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July 2009

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Jul. 2nd, 2009

surprised by milk

Chabon! Chabon! literary canons, non-realism, and Mitchell

"If Chabon gets away with this, and I rather think he does, it is not because he floods us with baseball itself, in its fractal abysms of minutiae; for he does not do so. He wins us over, I think, through an essential virtue in his relationship to story, which is the ability to convey an absolute sense of security in the story being told. He seems to have something like perfect pitch for what a story is, sentence by sentence, then by then."

- from a review of Summerland by John Clute here, which I thought was an amazingly apt summary of this feeling I've always had about Chabon's novels (those of his that I've read anyhow), but have somehow never have managed to verbalise.


Also of interest: Notes on Conceptual Fiction by Ted Gioia, a kind of discussion and recommended reading list of non-realist fiction, and a related site by the same author, The New Canon, a list of books of fiction since 1985. David Mitchell makes both lists. I saw [info]firescribble mention Mitchell the other day and felt woefully unable to say anything about him; he's one of those authors I feel instinctively that I will like (I've browsed through Cloud Atlas and number9dream before), but have never actually read.

Jun. 30th, 2009

trained to kill

(no subject)

So. I may happen to have stirred up a friending meme on a certain fandom community (it involves racquets and courts) via an LJ account that I have been ignoring for years that we shall agree not to mention by name on this LJ.

Said account might also happen to be open for business atm on account of a project mentioned in the previous entry on this Livejournal and will probably be the means of further updates on said project.

(Yes, I'm developing Multiple Blog Disorder just as [info]aiwritingfic achieves remission; this despite the fact that I barely produce enough content for one blog in any given month. Apologies all around.)

As a sidenote, anything that hits any of my LJ accounts (incl. fic journal) from now on will likely (about 99% probability) also make it to Dreamwidth either as a crosspost or a link, as a means of encouraging people to Dreamwidth, so if you're already watching my DW journal none of this applies. Of course, if you choose to watch multiple journals on LJ and DW this means that I get to spam you with Michael Chabon squee even more often than I do already, so I have no real objection to this.

Jun. 29th, 2009

trained to kill

Tenipuri Big Bang: Registrations of Interest

An on-off idea I've been tossing at people on AIM for months, but only really started to take seriously after discussion with [info]umarekawareru last night; would anyone be willing to help organise this? (I don't necessarily mean in a time-consuming way; the bulk of the help I would need is with promos and word-of-mouth, as the Tenipuri fandom is so massive and diffuse and my f-list is well, small.)

Also, how many people out there would be interested in writing/drawing for this? Do you see Dreamwidth or Livejournal as being a better place to host an event like this, or should we make it cross-platform? Are there any other suggestions you would like to make re: time of year, logistics, promotions, other?

(If you'd spread the word to people you think/know would be interested this, I would appreciate it; please direct comments to my DW journal for now, to maintain relative privacy.)

This entry was originally posted at http://readerofasaph.dreamwidth.org/65337.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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Jun. 27th, 2009

trained to kill

fic rec - KHR

The Definition of Insanity [info - personal]lysapadin
1278 words

Sawada Tsunayoshi was dead.

Again.


Brilliant and horrifying; the best thing I've read in KHR fandom in months, perhaps all year. And I don't even care that my last sentence sounded like one of those inane quotes on the dust jacket of a thriller novel.
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Jun. 26th, 2009

trained to kill

(no subject)

Dear self:

Just keep typing. If you stop to ponder whether you actually understand what you are trying to say, you are completely stuffed and will never finish this essay on time.

Exactly this. Why I am, in the end, grateful that I didn't decide to major in comparative literature.

Jun. 25th, 2009

trained to kill

(no subject)

"It is something which had happened to the mind of England between the time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning; it is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective one. Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think, but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience. It modified his sensibility. When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes."

T.S. Eliot; so NT it hurts.

My brain is muzzy from trying to read The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry, a book which presumably has many merits beyond that of turning young undergraduates off Ezra Pound* for life; merits I unfortunately can't dsicover right now. (I think I need a Cambridge Companion to the Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry.)

While we're on the brain-hurting, I had a look at the first two pages of Infinite Jest in Dymocks the other day and decided that I know so many ways of making myself miserable already that there was no point in attempting this method. *Lynnfail*

Jun. 19th, 2009

best friends

(no subject)

So in the last 24 hours I have not done much besides homework, staring into space, and reading m john harrison's blog.

We're all familiar with his much-discussed rant on worldbuilding, but here, have a post on urban fantasy.

Also, What it Might be Like to Live in Viriconium, which seriously helps to make sense of the worldbuilding argument.


ETA: the unimmersive - thoughts on French fairy tales.

this one for Tracy: on sebald's austerlitz.

still clicking through his blog and babbling at [info - personal]jetsam about random pieces of brilliance oh crap I really need to do homework arrgh so distracted.

Jun. 16th, 2009

trained to kill

prepare me for some sort of literary excommunication

In lieu of typing up a review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I am crawling through the Yuletide archives.

Enough said, really.

Why is Chabonism not a fandom? I want to Google for the answer to this.


ETA: I had totally forgotten about this: Help Jonathan Lethem Become a Slash Fiction Star. Clearly I am not slated for excommunication.

Also this: The Amazing Adventures of Lethem & Chabon.

Wait a minute. This Michael Chabon fandom thing totally has potential.

Jun. 14th, 2009

trained to kill

(no subject)

Following conversations with [info]usuakari and [info]tooticky at Natcon. My top 10 fantasy recommendations, arranged roughly in order of accessibility to readers. (Starts with Watership Down, which I think anyone whose age was in double digits would enjoy - possibly younger for the extremely precocious - and ends with the Iron Dragon's Daughter, which, oh, I don't know.)

Strictly fantasy only. (slipstream counts, soft SF and horror do not.)


the 10 )



secondary recs )





Notable omissions from the first list include Crowley, Wolfe, Shepard and Dunsany, all of whom end up in the I-did-not-actually-manage-to-finish-their-novels category. (I feel like they are at least as good and worthwhile as any of the ten I have actually listed, only.) *is lazy reader, also, the Internet is very distracting these days* A lot of commercial and epic fantasy is also left out of the secondary list, mostly because I can't manage to sort the massive piles of book titles in my head, so much of it is so tonally similar. Also because I am weirdly attached to huge quantities of stuff that I feel obliged to add all sorts of disclaimers to (I love the Betrayal at Krondor DOS game, and Feist is rather close to my heart, but if anyone were to recommend the book to me now I would declare them certifiable. And I must have gone through like ten of the Recluce novels, despite their all being essentially the same novel ten times. And then Flewelling and Rawn and Wurts and Huff...and,yeah. *crawls back to sit in the Slums of Literary Taste*)
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Jun. 11th, 2009

baby cow

(no subject)

Via [info]aidandoyle:

Japanese SF and English-language original SF, by [info]nihilistic_kid, who is editing Viz's forthcoming line of Japanese speculative fiction in translation.

(Possibly I am the last person in the world who even knew that Viz was doing this, but I am extremely gleeful about it happening.)

Jun. 9th, 2009

trained to kill

gacked from issen4

Dear [info]giving_ground,

I cave. Give me a list of Tove Jansson to read.

Also, please do this meme as well.

Love,
Lynn



Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?...

Tove Jansson (1914-2001)

9 High-Brow, -7 Violent, 5 Experimental and -3 Cynical!

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Peaceful, Experimental and Romantic! These concepts are defined below.


Tove Jansson was a Finnish painter, sculptor and writer. She was part of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland and so wrote her books, including her most famous works, the Moomin books, in Swedish. The Moomin books (1945-70), though perhaps not considered fantasy by some, are nevertheless fine examples of world-building for children, centred around the inhabitants of the Moomin Valley, where a family of white trolls known as moomin trolls live, and always return to, though they occasionally leave for adventures in the outside world. Though many of the Moomin books are pure childrens' books, Jansson conducted the experiment of letting the series turn more adult as she went along, the last three books (one collection of short stories and two novels) being psychologically complex stories that are just as fit, or sometimes perhaps more fit, for adults. Still, Jansson's somewhat romantic vision of the Valley as a peaceful haven of family life in the midst of a sometimes frightening and dark world is retained through-out the books. Though she considered herself a painter rather than a writer, Tove Jansson will always be remembered as one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest writer of children's books of all times.


You are also a lot like Philip Pullman.


If you want some action, try Gene Wolfe.


If you'd like a challenge, try your exact opposite, David Eddings.



Read more... )

the complete list of authors, based on score )

Jun. 7th, 2009

trained to kill

(no subject)

Forcing [info]shiorikazen to read extracts of Summerland, and finding to my delight that she likes it, and moreover that she does get that feeling that I get when I read Chabon's later work, of just utter fun, utter glee, that delight in people, in the world, that I find so rare in any fiction I read these days.

(She described it as an "XD! XD! XD!" reaction. Which probably sums it up better than any of my incoherent ravings do.)

Of my favourite writers, I think I've always felt like everyone can love Chabon because he thrills the reader in me; whereas I hesitate to recommend Harrison. I've always felt like Harrison is the quintessential writer's writer, even more so than say Link or Valente, for whom [info]tooticky suggested that phrase today. (Upon checking I discover that if you Google Harrison's name and "writer's writer", you encounter a startling number of relevant hits) I've loved Harrison's writing since I was in my mid-teens, but have never quite been able to figure out why; I have trouble finishing his novels, go back time after time for repeated failed attempts, and could not express or explain his stories to my satisfaction or anyone else's for love or chocolate. I always have this sense that something incredibly difficult and elusive is going on beneath the surface; but strangely I'm never bothered by the fact that I can't grasp it.
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trained to kill

(no subject)

Dear Clarion South people,

I did not realise how much I missed you until I saw you. Just saying.

Love, SL
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Jun. 5th, 2009

bloodthirsty skylark

(no subject)

So. I'm doing [info]fifthmus.

People who read (and therefore request) the kind of Hikago fanfiction I like to write, please sign-up and save me from the possibility of a fate worse than death. Like say, being stranded with a request for Ogata/Kuwabara.

Damn it, I'd rather write tentacles than some [info]fifthmus requests I remember.*


*([info] - personalannotated_em is evil. There are so many thousands of things the Tenipuri fandom needs** other than Kajimoto with long, wriggly cybernetic implants. WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT THIS)

**For instance, canon source material I can actually bear to read.

May. 25th, 2009

bloodthirsty skylark

poetry-sharing cont'd

...mostly because I'm rather interested in seeing what [info] - personaljetsam comes up with in response this time. [info]unicorn_on_mars too, if she's playing.

Eavan Boland
That the Science of Cartography Is Limited

—and not simply by the fact that this shading of
forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,
the gloom of cypresses,
is what I wish to prove.

When you and I were first in love we drove
to the borders of Connacht
and entered a wood there.

Look down you said: this was once a famine road.

I looked down at ivy and the scutch grass
rough-cast stone had
disappeared into as you told me
in the second winter of their ordeal, in

1847, when the crop had failed twice,
Relief Committees gave
the starving Irish such roads to build.

Where they died, there the road ended

and ends still and when I take down
the map of this island, it is never so
I can say here is
the masterful, the apt rendering of
the spherical as flat, nor
an ingenious design which persuades a curve
into a plane,
but to tell myself again that

the line which says woodland and cries hunger
and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,
and finds no horizon

will not be there.

May. 24th, 2009

baby cow

linkage

Quick link post: [info]lilacfield is hosting a Fanfiction Writer Friending Meme.

This entry was originally posted at http://readerofasaph.dreamwidth.org/58155.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

May. 23rd, 2009

bloodthirsty skylark

fic rec, when was the last time one of these happened?

calling names, by [info]desertidal/[info]tongari - Post-Varia arc, Dino pays Squalo a visit in hospital. Full of the grace and emotion, and the slight tinge of bittersweet humor, that so often marks [info]tongari's writing.

This entry was originally posted at http://readerofasaph.dreamwidth.org/57767.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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May. 22nd, 2009

arthur pendragon

more gratuitious poetry quotations

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.


- From Little Gidding


Tumblr looks more and more appealing by the day.

May. 18th, 2009

indirect communication

(no subject)

"I think that novels tend to fail not when the characters are not vivid or deep enough, but when the novel in question has failed to manage a specific hunger for its own characters, its own reality-level. In such cases, our appetite is quickly disappointed, and surges wildly in excess of what we are provided, and we tend to blame the author for not giving us enough - the characters are not alive or round or free enough. Yet we would not dream of accusing Sebald or Woolf or Roth - none of whom is especially interested in creating character in the solid, old-fashioned nineteenth-century sense - of letting us down in this way, because they have so finely tutored us in their own conventions, their own expansive limitations, to be satisfied with just what they give us."

- from How Fiction Works by James Wood - which, while not exactly a book about writing, is by far the most interesting book about writing I've encountered in a long, long time. The first chapter in particular contains some amazing (amazingly obvious even, except that I've never seen those points made anywhere else) observations about POV.

May. 16th, 2009

surprised by milk

(no subject)

DEAR [info]unicorn_on_mars YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST GO PICK UP ONE OF IAN MCDONALD'S BOOKS THIS GUY IS AMAZING.

(YOU TOO, [info]giving_ground)
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