Audubon - How much for 'priceless'?

A copy of James Audubon's famous Birds Of America sold at Sotheby's for over £7 million. The new owner, Michael Tollemache, a London dealer, could be said to actually have more money than sense as he described the work as "priceless". It's not clear whether that statement was before or after handing over the cash of the price.

Some interesting quotes from the Wiki page on Audubon;

Colorists applied each color in assembly-line fashion (over fifty were hired for the work). The original edition was engraved in aquatint by Robert Havell, Jr. ... Known as the Double Elephant folio after its double elephant paper size, it is often regarded as the greatest picture book ever produced and the finest aquatint work.

He followed Birds of America with a sequel Ornithological Biographies. This was a collection of life histories of each species written with Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray. The two books were printed separately to avoid a British law requiring copies of all publications with text to be deposited in Crown libraries, a huge financial burden for the self-published Audubon.

I suspect the British Library and fellow Crown libraries have copies now.

Apparently the cost of printing the Birds of America was US $115,640 (over US $2 million today, or £1.3 million). When the project stuttered during an enforced absence, he told the wary few (of his otherwise loyal) subscribers: "'The Birds of America' will then raise in value as much as they are now depreciated by certain fools and envious persons."

In the same Sotheby's sale a 1623 First Folio Shakespeare cost a buyer £1,497,250.

Historians

From Terry Pratchett's Jingo:

Lord Vetinari:
'Oh my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands.'

Cooking an internet thief

I'd hope we are all aware of the problem of Intellectual Property (IP) theft on the internet, and that (sadly) numerous print magazines and book publishers and authors (who should know better) lift online material wholesale and without credit.

So draw up your editor's chair, uncap the red pen, adjust the eyeshade and refill the Chardonnay glass as I bring you a warming tale of an arrogant cookery magazine editor's demise through theft and hubris - as Conrad Black has found, a dangerous combination.

...writer Monica Gaudio, who was surprised to learn this week that the small culinary magazine Cooks Source had lifted her five-year-old story for medieval cookery blog Gode Cookery entitled "A Tale of Two Tarts" ...

Challenging the editor, Judith Griggs, with a reasonable request for adjustment, Griggs responded with a breathtakingly foolish reply I quote in full:

"Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was 'my bad' indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things. But honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

Oops. To cut the long story short, after Gaudio crowdsourced the story, Cooks Source got a (legal) online hammering on their Facebook page - to the extent of moving to a new one (which, of course failed to stop the crowd's challenges. Griggs has been through a savage learning experience, as she recounts here.

The good news is that Griggs has made appropriate restitution to the author and apologised; the bad news is that what is a small magazine may fold from Griggs' overload due to the consequences of the problem. Some of the internet crowd found other (alleged) lifted articles and others contacted the magazine's advertisers with the result that some have withdrawn their advertising and others fight shy.

I was recently 'informed' that Intellectual Property was unprotected in the age of the internet, as bringing a legal case was too difficult and expensive against the potential award obtainable. (For the record, I don't think that's an accurate analysis, or true.) However this case clearly shows that an ignorance of copyright law and a lack of care (and inadequate internet savvy) are potentially lethal to publishers. Ignorance of the law is no defence, as we should all know; but it is not necessarily the process of law but online 'justice' that may render a - potentially disproportionate - correction.

Caveat emendator.

James

Thanks to 'Steve Crewdog' on WIX for drawing my attention to the story here, and to the linked online sources particularly Salon here and Gode Cookery.

Top Twain

An excellent article in today's The Age on Mark Twain by wordsmith Don Watson.

A couple of quotes.

Talking about his unusual approach to autobiography;

But more to his point was the language, and that depended on the manner in which the work was to be written. When we write about something that has just happened, he said, we write "naturally", as if we were simply talking about it. In this form, our accounts are "absolutely indestructible" and time "has no deteriorating effect" on the episodes they describe. By contrast, when we write from a distance in the historian's language, we rarely manage more than "a pale and tranquil reflection" of our subject.

And on writing:

Anyone needing a lesson in writing will profit from his letter to the "unteachable ass" who had the gall to edit his work. The letter is priceless not only for the lethal eloquence of his retort, but also for the insight into the writer's insecurity: the greater the writer, perhaps the greater the insecurity.

The full article here (for the moment), while the subject is the publication of his papers cum autobiography a century after his death.

James

Calling yourself names

The ever increasing depths politicians abseil into trying to say much while avoiding meaning and commitment, noted many years ago by Orwell (yes, him again) were explored in a different way in this ABC article. One passage stood out.

Kevin Rudd set out to convince us of his economic conservatism in the 2007 campaign by shooting an ad in which he simply told us he was: "People have called me an economic conservative. And it's a badge I wear with pride."

(Later, according to an account by Herald journalist Peter Hartcher in his book 'To The Bitter End', Labor's national secretary Tim Gartrell anxiously double-checked with Google that people had really called Rudd an economic conservative. He found two instances; one where The Australian's Paul Kelly had called Mr Rudd an economic conservative, and one where Mr Rudd had called himself an economic conservative. "That'll do," thought Gartrell.)

What more can you say?

Leaving aside the politics, both Rudd and his successor Julia Gillard are language disasters. Rudd spoke like a middle level civil servant - the one that, when speaking, makes a brief meeting feel like an ice-age - while Gillard as Prime Minister has a dreadful habit of over using a phrase, and making herself sound like the trainee junior project gofer who has read the mission statement but just doesn't get it. Yet both are clearly intelligent and articulate people outside this job.

James

Valuing Orwell.

News item here:

An authentic first edition of George Orwell's novel 1984 that turned up in a Lifeline charity bin has sold for [A]$2,000 at auction.

The book was published in 1949 and has a red dustcover.

It was found last week in a bin of around 200 books by a Lifeline volunteer in Wollongong, on the New South Wales south coast.

While this has got money for a good cause, one wonders what amount Eric earned per copy.

James

Early bath...

The latest Terry Pratchett paperback was snagged by Bev a few weeks ago.

It's Unseen Academicals.

As 'master of the footnote', Terry surpasses himself with this one with a footnote not just in the first page or first paragraph of the book, but in the first sentence. And the footnote has a footnote buried within it itself. Class.

Sadly the rest of the book ~ speaking as a dedicated follower ~ just wasn't very good, with several clunky passages and only a few examples of his normal wit; a particular example of the latter being the Dwarf fashion show.

Not the best, and with a messy, unsurprising and predicable ending. Bev noted the absence of the usual, separate but interwoven plot-lines, and there was no real sense of risk or doom. There were also a couple of frankly nasty moments, one where the cardboard psychopath gets a comeuppance from a 'good' charecter was jarring and left a bad taste. He's handled these scenes better. Ah, well, there's 36 other books to play with, and I hope Terry's health remains good and he delivers more to his normal, high, standard.

I'll also avoid (almost) all the laboured football references most reviews have played with.

The Dolphin Crossing - Book Review

The May, 1940 Dunkirk evacuation, Operation Dynamo, has inspired a unique subset of children's fiction. A rough search online throws up about a dozen titles, most of them highly regarded or at least well-remembered.

While writing about the events for this year's anniversary, here, I was reminded of a title I'd read myself as a kid. The acid test was that the essentials of the plot stayed with me, even though I'd completely forgotten the title and author.

Some searching (again online) tracked it down: it was the 1967 work The Dolphin Crossing by Jill Patton-Walsh. Ironically, after getting a copy from my local library on inter-library loan (Carnegie's 'internet'), we realised that Bev had an adult fiction book by the same author on the table, purely by chance, also from the library.

The 1974 Macmillan cover.

After moving it from table to book pile and on to other places around the house, I finally read it over the last few days. Perhaps my reluctance to re-read it was wariness about potentially losing the magic of a book I'd discovered and enjoyed as a child. Thankfully that was not the case.

The Dolphin Crossing is a tightly plotted, tough and concise work. It tells the story of two boys 'safe' in England who make friends as the Germans advance through the Blitzkrieg and surround the British army at Dunkirk. Getting an idea of what's going on, they take John's father's small powerboat across the Channel and help in rescuing the soldiers. The narrative structure does not fulfil your lazy expectations - so common in formulaic storytelling these days, and there are some shocks. I'll say now, before moving on to potential plot spoilers, that it's highly recommended for children and adults as an insight to the reality of those tough days off a French beach.

The author manages on that tricky line between sanitising for a children's audience (actually for parents; children seem able to handle any amount of fictional blood and guts, injustice and so forth) and presenting what the reality may have been for a couple of boys taking their boat into this war zone. Another theme is that of the conscientious objector. And as this review here notes, the view of those conscientious objectors was very different in 1940 and the 1960s.

(Don't go further than here if you don't want some big clues as to what happens.)

The ending is both credible, upsetting and open-ended as the reality was, and is in such real situations. An online discussion here focuses on the 'obligation' of an author to provide what I'd call a 'neat' if not happy ending. (This same discussion touches on several other books about the story of Dunkirk.) The discussion puts a formulaic expectation about fiction above narrative, especially a narrative told using fiction as 'truth', seeming closer to the reality than any report of the real events could be. Unpalatable though the ending is, it rings true. Changing it would equate in anticlimax to the Victorian 'happy ending' version of Romeo and Juliet.

Much of the book focuses on build-up: to Dunkirk (although we, and the characters, don't realise that Dunkirk is the storm that's coming). Wrapped in a believable narrative, the focus is on the boy's day-to-day life and their reactions and maturing in facing the challenges of civilians in wartime. The author created one boy as the sailing son of the coastal manor house, his new friend a London evacuee. What could have been a cliché on the level of Lady and the Tramp is neatly avoided, and while both boys are more idealistically-driven than any I've encountered, they are both rounded, credible and very human characters, as are those around them. Only the fathers are stock characters, mostly absent.

It is only in Chapter 12 that they arrive at Dunkirk, three-quarters of the way through the book.

Now they were moving in southwards, and that great cloud of black smoke a few miles to the right must mask the town and port of Dunkirk.

The sun was shining. The whole scene looked like one of those great paintings of sea-battles, with modern ships instead of galleons. All around them, up and down the coast as far as they could see, there we're ships of all sizes. Big naval ships painted silver-grey were standing off-shore, and among them a motley collection of cargo and passenger ships. Beyond them was a stretch of patchy water, blue and indigo, and green in the warm light. And across these wide shallows hundreds of little ships were swarming. There were wrecks too; small boats capsized and drifting, and larger ones grounded…

Prior to that is all build-up; including two passages on the nature of courage. The first shows both how far from a Boy's Own version this is and that it had to be written by a sensitive, in this case, female, author, who had been a child herself in wartime Britain. John, at home, hears a radio report, and realises that 'our' front has collapsed, and that the Germans are winning.

John sat still. Fear, he remembered, from a lesson in biology in school, is a protective mechanism. Some chemical is pumped into the bloodstream, and it makes you feel like this, and produces the necessary action - usually flight. In the case of a chameleon, change of colour to match the surroundings; in the case of a hedgehog, rolling into a bail; in the case of soldiers, fighting back; in the case of young boys and women sitting at home in a country at war, no action is appropriate. But the chemical in the bloodstream, which does not understand this, continues to produce a feeling of acute discomfort, till action is taken.

He was trembling. When he noticed it he felt a wave of contempt. He set himself to stop, and in a few moments was still, and rigid in his chair. Then he determinedly ate another mouthful of bread and marmalade. He would be in the navy one day, able to fight back, he reminded himself. Then he stopped over the thought. He and Pat would be able to fight; his mother and Mrs Riley would always be in this horrible sitting-and-waiting trap. For women fear was always a thing to be suffered, never a thing to act upon. He was awed. It occurred to him for the first time that his mother was as brave as his father.

I marked this passage for mention in the review before, intriguingly, arriving at another on the same topic. I'd carried this concept with me to this day since reading it here; it was startling to realise where I'd taken (what I still regard as an excellent concept) from.

Of course, Pat was being very plucky about it ... but there was far worse to come. John's father had told him once, talking about Crossman, that courage wasn't something you always had lots of, or always had none of; courage was like water in a bucket - you had a certain amount, and it got used up. The bravest man on earth could run out of it, if things went on too long, Daddy said, and it could take years to get the bucket filled up again.

It may be important to note that this isn't a moralising tale, despite perhaps the impression given by the extracts above. It can be best summarised as a fictional sketch of the reality of Dunkirk. It is solidly anchored in the facts of those days and that battle; one of the key ships the boys work with is HMS Wakeful, and her real history is crucial to the story -- and the theme about the futility and waste of war. Other than the youth of the protagonists, there's nothing to say it's a book only for children.

HMS Wakeful. Via Wikipedia

It is, I think, ironic that the edition the library got has a 'Goldfields' stamp (for the local Victoria, Australian library network) on the front; in so many ways the story seems as far from where this normally sits as fantasy fiction does from our reality. Equally far flung is this, a much more academic review of The Dolphin Crossing [warning plot spoilers] hosted on an Australian university website for an academic based in Western Canada -- and all about a British story set off the coast of France.

But as was noted recently in History Today magazine, children (and adults) need to encounter experience far removed from their own; that 'relevant' is a negation of the diversity of experience we need; and that fiction, and history (as here) can enable better understanding, mental tools and, yes, empathy and humanity. It may have taken about 30 years to complete, but that was a re-reading which was worthwhile and a review well worth doing.

James

Affecting an Effect

It's good to be an editor, most of the time, but there are some areas...

Credit to the literate and open xkcd webcomic of Randall Munroe, details here.

Footwear economics in fantastic fiction

So, you might think that footwear as economic theory would be unlikely to crop up once, let alone twice in fantasy fiction. But that's the case. The more recent version I'm aware of is over on the Discworld - the Samual 'Boots' Vimes theory of economic unfairness. From the book Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

And Pratchett then goes on (in later books) to use Vimes' thin soled cheap boots as a recurring plot device, which is a direction we are not going in.

Unless a reader knows otherwise, there's one other example of science fiction footwear economics, which, once examined, seems to lead off in all directions. Before Pratchett came Douglas Adams with his 'Shoe Event Horizon'.

[But first a digression. Now the primary problem with Adams work is what is the definitive text of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, given its reverse development and reconstructions from radio to book to TV to film. So there's multiple 'authoritative' versions.]

This is the text from the Hitch Hiker's book, The Restaurant at the end of the Universe where (in chapter 10) one of the characters has the abandoned planet he's on explained to him:

'Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It's a well known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds - you've seen one of them – who cursed their feet, cursed the ground, and vowed that none should walk on it again. Unhappy lot.'

For those who want more, there's the longer, more detailed version from the (original-original) radio series, transcribed here.

All that seems a bit, well, science fiction, doesn't it? Don't worry, that nice Berlusconi chap in Italy brings it back to a kind of 'reality' (as much as Italian politics is ever 'real'). From the 'In the Dark' blog, the blogger finishes a post on current economic and academic crises:

Looking around for a bit of good news, I could only manage this. If you’re worried about the future of UK universities and scientific research then consider how lucky you are that you’re not Italian. Owing to budget cuts imposed by the Berlusconi regime, several Italian institutions will no longer be able to pay scientists’ wages. Responding to this situation the Italian premier replied with all his usual tact and intelligence:

"Why do we need to pay scientists when we make the best shoes in the world?"

It's not just Berlusconi's looks that are superficial and bizarre.

Of course like much of Adams' writing it had a solid anchor in his experience. According to this website, Adams:

...had gone to London's Oxford Street where, quoting him, "You can't throw a brick without breaking a shoe shop window". Despite every shop stocking thousands of shoes, none had a pair which was the right size, price, or colour, or which was comfortable, durable or stylish without being outrageous.

Working off his frustration, Adams invented the planet Brontitall, whose civilization had collapsed into the Shoe Event Horizon. Not content with one poke at the industry, Adams also invented the predatory Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation, whose name is created by taking syllables from the names of well-known London shoe stores: "Dolcis"; "Freeman, Hardy and Willis"; "Saxone"; and "Lilley and Skinner".

All these stores were owned at the time by the British Shoe Corporation which dominated the UK footwear market and was the largest footwear retail company in the world.

For those that remember Oxford Street and those brands, suddenly Adams idea doesn't sound quite so far fetched - or funny - after all. For those not paying attention to this shoe-shop economics (most of us) they went through a convoluted economic disaster and collapsed - although not triggering the global financial crisis (as far as I've been able to establish. So far).

Extra: meanwhile, reality does seem to be trying to catch up, with this article in the New York Times picked up by Fledgling Otaku, who provided the earlier transcription of the Hitch Hiker's radio version. In America:

For months now, consumers have been hunkering down in an economic storm, buying only what they need to survive, like groceries, diapers, medicine — and shoes.

Shoes?

The American public, it would seem, cannot carry on without new shoes. Boots, booties, sneakers, pumps — for the last few months they have all been selling well as the broader economy struggles toward recovery.

… Among the more curious explanations proffered for the relative strength of shoe sales is that women — who make up the lion’s share of the American shoe market — get an emotional lift from shoe shopping in a way they do not when trying on jeans and cocktail dresses.

What a bizarre journey. I'd just thought it an interesting coincidence in writing tropes, unlikely to be or become a core theme (unlike the intergalactic credit, or 'little did he know') yet it turns out that there's a lot more to it than we thought.

James

Images extracted from the photo of a shoe sale sign, Melbourne, 30 July 2010. 'End of Civilisation' Sale?

Drunken Grocer's Apostrophe

A fine example of the Grocers apostrophe, but this time for drinkers. (For the non-Australians, a 'pot' is a beer glass measure. The full range of Australian beer drink measure glasses is remarkably confusing, as seen here.)

Under 'Misuse' the Wiki page on the apostrophe has the following:

A 2004 report by OCR, a British examination board, stated that "the inaccurate use of the apostrophe is so widespread as to be almost universal". A 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use the apostrophe correctly.

Some have argued that its use in mass communication by employees of well-known companies has led to the less grammatically able assuming it to be correct and adopting the habit themselves.

Certainly it's like shooting fis'h in a barrel to find thes'e nowaday's.

More details here.

James

Writer at Tiffany's

From the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, this dialogue may hit note with any writers out there.

It is 1961. Escaping from an unwanted date, Holly invades Paul's room through his window, while he is lying in bed and starts poking around his things, and starts questioning him. She asks:

WHAT DO YOU DO, ANYWAY?

I'M A WRITER, I GUESS.

YOU GUESS? DON'T YOU KNOW?

O.K., POSITIVE STATEMENT. RINGING AFFIRMATIVE. I'M A WRITER.

THE ONLY WRITER I'VE EVER BEEN OUT WITH IS BENNY SHACKLETT. HE'S WRITTEN AN AWFUL LOT OF TELEVISION STUFF, BUT QUEL RAT. TELL ME, ARE YOU A REAL WRITER? I MEAN, DOES ANYBODY BUY WHAT YOU WRITE OR PUBLISH IT OR ANYTHING?

THEY BOUGHT WHAT'S IN THAT BOX.

YOURS?

MM-HMM.

ALL THESE BOOKS?

THERE'S JUST THE ONE BOOK, 12 COPIES OF IT.

"NINE LIVES, BY PAUL VARJAK."

THEY'RE STORIES.

MM-HMM. NINE OF THEM.

TELL ME ONE.

THEY'RE NOT THE KIND OF STORIES YOU CAN REALLY TELL.

TOO DIRTY?

YEAH, I...SUPPOSE THEY'RE DIRTY, TOO, BUT ONLY INCIDENTALLY. MAINLY THEY'RE ANGRY, SENSITIVE... INTENSELY FELT, AND THAT DIRTIEST OF ALL DIRTY WORDS - PROMISING. SO SAID THE TIMES BOOK REVIEW, OCTOBER 1, 1956.

1956?

THAT'S RIGHT.

THIS IS KIND OF A RATTY QUESTION, BUT WHAT HAVE YOU WRITTEN LATELY?

LATELY, I'VE BEEN WORKING ON A NOVEL.

LATELY, SINCE 1956?

A NOVEL TAKES A LONG TIME. I WANT IT EXACTLY RIGHT.

SO, NO MORE STORIES.

WELL, THE IDEA IS I'M SUPPOSED TO NOT FRITTER MY TALENT ON LITTLE THINGS. I'M SUPPOSED TO BE SAVING IT FOR THE BIG ONE.

DO YOU WRITE EVERY DAY?

SURE.

TODAY?

SURE.

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL TYPEWRITER.

OF COURSE.

IT WRITES NOTHING BUT SENSITIVE, INTENSELY FELT, PROMISING PROSE.

THERE'S NO RIBBON IN IT.

THERE ISN'T?

NO.

OH.

Credits: Script here, Image from here.

Why Write? Money?

This from the New York Times Paper Cuts:

Writing Stiffs

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

A 2008 study of the creative economy from the National Endowment for the Arts reported that full-time “writers and authors” earned a median annual salary of more than $50,000.

That may not make you feel rich in Manhattan (or even South Dakota, which scribblers are apparently abandoning in droves), but a nifty chart put together by Lapham’s Quarterly suggests that some of our great writers didn’t do any better in their day jobs.

According to the chart, Charlotte Bronte somehow survived on $1,838 a year, adjusted for inflation, working as a Yorkshire governess. (Room and board were included, but laundry was not.) William Faulkner made about $18,000 as a postmaster, though the job apparently allowed plenty of time for mah-jongg and poetry.

Tempted to bail on the creative life and go to law school? Think again: Kafka brought down only about $40,000 a year doing legal work in a Prague insurance agency, though he did get to ponder such subjects as “Measures for Preventing Accidents From Wood-Planing Machines.”

(Do today’s novelists pay enough attention to the workplace? More on that question here.)

Worth a look at the comments after the original post, too. I liked 'the art tells you what to eat.' observation. Brings a while new meaning for 'not hungry enough for success'.

James

Read any good books lately?

When I thought of this blog, I thought that there'd be no problem coming up with numerous books we'd read that we wanted to comment on here, hopefully for feedback. Sometimes they might be bad ("Avoid this one.") but what's been interesting is that there's been several books I've read or part read recently which have proven so ~ average ~ that I don't even want to acknowledge their existence.

Odd.

The image above comes from a blog post in the Walrus, which takes a look at the volume and nature of the mass out there. It takes a lot to want to destroy a book. (I've only ever thrown away a couple - Clive Custler having a work of tripe claiming to be one that went in the bin as I decided it needed to be removed from circulation...)

James

The unloved

As we contemplate moving again (it's been a blissful five years sans haulage), I find myself thinking 'Oh, I should get rid of some of the hundreds of books I've acquired' -- but how?

How would I choose? Should I get rid of the ones I've never finished reading? Well, not reading a book all the way through is normal, if you are an academic. You milk them, like little buttercups, for the goodness in them.

What about the ones everyone has? The classics, especially classic paperbacks -- they're in every library, I can get them anytime (except late at night or when I am running for the train). Hm.

The old school books? Well actually, many of those are gone, and what remains represents those subjects I'm most interested in. If learning makes you who you are, then these are a part of me. Might as well lop off a toe, or a small digit.

Not the battered and beaten up old ones, they are battered for a reason: I've probably read each of them fifty-two times. Not the ones I was given but haven't read yet.

I know. I'll cut down my bookload. I'll stop going to the library, for at least a week.

Whew, glad we sorted that one out, then....

Bev

Wordism's 'iCodex'

From the Wordisms blog...

Introducing the iCodex

Today, St. Stephen of Jobs announced the newest creation from the monks at Abbey Apple: the iCodex, which he believes will revolutionize the way people work and play.

“This is a fabulous new product, really great for the modern traveling clergyman,” said St. Stephen, the man famous for transforming the liturgical world with the Christendom-wide success of the iChant. “The iCodex is portable but also contains a great deal of easily accessible features.”

With the iCodex, people can now store multiple items in one, easy-to-use package. A user could, for example, enjoy both cooking recipes and psalms, or mappa mundi and instructions on marital relations. Since the iCodex's pages are bound together in an easy-to-turn format, things stored at the end of an iCodex are as easy to access as the beginning. ...

Brilliant. Read on here.

Mediaeval Helpdesk

You can't get the monks...

It's not as good as a scroll, you know...



I think the Norwegian sort of adds something.

Original taken from the show Øystein og jeg (familiar to us all I'm sure) on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) in 2001.

Story - Not Story

In the way that we rank our senses and neglect to recognise that in certain circumstances certain sense are far better than the usual favourites - we often forget that we are story telling, social animals.

Much of human society is driven by stories, but 'stories' for many are tainted by being 'fiction'.

Please pause and think about the word 'stories' for a moment.

...Storyteller by Bev. [Copyright]

Thank you! What did you get?

For me there are associations with time out, relaxation, children's stuff, escapism, and so on. Generally we are cautious to accept stories are just as much the way we explain the world to each other, or that we use them for good or evil. I'm going to guess you didn't have any of the following:

That in court the lawyers' and the judge summing up are carefully constructing a story to sell an idea to a picked audience within a set of rules, as much as a salesman is selling a product by using a story. History and archaeology only comes into focus for non-statisticians and non-specialists when a story is created to explain it. Music and painting are often telling a story to the audience, but so is the scientist seeking research funding, and (obviously?) the journalist reporting on the ... wait for it ... story. And so on.

It's hard to think of areas where stories don't have a role, yet we rarely acknowledge that's what they really are. They are 'a convincing argument' or 'a good case'.

I was reminded of my belief that we are driven by stories as much as we drive stories through every part of our lives by this article on the BBC website today. Leaving the political stripes aside for a moment, this is interesting as a rare expose of the power of stories over our much vaunted facts and numbers:

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate.

With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

And here - for me - is the kicker:

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious."

Every day we are surrounded by stories. For good and bad. Most of them are in disguise. How many do you encounter in a day?

James

From 'Politics & the English Language' by George Orwell

Good writing is for all time. Good, clear writing is rare. Good writers advising on how to write clearly are rarer still.

But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English...

Politics & the English Language, 1946. Full text here.

Four literary fleas & a louse

Robert Hooke's drawing of a flea in his Micrographia - 1655.

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
John Donne, 1633.

Here we are, two literary men (pauses to catch flea on waistcoat: throws it into the fire) with the unbounded influence of our pens. Can't we start a Lachrymose Revival?
...
Bunny, when you feel like writing, will you tell me all you know about that great house at which you were staying when you told me that story about the variorum edition of the Pentateuch (or Septuagint)? It was either Penshurst or the other one beguinning with P - Petworth? (Catches second flea on sleeve.) I am passionately addicted to places like Knole and I deeply regret never having cultivated enough dukes to be a constant guest in such.

T.H. White, Ireland, 1944, letter to David Garnett*

The Morgan Library has a very fine 11th-century Lancelot in perfect condition. I was going over it one day and turned to the rubric of the first known owner dated 1221, the rubric a squiggle of very thick ink. I put a glass on it and there imbedded deep in the ink was the finest crab louse, pfithira pulus, I ever saw. He was perfectly preserved even to his little claws. I knew I would find him sooner or later because people of that period were deeply troubled by lice and other little beasties - hence the plagues. I called the curator over and showed him my find and he let out a cry of sorrow. 'I've looked at that rubric a thousand times,' he said' Why couldn't I have found him?'

John Steinbeck, 1962: from A Life in Letters, 1975**.

*Page 207, T H White A Biography by Silvia Townsend Warner.
**Page 394, The Faber Book of Science Ed John Carey.

Words are living

Post 2. Sitting at the table this sunny afternoon, enjoying talking to my husband, relishing the full feeling of a really nice lunch consumed at leisure*.


So he's thinking of a blog, about books and writing, and the process of writing and being an editor. Okay. I do all those things.

But then, then he says -- you could write about food writing and the cookbooks you read all the time. (He carefully does not use the word 'obsessive', for which I've grateful.) And of course, I'm hooked.

Fancy a few wanderings into why? Why are some writers interesting and others a little cloying? I don't pretend to know the answer, but I'll come along to have a look. Why do we get crazy about apostrophes? They sure'ly do'nt count, do they?

So I have accepted my part in this challenge, which is all about reading and writing and what goes on in between. And if you're lucky, there will be lots of cookbook recommendations. Mmm.

Bev

* Take two slices of good ciabatta, drizzle them with olive oil and rub them with garlic and chopped parsley. Then grab a handful of the minced pork you're about to use to make meatballs (the tomato sauce simmering on the back of the stove), add some cooked grated carrot, onion and lemon zest, a pinch of chopped garlic, some salt. Form into patties, and fry nicely in a little pan. Toast the bread, layer it with the hot little patties, a dab of homemade aioli and a slice of a tomato from the garden. My, my!

Serve with thick carrot and cucumber sticks, and plenty more aioli for dipping. Beatific serenity will result.

What are the big ideas?

Post 1. My idea is for this blog to cover all the thinking about reading and writing that hasn't got onto our blog Taccola. As anyone who knows us knows reading has been almost as fundamental to us as breathing, and books as important as oxygen.

The intention is to be posting what we are currently reading, as well as thoughts about books we have read. Magazines, journals and writing on the web may well appear too. There may even be the occasional item that gets accused of capital L 'Literature', or a novel, but I'll try and keep those under control. [And an addition in August - clearly quite a bit about writing, editing and the creative side is appearing too.]

Conversely there may be some musings on the importance of leading the language we use, rather than being driven by literals and the lowest common denominator of comprehension.

As an ex colleague's T-shirt said: "So many books, so little time".

James

So read on...