Trying to find out what condoms cost in the 1940s -- no luck, but I did find that (in Britain at least) they came in a tin.  How many I don't know.

New Grammar Whiz:  Add words to either the beginning or end of the following bit (quoted from TLS) to make a good English sentence.  No adding of punctuation, no "thinking outside the box" (e.g. puns, treating words as themselves subjects, etc.)

against that satirical vein they both share that one

Some of you connected in this net-node will have been made aware of the reviews (so far of the first three books) of Aegypt over at  Strange Horizons --
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/07/the_first_book_.shtml

(I've once again forgot how to insert a link and how to make a ligature)

Reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum, grahamsleight  and Paul Kincaid (peake ).  All three take the books studied seriously, though I am more sympathetic to some opinions and find myself more in agreement with some insights than others; no surprise there.  In the near future John Clute will review the last volume. 

Well, I suppose it's possible that (as pnh suggests) a movie company might  be redressing Chapel Street in 1950s dress for a movie set -- say, the new Indiana Jones movie -- but that's just one answer.  Nobody suggested timeslip, but perhaps when I produce the photograph of the exact same moment, but with a copy shop where the Woolworth's  long ago was (and for a moment is) maybe the answer will be a little different.  The copy shop's sign in the window was somehow unerased in the transition to past state.

I just couldn't resist having a photo of myself aged revisiting scenes of myself young. 

Snapped by a student today in New Haven.  What -- besides my spreading waistline -- is funny about this picture?

Of course by "series" I meant Harry Potter -- I can see why some might have been confused, becasue I FORGOT TO SAY THAT.

Over at joculum, he's decided to guess the awful (original sense) ending of the series based solely on his having seen the first movie on a plane, without sound, and having read not a word of any of the volumes.  That's about my situation too.  I am going to think a bit, and post my own guess here; I don't know if joculum would welcome frivolities over at his place that aren't his own, but you could go see.

LAst of the summer's Guest Famous Writers was Tom Perrotta, author of Election (filmed with Reese Witherspoon) and Little Children, filmed by Todd Field (In the Bedroom) with Kate Winslet et al.  Charming modest fellow.  I read the book after watching the DVD and then after reading the book saw the film again, at the screening at Yale (best attended event of the summer by far -- hey this is the movies not just books).  I thought it was striking, when I read the book after seeing the movie, how very similar it was -- it seemed to me a tribute to author-as-screenwriter to have put so much of his book in the movie.  There was even a past-tense somewhat heavy-handed narration taken, I thought, directly from the book -- only authorial vanity could have wrung that concession from the director.  Then seeing it again after reading the book I was struck by how different it was: different emphases, different motivations, subtleties discarded, more urgent and darker (particularly the ending).  ANd Perrotta explained to us that it was the director's idea to use that narration, not his -- it was part of the director's conception from the beginning.  Huh.

Anyway that's it for this year.  Next year, guests will include Thomas Pynchon, J.K. Rowling, J.D. Salinger and B. Traven.  Book now!

Ægypt

No end to possibilities! kiplet  now instructs me in the Æ -- this time in Unicode -- and it works --sort of -- in HTML but not Rich Text -- so from now one no more Aegypt only Ægypt.

Æ Æ Æ

polychlorinate has shown me howto insert this character, important to me, but somehow I con't make it work -- what I've done here is copy the one s/he sent me.  I will keep it in a secret place anduse it at need.

Well now I feel rather stupid -- I hope I wasn't thought to be eliciting the dozens of comments to my last posts -- though maybe I WAS thought to be, so many came in, all of them encouraging and consoling --  I actually supposed that those who were not responding as they once had weren't reading either, but here they all come trooping in like the last scene of It's a Wonderful Life.

Yes there's a danger of this thing eating up all the time that should be devoted to watching American Idol etc (or writing) -- that was  unexpected to me -- unexpected, that is, that I do happily hand over the time to be eaten up, and even worry over the creation and maintenance of this thing, as though it were in some sense part of my job. But maybe it is.

  I've been thinking about what I'm calling  the New Intimacy in art, writing, etc., in which a relation with the author or creator of something you are affected by is not only sought but acquired, by this means here, or others like it.  The remoteness of creators and their distance from readers and appreciators was far greater when you couldn't find their addresses, had to write with pen and paper to the address of the publisher, itself sometimes coldly witheld, and there went the letter into oblivion.  People who tried to establish intimacy with their favorite artists seemed kind of creepy or obsessed (see Frederick Exley's "A FAn's Notes" or Nicholson Baker's "U and I".) Now, not so, obviously -- you can easily establish a relationship, and it goes both ways:  the (lonely, wondering) artist can have one with appreciators.

I'm trying to expand this to art in general but really I think it mostly applies to writing and reading.  But is this one of those movements in human consciousness that can't be resisted, or is resisted only by those trudging grimly pastwards?  Is it "good" or "bad"?  What kind of thing, relationship, adjunct to creation, will it turn into?  Does it function solely to bring appreciators, fans, into a superficial equality with their favored artist?  I don't think so, considering how many responded to my last posts saying they felt shy or unworthy to comment.  In future will the blog, the commentors, the writer's lucubrations and confessions and response to queries, come to be seen as an integral part of the work?  When music began to appear on records it changed the way people listened to music, and there fore (I'd claim) the kind of music that got made.  Now DVD is doing the same with film, and YouTube going an even farther step.  Is that happening to writing?  Are Haruki Murakami and Dave Eggers more interesting to readers than their books, or -- better said -- is a cnnection to the characters Haruki Murakami and Dave Eggers integral to appreciation of their works?

So, it seems many people have been READING but not COMMENTING -- why didn't I think of that -- makes sense -- I do it myself -- read somebody's amusing or interesting post and think Haha or Wow or Interesting and then think how pointless that is as a response, so I don't.

So there is the capacity  to respond but not necessarily the right conditions -- and just because people haven't responded doesn't mean they're not readers.  Why -- dammit! -- it's the same as a book! 

I hate the idea that it might be like high school -- with insiders and outsiders and popular and unpopular people -- I wasn't tormented about that in high school but I disdained it -- I knew I was not among the inner circle but I didn't experience the cruelty or shame or whatever of it.  I didn't give a hoot basically.  Actually I just wasn't paying a lot of attention.  I had found by senior year a small number of people I cared about, mostly anomalous characters neither in nor out.  Like you guys.

So that's how I'll regard this too.

So LJ is like life!  And if only I knew more about life I'd have seen that long ago!

Amazing.

Looking back through my earliest entries here for something,  I perceived (or rather my suspicion was confirmed about) something somewhat sad maybe but that must be a part of having a LiveJournal.  I now have hundreds and hundreds of Friends (supposedly) but I actually have far fewer correspondents or commentors than I had at first.  Is the bloom off me?  Have the flighty and light-minded given me up for newer Friends?  Should I not care, for the true Friends will stick by me?  It's not like casual lookers-in who didn't know what the site was about have stopped posting comments; it's many who seemed to be amused and interested and in whose comments I was interested.  This is worse than worrying about my book readership.  I know I have more commentors than other worthy Journal keepers, but should I worry that I have fewer than I did?  WHo has most?  Is this a competition? 

So for now the various epigones threatening my frailty having withdrawn into the alphabetic body from which they made that sortie (I don't have  a pool much less a poolboy or a nurse) I am free to return to speculations.

tomsdisch told me about a book he had as a boy about architecture, which he read with great delight -- the author (whose name I can't remember and which I hope he will supply).  It was, he said, beautifully and elegantly written, clear and inviting, and he read it again and again; for a long time he wanted to be an architect because of it, and worked toward that goal.  But I think what entranced him was perhaps the writing, the projection in words of a beautiful world of order and clarity.  In other words it was part of his enchantment with language, and a step toward fiction and poetry.

I have a book like that in my own life -- given to me for Christmas somewhere around 1952 -- which was called This Fascinating Animal World and was by a nature writer named Alan Devoe.  He owned an old farm in New Hampshire or someplace and called himself a naturalist or, his own word, an "animalizer".  The book was arranged as a series of questions with lengthy answers -- "Do fish sleep?"  "Why do houseflies bite more in humid weather?"  (They don't; it's deerflies and horseflies and black flies that bite, amd when the air is light and windy they have trouble navigating, and don't bother us.)  "Do all birds lay eggs?" "Why do birds sing?"  His answers to these questions were so clear, so wise, so full of humane pondering of so many matters (sex, death), and his voice so smiling and open, that it made me too want to study animals and be a naturalist.  Which I did not do in any organized way, though i read his book over and over.  I believe now it was the world made of words that he wove.  Cocteau said "I am one of those who is more moved by the representations of things than by the things themselves."

SOmebody on the journal here (I can't seem to find the query) asked me for the names of my favorite books. This is one.



Anyone else have a seminal book like that in their lives, maybe one that seemed to direct them away from books but was actually most affecting as a word thing?

found blog open here
their fighting in the pool house
thot id put my two cents in
tho not a pro
i am a writer 2

open mike nite
faraway lodge
coulda heard a pin drop
when i told the truth
in 3 stanzas

about a pool boy
man in a plastic lounge
books nobody reads
redfaced nurse gives me the eye
fired for nothing
lawyer might die

so heres my announcemnet
be their again tonite
to "rant"

hey its not much but its mine
all quiet now
back to "work"

yrs

ron jolychew

 I have wrested control of the journal momentarily from my helpful but contentious staff to note here a rather striking promo from my new paperback publisher. Overlook Press. 

Those especially eager for an advance copy of Volume I of what shall hereinafter be referred to as the Aegypt Cylcle (but with that funny ligature thing) can get one, if they are particularly witty and particularly lucky:

http://theoverlookpress.blogspot.com/search/label/john%20crowley

Yes, attempt a haiku equal to both your desires for and the ambitions of the book, and a Zen master in the mountains of Hokkaido will pass judgment on it, and if it is acceptable, you get a copy of the galleys.

Not a joke!  Try it!

Visions of owning
But after winning, book comes
Alas!  No better!

[But of course the contest is closed to me or my immediate family, as well as (I assume) employees and assigns of Overlook Press, shareholders in same, etc.etc.  See complete rules at website.]

Neither I nor my squabbling helpers knew about this; I have the link from ever-vigilant joculum

It has been brought to my attention by the principal of this journal that unauthorized persons (unauthorized in the contractual sense) have seen fit to make free with entries and assign to themselves duties that ought rather to be the purview of persons having longstanding professional relations with the said principal, and who (unlike person or persons who without any particular skills or abilities to offer and as far as I can determine no actual professional license) have the "right stuff" to handle complex negotiations with bookstores and other such venues where events such as but not restricted to readings, sales of books, meet-and-greet opportunities, etc., are held, offered, made, done or consumed on the premises.

Pending legal investigation into questions relating to misprision of affection, fraudulent appropriation, uttering, and undue exploitation of proximity, all readers are requested to ignore any and all solicitations or offers from or by anyone using the name "Joyce Howl, R.N." or any collateral relatives or agents.

Thank you for your attention, and watch this space for more news from --

Yours in the biz --

Len Ochowy, Jr.,

Attorney at Law (license pending)

[NOTE: I have turned over the Announcements and Publicity part of this LJ to a wonderful woman who has seen to my needs for some time now, and here I'll let her introduce herself.]

Hi all!!!

Yes, Mr. C has turned over to me all those onerous duties of plugging his books and appearances, as well as those he has to manage, a big drain on his flagging energy now as he heads into what we'll have to call the Older Years or Senior Citizenship, which he's facing with a good spirit.  I've been at his bedside now for a while, and I believe I can say that he trusts m as much as (to say the least) others around him whose attentions seem to have slid away of late.  Never mind!!  Just watch this space for a steady stream of updates from his bedside, loungeside, or wherever I may have to be with him.  If I get the odd name wrong (and some are mighty odd!) it's because I'm unfamiliar with them and besides Mr. C's enunciation isn't so good what with the medications.  Just take a good guess, folks!! You know more than I do!

Bless you --

Joyce Howl, R.N.

proteon_nine  asks if the events in the previous post are only for the Yale writing program -- no, they are open to the public, and completely free of charge.  The Tom Perrotta event will include a free 35mm screening of his film Little Children at the Whitney Humanities Center at 6 PM on Friday JUne 22, followed by a Q&A with Tom.

ALSO entirely open to the public will be a series of readings sponsored by the Summer Session Creative Writing Program, John Crowley, Director, and Labyrinth Books, wonderful independent bookstore at 290 York Street in New Haven.  These will all be at 6PM in the bookstore, with free coffee and stuff too.  There will be published writers reading from new books and also student and local writers, indeed anyone can apply to read; come see, hear, and read. 

These reading things will be on Wednesdays throughout June (except tonight).  I will be reading at the first one, June 13. 

ALSO available now on paper and on line, the latest edition of the Boston Review http://bostonreview.net/ , which among other interesting matter features my review essay about  the work of the photographer Rosamond Purcell, one of whose striking pictures is the cover for Endless Things.

(I think I should invent a Secretary who can post these notices in his/her name, so that the Subject himself can remain in dignified and smiling silence.)

Once again I revert to my Creative Writing Program Director persona, absent-minded but lovable host of writing events all through June.  To view the three remaining events, go to http://www.yale.edu/summer/writing.html,  or see below.

The first event happened last night -- the multifaceted Irish historian/commentator/critic Fintan O'Toole, a fascinating mind full of odd arcana that he draws real and compelling insights from.

Coming up on June 12, Aimee Bender, the delicate surrealist (or tough-minded fantasist), one of my favorite younger writers, a post-post Bruno Schulz.  Go to http://locusnovus.com/lnprojects/hotelrot/ for an amazing taste, or to http://www.flammableskirt.com/books.html for a different sampling.  Worth coming to New Haven (even) for.

ALl events listed below.

Events

June 5 7 p.m. LC 102	Guest lecture by Fintan O'Toole. Fintan O'Toole's talents and interests range widely -- he is a drama critic, literary critic, travel writer, engaged political commentator, historian.   Born in Dublin, he has written for the Irish Times since 1988 and was drama critic for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 2001.  In 2006 O'Toole spent six months in China reporting for The Irish Times.  He is the author of  a dozen books including  Shakespeare is Hard But So is Life, 2002; After The Ball, 2003; and White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America, 2005.
June 12 7 p.m. LC 102	Guest lecture by Aimee Bender. If there is a New Wave in American fiction now on, Aimee Bender is riding it.  Author of  The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a New York Times Notable book of 1998, An Invisible Sign of My Own, an LA Times pick of 2000, and Willful Creatures, selected by The  Believer as one of he best books of 05.  Her unique, unexpected tales have been published in Granta, GQ, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review,  Harper's, and more, as well as heard on "This American Life".  She lives in LA and teaches creative writing at USC.
June 19 7 p.m. LC 102	Guest lecture by Heather McHugh. One of America's premier poets and teachers of petry, her books include Eyeshot (2003), and Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (1994), which was a Finalist for the National Book Award, and was named a "Notable Book of the Year" by the New York Times Book Review; Shades (1988); To the Quick (1987); A World of Difference (1981); and Dangers (1977). She is the author of Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (1993).  In 1999 she was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. McHugh teaches as a core faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and as Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle.
June 22 6 p.m. screening of Little Children followed by Q&A Whitney Humanities Center	Guest lecture by Tom Perrotta. Novelist Tom Perrotta was nominated for an Oscar for his adaptation of his own novel Little Children, which was chosen for numerous "Best Books of 2004" lists -- including The New York Times Book Review, Newsweek, National Public Radio, and People magazine.  Called "an American Chekhov" by the New York Times, he is the author of the novels Joe College, Election (made into the film with Reese Witherspoon), The Wishbones, and the stories collected in Bad Haircut.   (Presented jointly with the Film Studies Department.)

Tina Brown was down there at the BookExpo flogging her book about Diana and giving her opinions about the present state of the book business.  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/books/04book1.html ; She emailed the NY Times reporter covering the expo with a comment about the apparently flourishing practice of giving your book away free on line in order to promote it.  “Giving an author’s book away for nothing on the Web as a way to market books seems a mirage to me,” Ms. Brown wrote.  “All it does is feed the hungry angles of journalists and bloggers who plunder it without any of the author’s context or nuance and makes the reader feel there is nothing new to learn from the genuine article when it finally limps on its weary way to a book shop.”

That's two referents for the pronoun "it" in the second sentence -- "All it does" = the practice, "plunder it" = the book.  And "the hungry angles"?  And of course "makes" should be "make" , or maybe cut the "and" and substitute comma "making" if an entirely new verb is wanted.

Well we aren't at our best in emails, I guess, and of course the "editor" of the New Yorker I guess doesn't and didn't really edit anything, though by God William Shawn used to.