlite.

Not that it was anything important or anything but it happened in 2 different threads and so I'm beginning to wonder if I'm becoming feebleminded or what. You may all now reassure me that I am, in fact, feebleminded.

MKK

Posted March 30, 2004 3:57 PM by Mary Kay

All a google search turned up was that Maugrim was a made-up name by C. S. Lewis, and used in other sources, as well. I found no solid evidence that he's from Norse mythology, but apparently, he's turned up in Tolkien, too. Sorry I can't be of any help there.

I read the series in the original order, with Magician's Nephew towards the middle, and I liked it there. As a child, I found it dry, compared to the first book, and I may never have continued reading if that was my first introduction to it. Yes, it occurs chronologically first, but I prefer that information after I've established why I care about Narnia. Knowing all that up front destroys the mystery, somehow, like spoiling the end of a good movie. My husband won't discuss the subject, and is in denial that the box sets with Magician's Nephew first exist.

Posted March 30, 2004 4:02 PM by Alice Keezer

Mary Kay, I didn't zap them.

Posted March 30, 2004 4:04 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Sad to hear of Alistair Cooke's passing - the beeb's got a good tribute up on their website here, with links to highlights of some of his letters in the sidebar.

-J

Posted March 30, 2004 4:08 PM by Jakob

Tamara, Skwid,

It supposedly has its origins in an Aboriginal rite-of-passage imitating bifurcation in kangaroos. As sympathetic magic, I suppose I understand it; the kangaroo is associated with prowess. But as a fashion statement?

Posted March 30, 2004 4:18 PM by Jean OG

'I could swear the captain of the secret police in _Lion_ used to be named after a prominent figure in Norse mythology, and now he's not.
'
Well I seem to remember he was called fenris Ulf, are you saying he is not called this anymore?

Posted March 30, 2004 5:24 PM by bryan

My only known encounter with bowdlerisation was in, I guess, 8th or 9th grade, when we were given a copy of Gerald Durrel's 'My Family and Other Animals" that had been clumsily rewritten. I found this terribly confusing, having read the regular version of the book at around age eleven. To this day, I don't understand why they conflated several of Durrel's teachers together, or why they felt they needed to censor the name of the boat 'Bootle-Bumtrinket'. I know it sounds like something to do with body modification, but even allowing for Laurence Durrel naming the boat, I'm more inclined to believe it's just a nonsense word....

Posted March 30, 2004 5:54 PM by NelC

Nicole and Bryan--

I don't have my Narnia in the office here, but yes, a character named Fenris Ulf in the British version has a different name in the American version.

I am firmly convinced that the order of publication (LWW first) is the correct order to read Narnia. There's a really good chapter in Peter Schakel's book "Imagination and the Arts in C.S.Lewis" about the proper order. There are people who disagree. Schakel does discuss a letter Lewis wrote which is the basis for claims Narnia should be read chronologically. But I think you need to encounter the lamppost as a mystery first, and find out its origin later.

Posted March 30, 2004 5:56 PM by Janet Brennan Croft

I could never get through the Narnia books (forgive my heresy). Probably because reading them as an adult, I caught on early to the whole dying and reborn god thing - a religious friend assured me that Lewis intended it to be as Christian as it sounded, but later I read that he was agnostic (Lewis, that is).

Posted March 30, 2004 6:53 PM by Karen Junker

Nicole - What is Fenris Ulf called in the edition you just bought? (It does appear that Fenris/Fenrir is a member of the Norse pantheon).

This sort of thing is as irritating as having whole subplots get stripped out of the movie version of your favorite book, only to make way for the screenwriter's added irrelevant/ego-gratifying/inane bits that s/he wrote him/herself.

Posted March 30, 2004 6:54 PM by Jill Smith

One of my high-school textbooks had a bowdlerized _Romeo and Juliet_ and no mention at all that it had been abridged. Oh, I was outraged.

The Nurse sounded punchdrunk, they'd taken out so many of her lines.

Posted March 30, 2004 6:55 PM by clew

Leslie writes (way above):

well speaking as a visual artist most artists I know show their work to other artists in critique groups and some non-artists - feedback is always useful. Tim is correct that gallery owners give a yes/no response more often than anything more detailed.

At last year's Worldcon in Toronto, I witnessed our hostess giving a "docent tour" of the art show, exhibiting critical skills rarely displayed in her on-line persona. In partnership with photo-artist Ctein, she orally red-penciled paintings, prints, and sculpture up one aisle and down the other. The experience was breathtaking and a little scary, and it left me feeling very glad I wasn't a mediocre artist with paintings on display there.

Posted March 30, 2004 7:09 PM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Karen, I'm pretty certain C.S. Lewis was a renowned writer on Christian theology. Perhaps your friend was using some more technical theologic meaning of "agnostic"?

A quick search yields http://www.cslewis.org/about/index.html which describes various changes of religious viewpoints undergone by Lewis, but no mention of agnosticism.

Posted March 30, 2004 7:17 PM by Jeremy Leader

If Lewis wanted them in that order, how come they weren't published in internal chronological order until long after he was dead? Those books went through several editions while he was alive (and many while his closest friends were alive), and he had therefore plenty of chances to make his wishes known.

Stylistically it makes no sense: as commented above, MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW is written very differently (much more adult, actually). I was given it first by some well-meaning relative, and when I tried to read LION -- I bounced. The style was so cutesy and young. Lewis got much more sophisticated. I decided that MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW was an anomaly, and didn't go back to the books for many years.

Posted March 30, 2004 7:23 PM by Tom Whitmore

Re: C.S. Lewis and the order of the Chronicles - I think the point (made by Janet) about encountering the lamppost first as a magical mystery is a good one. I myself have yet another similar reason for preferring the non-chronological order--The Magician's Nephew directly precedes The Last Battle that way, and I think it gives you more emotional impact to experience the death (and subsequent rebirth of Narnia) so closely after you've just learned its origins. Secondly, it brings the series full circle, as the death and rebirth of Narnia mirror the events of Aslan's death and rebirth in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I think it's thematically stronger.

Posted March 30, 2004 7:31 PM by PiscusFiche

You could have a lot of fun with a Hunter Dan doll and one of the Pope action figures sold by Archie MacPhee.

Posted March 30, 2004 7:37 PM by Stefan Jones

PicusFiche -

Thank you. I had always felt an intrinsic conflict between the order in which the books were written (also the numerical order of the box set my mom gave me - inscribed on the spine, in case anyone cared to dispute) and the "chronological" order (which seemed right to my orderly, young self). I too was drawn in by LWW at the outset and enjoyed the unfolding mystery, but was troubled about chronology.

But your more literary, less literal approach to the problem is soothing in its emotional logic. Both impulses are satisfied.

Aaaahhh. I should go re-read the series now (as I've been meaning to for some time).

Posted March 30, 2004 7:47 PM by Jill Smith

Just because I'm slightly compulsive about this, Fenrir/Fenris Ulfr isn't "a member of the Norse Pantheon", being of the tribe neither of the Ás nor the Vans.

Loki and the Giantess Angrboda, the Hag of Ironwood, had three children; Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent, and half-faced Hel [1].

Alarmed at the rate at which the wolf was growing, and the degree of appetite it was showing, the gods tried to bind it [3]; they only succeeded when the dwarves made a chain out of unlikely substances [2] and the god Tyr put his right hand in the wolf's mouth as pledge of the Gods' good faith.

Tyr lost his hand, but the chain held, and "the grey wolf gapes ever at the abode of the gods".

At Ragnarok, Fenrir will get free, and (along with the rest of us), kill and consume Odhin. It is said that Odhin's son Vidhar, got for the purpose, will put on the Thickmost Shoe and tear the wolf in half, releasing Odhin into a new, resurected life, but everyone knows that the things the One-Eyed's minions come up with to say about him are not reliable.

[1] Hel is in charge of the place Hel, the cold abode of the dead; despite her parentage and siblings, she's a sweetie, and no one ever has anything to say against her, perhaps because most realize that they will, soon or late, be coming to visit.

[2] the sound of cat's footfall, a woman's beard, the roots of a rock, a bear's sinews, a fish's breath, and a bird's spittle.

The chain is called Gleipnir, and resembles a silk ribbon, smooth and small.

[3] Tyr and the Wolf October, 1992

Six dwarves, slow in a sweat of death
carry the strand toward black horror
Bristling like a furred and forest thing;
fanged gape like a hole in the world
wearing a wolf-cloak; slow in pride
for the broken ropes chains that held
but brief and broke against his strength
sees six dwarves in slow strife
with a thread, balks, growls like the sea.

The wolf not witless no more a game
this strength-play will light look on
demands a faith-pledge; wordless then
far seeing Tyr with pale set eyes
His right hand lays within the jaws.
Half disbelieving Fenrir halts
stands stone still as round his neck
three dwarves cast the thread thin chain.
Round the rock the bight end reeves,
bone of Ymir bond of the Earth.
Glepnir's got him; the dwarves dart back.
Rage-mad Fenrir leaps away
the chain rings but rock remains
bent-necked bides the wolf.

Gaunt he grows with the world uneaten
froths and howls, rolls red eyes
orders all about in rank of eating
for when - the mad eyes know -
the rock will rip, the chain come free.

Tyr's lone hand his forearm clamps
better to bind bright blood inside;
sees from a set face shut with pain
thin strands and stronger Urthr's weaving
the bright bridge bloodied, broke, and smoking
the unbound wolf glutted with Odin.

Modhi toddles, teethes on rocks
spits new sand, laughs infant glee
sees a serpent's broken writhing
watching the wolf twist and howl.

Posted March 30, 2004 8:25 PM by Graydon

Oh wow.....

Graydon, I bow before your Nordic theological erudition.

Posted March 30, 2004 8:45 PM by Jill Smith

I don't have my Narnia in the office here, but yes, a character named Fenris Ulf in the British version has a different name in the American version.

I just checked my British copy of LWW (a 1975 Puffin edition) and the captain of the secret police is named Maugrim.

Hmm... according to the C. S. Lewis FAQ, "Fenris Ulf" was only in the American editions:

Some very minor changes were made to The Lion ... and The Voyage ... for their American publication. For example, the name of the witch's agent is changed from "Maugrim" to "Fenris Ulf" and Peter's title from "Sir Peter Wolfs-Bane" to "Sir Peter Fenris-Bane." In the Englis