Christian ("This is the worst thing Americans have done to each other in a long time."): No, it's not. It's the worst thing the American government has done to its people, pretty much ever.
I love how a lot of the media are seizing on Bush's noting that the emergency response has been "not acceptable."
Bush hasn't responded acceptably, to any situation, since, well. Ever.
You know, posts like Ivan's are what gives me such pause. I disagree with everything contained therein, but according to one of the best tenets of our nation, everyone's got the right to be wrong.
Graydon: Ah, okay. When I googled DART, I got some Dallas Road Transit, and couldn't figure out how it might correlate. Now I see.
"He was told, effectively, 'no'; the newspaper quote I saw this morning was something to the effect of "we're still concentrating on life saving"."
Rhetorical question: does he not realize that *You Can't Save Lives Without More Potable Water*?
I'm so disgusted/angry/frightened by this whole situation, and all its implications, that I cannot think coherently. I hate when I can't think coherently.
And sidenote: I just want to thank you, Teresa, for providing this sort of forum. Making Light became my most reliable source of information, and when people have asked how I know what I know about Katrina, I mention these two editors at Tor, a science fiction publisher, and the weblog they run, and how it's about politics and religion and writing and gardening and knitting. And thanks to all of you, too, because without you commenters, I simply don't want to imagine how I'd be coping with this.
"(The ability to make hundreds of thousand of litres per day of it potable sits on a runway because Bush doesn't want help from DART.)"
What's DART, and what's this situation? I haven't heard about this.
"It's a nightclub for obsessive-compulsives. They don't have strobe lights, they just tell one of the guests to turn the lights off and he checks it 5,000 times."
I'm the assistant editor of the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services. I had to struggle not to burst out laughing at work when I read this.
General comments, because, good Lord, the thread multiplied insanely when I turned my back.
Sure, writing's hard. It's hard to get it right. And make no mistakes, I've gotten my huge share of rejection letters (well deserved. Including the ones with good comments), but I rarely lament. I remember when I realized it was what I wanted to do. It's still what I want to do. I try not to trash it, because, when it comes down to it, a keyboard and screen are still home. This is what I do, and what I love to do, even when it's hard love. I've gotten good comments. Mike Curtis at the Atlantic Monthly liked my story, and Will Shettery liked my novel, and it's not like I was paying them to compliment me.
Why am I trying to do it? Visibility? To a degree, I guess. But it's more also that I didn't start out just wanting to be a writer. I've never wanted to just be a writer. I've wanted to write books. Not novel-length stories. A physical object, with paper and (hopefully) good words. Something that, someday, someone might pick up in a second-hand shop, and think, huh, and read, and enjoy. I'm lucky enough that the goal has become secondary to the writing itself, though. It wasn't always like that, and I think I grew a lot, as a writer, when it did.
I don't like the writers who lament it. I used to be on the Well, and one of the members had "You're an author. [Bugger] off and auth," as a pseudonym. I always liked that. People get on me sometimes, but, when it comes down to proving myself, I don't argue. I just bugger off and auth.
Along the lines of physics/mathematics journals: I'm the editor of two nursing journals, one clinical and one academic. Their subscription rates aren't as high as the ones cited, but I know we don't pay our authors except in comp copies. Which I send out, every month. I send out most of the correspondence, in fact. I hate days when I have to send out rejection letters, because I always fear it's karmic, and I've gotten enough myself, thanks. I know I'll get more. But I don't want them, and I'd care not contribute.
Xopher, I think I encouraged you to do the NaNoWriMo before, but if I didn't, do so now. It's a good exercise, and what've you got to lose? A month of sanity perhaps, but, hey, sanity's overrated, anyway.
And I just want to note that I really like that you commented on Fiendish, Patrick, and that the comments got you giddy, Fiendish. That's always wonderful to see. Good luck to you, Fiendish.
"But I'll disagree that I'm touting the specialness of SF. My problem is with supposed literary types who dismiss all SF because it is SF and then are blind to SF elements in their some of their examples."
Oh, I didn't mean that I had inferred you were touting the specialness of SF. I don't know that I had inferred anything besides that you were saying you don't like what many people seem to call "literary" fiction.
"Lovely Bones" made me cry, too. So did "The Time-Traveler's Wife" (still the last great book I read, but I have high hopes for "Anansi Boys"). And I certainly recognize the fantasy/sf elements, respectively, in each. In my world of reading, however, when I like books, they transcend genre and become simply "good". I talk about them differently, and recommend them indiscriminantly.
I won't touch "Beloved." I did, once. I even read twenty or so pages.
Incidentally, if anyone is interested, Salon has a review of both "Magic for Beginners" and "Lunar Park" today, in its end-of-summer, hot-fiction feature:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/08/24/wtr/index.html
You can read it free if you watch the day pass. I think it's worth it, not just for those two reviews, both of which I thought were pretty well presented. Briefly mentions zombies, too, but doesn't wonder whether they're the sort you write about or the sort you run away from, which is probably best.
I wasn't trying to "win," Lucy; I was trying to understand what you meant. Sorry to have made you grumpy because of my ignorance.
Lucy, I had followed the links, and I wasn't trying to break your box or render it useless; I was trying, as I thought along with the discussion, to define the borders of the box.
The Arizona State University page to which you linked lists, by my count, 26 different definitions/suppositions for "magical realism". There are similarities between them, of course, but there are also contradictions. Only a few link it explicitly to literature of the 20th century. The one mentions it was "coined around 1924 or 1925 by a German art critic named Franz Roh: what he called magical realism was simply painting where real forms are combined in a way that does not conform to daily reality. In fact, what Franz Roh calls magical realism is simply Expressionist painting."
Which is interesting, because to me it says that not even the man who coined the phrase in the first place knew how to properly apply it, or even what it was.
"Magical realism's most basic concern [is]--the nature and limits of the knowable. Magical realist texts ask us to look beyond the limits of the knowable. Magical realism is truly postmodern in its rejection of the binarisms, rationalisms, and reductive materialisms of Western modernity." This can't describe Poe?
What about this? "First it is the combination of reality and fantasy and second, it is the transformation of the real into the awesome and unreal, thirdly an art of surprises, one which creates a distorted concept of time and space, fourth a literature directed to an intellectual minority; characterized by a cold cerebral aloofness it does not cater to popular tastes, but rather to that of those sophisticated individuals instructed in aesthetic subtleties."
How about this? "Magical realism refers to the occurrence of supernatural, or anything that is contrary to our conventional view of reality [it is] not divorced from reality either, [and] the presence of the supernatural is often attributed to the primitive or 'magical' Indian mentality, which coexists with European rationality."
Maybe this? "Magic realism--[is characterized by] the mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic, bizarre and skillful time shifts, convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots, miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and fairy stories, expressionistic and even surrealistic description, arcane erudition, the elements of surprise or abrupt shock, the horrific and the inexplicable."
I should point out, I don't mean to concentrate solely on Poe. But "A Midsummer Night's Dream" mingled the realistic and fantastic, had convoluted narrative, and used fairy stories. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that the description, as it stands, applies to a lot more than what people seem to want to apply it to, and issue takebacks when it's pointed out. "Oh, no, well, that's not twentieth century." So?
But, then, maybe it's useless to try to help define the box, because I mainly think outside of it. The box doesn't interest me at all; it's the story that's being placed in it that I care about. Is that why I don't care about the knight's adornment and the jewels in the sword and just want to know where he's going and why? Dunno.
I like footnotes for Michelle K's reasons.
This just reminded me of this discussion:
"She set herself tasks of thinking when she left on a walk, small tasks such as: What counts as mundane? If mundane just means "Of, pertaining to, or typical of this world" how is it that over the years the mundane has become allied with the trivial?"
-"Oh Pure and Radiant Heart," by Lydia Millet
"Why wouldn't "A Midsummer Night's Dream" be considered magical realism?
Because it's about the faerie court?"
Oh. Sorry. I thought it was about mismatched lovers and mistaken identity.
Going way back to Sean and Michelle (sorry. Busy weekend. Kilt fitting and... well, my dog Ludo didn't wake up Saturday. He was 3)...
I don't think that the difference between "literary" and "mainstream" and "fantasy" is that easy to define, and I certainly can't agree that "a lot of crap stories get put in front of you as "excellent examples"
Literary is the genre of dead grandma's and broken relationships.
SF is the genre that deals with people in the what if."
Several big examples I can think of: "The Lovely Bones," by Alice Sebold, "The Time-Traveler's Wife," by Audrey Niffenegger, and "The Confessions of Max Tivoli," by Andrew Sean Greer. All are arguably "literary," all have elements of fantasy. None are about dead grandmas and broken relationships (they're about a girl who is raped and murdered and her family's grief, the effect of time-travel on a romantic relationship, and a man who ages backward, respectively [and all are worth reading. Excellent books]).
All stories are "what ifs". What if a guy got obsessed with a whale? What if a raven came to visit?
"Lucy: Michelle, I think you're being unecessarily hard on non-sf readers. I don't think non-sf readers would normally "freak out" at any individual sentence. The thing is, they aren't engaged by the same kinds of things, and they don't find the same kinds of questions intriguing,
Exactly.
As noted above, the tendency to tout the specialness of SF by means of constant denigrating references to mainstream literature is one of the things about SF fandom that really drives me up the wall."
I'll be the first to say that I'm a non-SF reader. I've really never been a huge fan of science fiction. I don't freak out; I just don't like stories about space ships (of course I understand there's more to science fiction than space ships. This statement is more along the lines of "I don't grok what you grok" than "science fiction is bad").
You know what throws me off? Names with apostrophes. Far away planets. Space settlements. Fantasy, too. Swords and rings and such.
But I like Harry Potter. I'm weird.
I once had a feminist teacher in a college creative writing workshop. She mentored me, to a degree. It was obvious that she was steeped in "Pride and Prejudice" and "Jane Eyre." She was Irish and red-headed and spoke her mind bluntly. I learned a lot from her, not least of which was that not everyone is going to like what I've writtent, but that doesn't mean it's bad.
In a class of personal memoirs, essays about Tiger Woods, and sophomore poetry, I handed in two chapters of a werewolf novel for my final project.
"Quite a splendid piece of horror fiction."
She was one of the few people I know who didn't shut down when she encountered the unfamiliar.
I, unfortunately, don't have that ability. I'll fully admit to it. I don't know why I love "Harry Potter" but hate "Lord of the Rings". But I do. Certain elements just work for me as a reader, and certain ones don't.
"The reason I wouldn't is that magic realism isn't so much a category as a literary movement or maybe a school -- like "nueva cancion" is a musical movement."
But this prompts a question: do you go by when the movement began, or when it was recognized? Does recognition change the nature of the movement? And does the movement really only exist after you've recognized it?
It's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Literature. Do stories have genre innately, or do we observe genre in them?
I sometimes think that the difference between novels that get sold in the literary/fiction section at Barnes & Noble and novels that are sold in the fantasy/science fiction is not necessarily what is contained therein but rather how writers tell their stories and whether those stories follow the limitations set forth by genre's conventions. Jonathan Carroll's books are not on the shelves in the fantasy section because he doesn't follow conventions; readers really don't know what to expect when they turn his next page. He does not follow "rules," and, while some of the elements of his stories do seem to have symbolic meaning, the symbolic meanings are generally subtle, ambiguous, and perhaps most importantly in distinctions, secondary. Does the videotape in "Child Across the Sky" stand for something? Probably, yeah, and if you think it stands for that, chances are it probably could. But don't forget it's a videotape. Just push play.
No magical realism before Garcia Marquez? Poe wasn't telling magically realistic stories? What about "Young Goodman Brown"? "By the Waters of Babylon"? Why wouldn't "A Midsummer Night's Dream" be considered magical realism?
I found it difficult to decide which thread to post this in: it's a letter by Roger Ebert to the producers of a movie called *Chaos*, and I think it's relevant to discussion both here and in the "Patrick McLuhan" thread:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/movies/cst-nws-ebert19.html
"But perhaps it could be argued that one only has so much time and energy to devote to any piece of writing, and if you spend too much time on the special effects (dragons/zombies/twin suns etc.), you won't be able to do such a good job on basics like plot and characterization."
And to further tie this to the other thread, Laura, I wish you had sat down with George Lucas circa 1992, before he destroyed his own myth.
Lenora: thanks for the clarification, I get what Jo was saying now. But it now makes me wonder: doesn't irrigation include pumps in its implementation? How far back go pumps go, Jo?
On the "get"/"not get" gap: This thread has prompted me to think about this a lot in the past week, for a number of reasons. In recent years, I've found myself bridging out and reading stories I might not've read when I was younger, opening myself up to possibilities and, hopefully, more complex stories. Also, I've recently been considering MFA programs in writing, so I've been looking at a lot of different books by a lot of different writers on faculty. I must admit I'm so far unimpressed save a few exceptions.
It's funny Bret Easton Ellis has come up recently, and even in the Making Light sidebar there, because my boss lent me *American Psycho* several months ago, and I recently picked up *Glamorama*. While I haven't really gotten to the latter yet, I read the former over about a week. And found I liked it. Not a great deal, but more than I'd expected to.
But tying this in, I also, shortly thereafter, read Teresa's review of *American Psycho*, as I picked up *Making Book* not long ago (and enjoyed it quite a lot, Teresa. It prompted me to submit a novel to Tor, in fact, because I enjoyed it so much).
I don't know how familiar other people here are with the review, but it's not a good one. Well. I mean, it is: it's a *great*, very negative review. Every point it raises is valid, and I actually agree with a lot of it. It made me see a couple of things I hadn't noticed when I'd read the story, even.
In spite of this, I still like it. I like it because I read Men's Health and GQ and Esquire and a bunch of others, and I lived in Manhattan for several years, and, well, I knew people like that. Not that tried to eat women, mind you, but people who were solely concerned about materialistic issues. I don't know if it has any bearing that I saw the movie first (we'll never know if I would've finished it if I hadn't seen Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman); it may well. I could perfectly hear Christian Bale's voice narrating the book in my head. Again, this might have made a difference. Bateman does list things in minute detail, to the point of both obsession/compulsion and, yes, tedium, but...
I "got" it.
This is not to say, Teresa, that didn't understand the book, because it's obvious you did, and wrote a very cogent review of it. But I think this gives an example of what Patrick is trying to get at when he mentions the "get"/"not get" disconnect. I "got" *American Psycho*, whereas Teresa "didn't get" it.
Mike: Ah, right, thanks for the clarification. I've never been to a con; my sole experience with bars has been the sort of divey place you go to where your there for the beer and the band, and the music's loud enough to prevent good conversation. Which, of course, means that you have to lean in toward the people to whom you're speaking and nearly shout into their ears.
And, of course, you end up there on Karaoke night, and some tone-deaf lush gets up and mangles Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69," which is ironic if only because, looking at him, you wouldn't think he was born until at least a decade later.
(yeah, I was that guy the other week. What? Somebody's got to be him)
I need to start hanging out at better bars.
Jo: I may be misunderstanding the sentiment there, but you're not saying that arterial blood does not pump, right? Because it does. I was premed and nearly a doctor, and double-checked with my mother, a laboratory technician; if you nick an artery, the blood doesn't just seep out, or even run freely. It pumps out of the wound like semen from a weak orgasm, in tiny, timid spurts.
Beth: As a single guy, I'm going to ask--when anyone has met intelligent beings in any bar?
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|---|---|
| 2005 | 45 |
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