Condalmo

Hiatus.

No, not because Condalmo favorite Remainder got eliminated today.  (It must be said, though - I thought Wiggins got faint praise, and McCarthy got a bunch of sour grapes.  But I enjoy Liberman's Language Log, and appreciate his willingness to part with the book - e-mail me for my address, Mr. Liberman.  I'll give that little orphan a good home.  Condalmo's the name, Gmail's my game.)

The hiatus is because of my upcoming exam.  I don't think I've talked about it much here, but my graduate degree is in clinical counseling (and rehabilitation counseling - largely work around assisting people with disabilities in employment - though my interests fall more in the clinical field) and I've got my licensing exam coming up shortly.  Private practice as a therapist (mental health, possibly specializing in elder issues) is the eventual goal.  First, the exam, and then we'll see what comes next.  So things are going to go quiet - no, really - around here for a while, while I direct my attention to the studies.  It's been some time since I was in school, so I want to be thorough in my reviewing. 

I'll be checking my e-mail periodically (Mr. Liberman) but will be avoiding fiction, this site, and my Google Reader.  Especially the reader.  It just ate twenty minutes of my evening.  Back, you monster!

Post from mobile phone traveling on 295.

Tob 2008 - remaindr eliminated.  goodbye cruel world

Tax time for writers.

Tips from the accountant, via his novelist daughter.  Probably common sense for everyone except writers, who (in my experience) are rotten with numbers.

Book deals that Canadians like.

Someone out there is looking at your sites, my friends.  Better tuck in those shirts.

You know that funny Web site Stuff White People Like, the one with the jokes? The Canadian guy who runs it just sold a book to Random House for an advance that publishing insiders said had reached at least $350,000 when it was at auction last week. Unclear how high it ended up climbing, but frankly, $350,000 is already a staggering sum for a paperback inspired by a faddish blog that launched just over two months ago...

I'm starting the bidding here at $5.  Do I hear $6?

Now you'll know your ABC.

Forthcoming pop-up book of typography.  Fun!  (via)

Not necessarily the way they happened.

A friendly PSA from the staff here at Condalmo: available next Tuesday. 

RIP LitBlog Co-Op.

From Dan comes notice that the Litblog Co-Op is shutting down:

The Litblog Co-op is closing down, mainly because so many of its members have become so preoccupied with their own blogs, as well as other literary endeavors that in some cases their blogs helped to make possible, that they could not devote the kind of time and attention required to keep a loosely-affiliated group like the LBC functioning adequately. The LBC was formed with a specific mission to highlight books that weren't being discussed much, or at all, in mainstream book sections by putting the collective authority of the then better-known literary weblogs behind the selection of one book per quarter the group believed was worth readers' attention.

I'd like to take the LBC's dissolution as an opportunity to not only reflect on its success in highlighting such books but also on the evolution of the literary blog from the time (actually only 3-4 years ago) when "literary weblog" seemed merely a peculiar conjunction of words to the present moment, when the litblog has become sufficiently established that numerous print-based critics have attacked literary blogs for encroaching on their territory (the gates to which they apparently intend to keep)...

...which he then does (reflect), and while his observations are interesting, his multiple-use of the word "litblogosphere" is making this site my next stop.  Because that word sucks.

Mark Sarvas sticks his thumbs in eyes of Julavits, Vida, "The Believer."

It does no good to gripe about any particular judge's decision in the Tournament of Books.  Well, okay, it makes us feel better, pointing out why that judge is wrong wrong wrong.  But it doesn't change anything.  Sarvas attempted to flex his newly developed Author muscle, but needs to go back to the spinach can:

Imagine, then, my shock and dismay to find The Savage Detectives eliminated in the first round. Knowing our hosts’ taste for controversy, I wrote to them and pleaded the merits of jury nullification, so that I could undertake this clash of titans I’d envisioned. Mischief-makers that they are, they were tempted, but finally felt obligated to observe the rules of their own game.

Not tempted at all, according to them; but, justice will be served:

Well, obviously I want to undo the unfathomable wrong of the prior round and advance The Savage Detectives. That’s my real choice.

But since I don’t have the option open, and since neither book excited me as much as last year’s The Road, I’m going to advance Tree of Smoke, on the grounds (as good as any) that in the event that it makes it all the way through to the finals, it is precisely the sort of Big Literary Book that frequently gives Nick Hornby such conniptions in his Believer column, and it will be entertaining to see how he takes to it.

But really: The Savage Detectives.

Which leads one of the Tournament Overlords to nearly "give Judge Sarvas the Dale Peck Pretentious A-Hole of the Tournament award" which would no doubt please Dale Peck as he plots more evildoing from his underground lair.  Such drama!  I haven't read either of these, though I will admit some underdog appreciation of Vida's work.  I do wish for fewer judgments like this one in the future; people want an honest weighing of the merits, not vigilante justice.  (Of course, substitute Remainder everywhere you see The Savage Detectives in Mark's decision, and, well, yeah.)

"Don't kill the messenger."

Instead, call them on it, and make media better.  Sometimes I joke about "the promise of the internet realized," but this one has potential.  I can't wait to see where this goes.  (via.)

The race question.

Full text here.

I have never felt more convinced that this man's candidacy - not this man, his candidacy - and what he can bring us to achieve - is an historic opportunity. This was a testing; and he did not merely pass it by uttering safe bromides. He addressed the intimate, painful love he has for an imperfect and sometimes embittered man. And how that love enables him to see that man's faults and pain as well as his promise. This is what my faith is about. It is what the Gospels are about. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian.

Small Press Month: dream time.

I wrote previously about the difficulty in writing good fiction involving dreams - it can come off so very badly.  Derek White, he of Calamari Press (Good, Brother, the excellent Part of the World, among others) has his first novel coming later this year.  I asked if he would share, as part of Small Press Month.  Here's an excerpt - a dream sequence.

The Adjoining Room at the Calico Hotel

Marie-Yves and I went to “get a room.” When we arrived at the hotel the lobby was full of cats—orange tabbies that all appeared to be related. One in particular, with tear-duct markings like a cheetah, rode with us in the elevator. It had some sort of nerve disorder that rewired its intentions. If it tried to jump to the right, it jumped to the left. If it tried to jump up, it slunk to the ground. This cat had learned to make do by always thinking the opposite of what it wanted to do, so by not trying to get in the elevator with us, it ended up in the elevator. Initially I thought by the way the cat was rubbing against me that it truly wanted to ride up with us, until I realized it might be rubbing my leg against its will, and that it in it’s heart it truly despised us.

I was embarrassed because I was the one that had suggested this hotel to Marie-Y, who by this time (judging by the ruby ring on her finger that evidently she had received from me) had become my fiancée. The cat tried to rub against her leg but fell in the opposite direction away from her.

“I’m sorry,” I kept saying.

“Don’t worry about it,” she kept saying back, touching my elbow. “There’s nothing you can do.” Then Marie-Y started rubbing against me with increasing intensity.

When we got to our floor the hall was full of identical calicos. They all got out of our way as we approached like a sea of cat molecules parting. They bowed down on their front paws in perfect unison and avoided eye contact. The orange cat with the nerve disorder and tear-duct markings remained in the elevator as the doors closed behind us.

“Sorry if this is weird for you,” I said.

“Don’t worry. It’s putting me in the mood.”

Our room key said ‘habitation 16-28-13,’ but all the doors had X’s or Y’s on them. The room at the end had a bank vault door with a combination lock.

“Ah-hah,” I realized. “Maybe it’s not the room number, but the combination.” There was a funny smell coming from under the door, making me reluctant to even try it. One of the cats lifted its tail and sprayed on the door, effectively counteracting the smell.

“We’re rich!” yelled Marie-Y. She hugged me and I accidentally kissed her on the lips thinking she was coming to kiss me, not realizing that the custom here was to kiss to either side on the cheek. Marie-Y kept kissing me back, on the lips, and then with an open mouth and I reciprocated. She tasted like she had eaten an orange, or some orange-flavored candy.

“Why?” I asked, after we had finished kissing.

“The Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle will pay 10,000 euros to anyone that finds a male calico.” When we looked down, the cat had mixed in with the others.

“They all look the same to me.” 

“Only one of them is a male, with an XXY chromosome instead of XY.”

“How will we be able to tell?”

“By lifting their tails and checking.”

When we walked toward the cats, they kept sweeping just out of our reach. Marie-Y got down on all fours, meowing like she was one of them—thinking the male might act differently toward her. No such luck.

We woke up in bed together, which reminded me I was still sleeping and had yet to meet Marie-Yves.   

An open letter to Nick Hornby.

Dear Nick Hornby:

Remainder or The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao? 

Yours,

Lee Rourke on being boring.

Rourke's top ten books about boredom.  He gives the nod to Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, coming in at number three:

Those perfectly empty moments when we find ourselves waiting for absolutely nothing, until it's time to walk back to work or back to our homes for the evening. Pessoa's entire philosophical study of boredom is possibly the greatest poem ever written.

This sounds interesting:

The mindnumbingly boring routine of office life is examined in this perceptive novel of alienation. Much darker and philosophically damning than Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End, Michael Bracewell points us towards the futile accessories of the modern office: spider plants, polystyrene cups, suspension files, print outs and trips to sandwich shops between 1 - 2 in the afternoon. Bored people trying to find their foothold, their superior position, within the meaningless politics of the office. It is a novel that offers the proof we need that most of us are bored without even realising it.

Is a list of ten not exciting enough for you?  Rourke kicks it up a notch.  I'd add The Moviegoer...

The Case of the Dixon Deception.

A quiet evening, me blithely reading an article, half remembrance and half review, of those blue covered Hardy Boys books.  Fond childhood reading memories all around.  When:

One of the high points of my Hardy Boy reading days (fifth and sixth grade) was when my father’s cousin gave me all his old Hardy Boy books, which were in fact old books.  He’d inherited most of them from an older cousin himself and these were all originals from the 1920s and 30s.  I had collected about a dozen of the newer, blue-spined books by then, my dad’s cousin’s collection included seven or eight brown-covered ones with actual grown-up book style paper dust jackets from the 1950s, so my suddenly increased collection included about a dozen more of the originals and I could tell the difference.  For one thing, they were better written.  Oh sure, they included their fair share of Tom Swiftys and Frank and Joe never just said anything.  They exclaimed, they enthused, they whispered, they called out, they ejaculated, a lot, and as soon as I learned that word’s other meaning I wondered if Franklin.W. Dixon employed it so often because he was trying to be funny or because he was a little bit strange.  (It wasn’t until I stopped reading the books that I learned that there was no one person writing the books named Franklin.W. Dixon.)

Um, what? 

(It wasn’t until I stopped reading the books that I learned that there was no one person writing the books named Franklin.W. Dixon.)

Okay, I'm never reading anything ever again ever.  Goodbye, sweet innocence.  Today, I am a man.    

UPDATE:  ...

"That man leaving here is certainly excited," said Joe Hardy to his older brother Frank as they looked out of their second story bedroom window and watched a mysterious man leave their home.

"Yes. And he only visited with Dad for a few minutes," exclaimed Frank. "He certainly came and went very quickly."

Next you'll be telling me that the Master was in love with the Doctor.  Leave my dorky childhood alone!  (via)

Prizzoust.

Richard bravely brings Snoop Dogg and Marcel Proust in on the same post.  (And Everlast.)  Joke lead from me, ha ha, but it's an interesting comment on the rare occurrence of all the right elements falling into place with creativity.  Excerpt:

I think we get so caught up in evaluation and assessment and moving on to the next big thing (or the next small thing) that we too rarely stop to consider how amazing artistic creation is. I commented to Tom's post that "the line between something awesome being created and not is that vanishingly thin." This is probably true to the point of banality, but at times I ponder it, in something like astonishment. When listening to a song, one that seems just so, and yet comprised, perhaps, of what might have otherwise seemed like incongruous elements, I sometimes become forcefully aware of how easily it could have been otherwise.

Not banal; just rare, that someone appreciates that magic.  We take for granted that we live in an age and country that are more geared toward entertainment than nearly anything. 

For the New York Times.

I like the New York Times, but having Garrison Keillor write a take-down "review" of a book written in praise of melancholy - I'm reaching for the right metaphor here, but failing.  Let's just call it an article - by a "humorist" upon whose "popularity" rests on people turning that frown upside down - taking snide potshots at someone who doesn't think Shiny Happy Everything is all there is.  Doesn't make for valuable reading.

Better is this article (Why the dumb title?  Why filed under fashion instead of, um, home & garden?) about the next generation of people and farming.  You know: where food comes from.  Local turnaround Broadturn Farm gets a mention.  Hurrah for CSA!

Finally, on not being reassured:

The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance. Our credit markets are foundering, and all we’ve got is a guy who looks like he’s ready to kick back and start the weekend.  ...this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”

Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.

 

Stumbles McGriffey and the Google Searches.

Housekeeping:  the two Google search bars have been discontinued, as they appeared to be completely useless.  Lijit's been brought back in to fill the void.

Also, if you like that Condalmo feeling, please Stumble on me.  (There's also a button for this, there on the right.)  Your Stumbles will do something good, somewhere.  Thank you.

Monday morning Remainder/Chesil matchup: prediction.

Brandon does the heavy lifting and calls it for McCarthy. 

"Are you going to do something, or just stand there and bleed?"

I never thought I'd find a way to work that quote into a valid & related subject header.  God bless you, my friend.  From "What Are You Going to Do, Bleed On Me?":

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (a decrepit and anachronistic organization if ever there was one) defines a professional short story publication as three cents a word, a laughable figure which hasn't changed in decades. As for "literary" short fiction, the number of publications which pay decent rates for it can be counted on the fingers of one hand -- The New Yorker, Harpers, Playboy, Esquire, and once a year the Atlantic Monthly. Did I forget anyone? On the other hand there are an ever increasing abundance of "literary magazines" with circulations in three or even two digits, published by universities or the equivalent of two guys in a garage. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but it's incredibly obvious that today having a "career" in writing short fiction and reaching out to a large audience on a regular basis simply isn't possible.

Let's be clear: I like short stories and I both read and write them. But we wouldn't need a Save the Short Story campaign if it wasn't in trouble. Let us not play pretend, let us not close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears and make believe the art form that once provided an income for a multitude of professionals isn't becoming (or hasn't become) irrelevant to the population at large. The short story is not a healthy art form, but rather a once mighty appendage of the greater literary body that's been gradually severed off and reduced until all that remains is a single lonely ligament, desperately clinging for all its worth.

Thus the Monty Python Black Knight reference that follows.  And thus my subject.  What is it, exactly, that we're all doing wrong?  Depending on how you look at the form, and the criteria you then choose for whether it's "healthy" or "smells like someone died" (yes!), it's easy to argue.  More people writing stories?  Check, or at least probably check.  Fewer "big" magazines paying good coin for the stories?  Check.  More "garage" magazines publishing stories?  Check.  Double digit subscriber lists?  Check.  Back and forth we go.

But it's hard to get around the fact that many fewer collections of stories come out each year than novels, and that those story collections rarely see the same sort of sales numbers as even your midlist literary fiction authors.  Why?  Why didn't The Dead Fish Museum sell like mad?  It's excellent, through and through.  What is it about stories that don't make you reach for your wallets?  Do we blame the publishers, with misguided/lackluster marketing?  Because: if you want to reach a population not interested in choosing reading over more immediate, short-attention-span-supporting pastimes, wouldn't a short story be a good start?  We can also blame ourselves: what did you buy more of last year?  What can you find more of, for free, on the internet?  Why are we making it available for free?  Nobody sensible will read all of Beautiful Children in a PDF file, but a three to five page story?  Absolutely.  Nearly all of the new stories in a new collection (of old and new stuff) forthcoming can be found in various places online, either right there or lodged in a Google cache.  There's the entire "maybe" audience gone; all that's left is the hard core dudes that would buy the thing anyway. 

Anyway, this is leading nowhere in particular, except that I simultaneously feel that pain and am disgusted by it; I wish short stories would become popular, but like you, am standing around bleeding.

"Chatterboxes and politically incorrect nincompoops."

Dan links to this piece on Stephen Dixon, part of which I offer here as anticipation builds for the arrival (via Bookmooch) of Dixon's favorite book.  This excerpt: on his style, and on what may be the only book I'm afraid to read:

That’s because what he’s really writing about, often, is memory—how we reconstruct past events in our minds, how those reconstructions are at odds with how other observers recall the events, how our fantasies overlap and occasionally supplant what actually happened. I can’t count the number of Dixon passages that begin with the protagonist sorting through how a pivotal event occurs, only to have a wife or a brother or a friend proclaim his memory faulty and then proceed to argue with him about how it happened this way. 

Dixon explores infinite alternatives to a situation and the contours of a person’s life. He’s the writer as cubist. In a story, he’ll look at a person’s situation or actions in as many different ways as possible. Interstate (1995), an entire novel based on the seemingly random murder of one of his daughters during a drive on the interstate , takes this idea to the nth degree. Each long chapter looks at the basic event—the protagonist is driving on the interstate, with his young daughters in the backseat, when a passenger in another car makes a rude gesture at the protagonist and suddenly fires bullets into the protagonist’s car, hitting the youngest daughter in the chest and killing her.

That in itself is harrowing to consider. What Dixon does with the material, however, is even more excruciating. Each of the book’s chapters examines the event from a different perspective.

I think Dixon's best stuff (that I've read thus far) is when he works around a specific loss - Old Friends, Phone Rings (made me wish I'd had a brother), and Interstate is highly spoken of and was nominated for some award or another.  I, End of I, both good, but meandering - ?  And I couldn't finish Meyer. 

I remember reading somewhere that his next one's going to look at his wife leaving him.  Melville House?

Correction.

This book is not about old-people sex.  My apologies to grandparents everywhere.

(Still, though.  Really.)

Banana stand grand re-opening.

Start here.  There's a movie coming, but it's a ways off, so you have time to watch all three seasons.

Murakami versus the volcano.

I don't know that I agree with the idea that Murakami is difficult to read (the person, or his books) but of interest anyway:

...Set against both Meehan’s tame realism and Gaddis’s comically absurd satire is “The Elephant Vanishes,” by Haruki Murakami, the only author under discussion whom I can imagine being happy at a real demolition derby. The story is trademark Murakami, in that it’s a fantastic story told matter-of-factly, and the result is unsettling. In the first half, the narrator concentrates almost tediously on how the elephant came to be where it was, and the aftermath of its disappearance. Only in the second half, when he tells the story to a young woman he’s flirting with, do we learn that he was the last person, aside from the keeper, to see the elephant before it disappeared. We also learn that it might have vanished by growing small enough to shrug off the iron ring that bound its leg and then slip between the bars of its cage. What’s not clear is whether we can trust the narrator’s perception (he doubts it himself), but the only way the elephant’s disappearance can be explained is to accept the impossible, a recognition that has subtly affected him. “Some kind of balance inside of me has broken down since the elephant affair,” he says, “and maybe that causes external phenomena to strike my eye in a strange way.” Telling the story to the young woman, for example, turns out to be a mistake, for its strangeness casts a pall over their attraction, and he never sees her again. Meehan might have enjoyed Murakami’s story, being the author of the hilarious “Yma Dream” from February 24, 1962. (It's best heard aloud; you can watch Anne Bancroft perform it here.) But Gaddis would’ve had no patience with the stubborn fantasy at the heart of “The Elephant Vanishes.” Still, Gaddis is famously difficult to read, which is something he shares with Murakami. Anne Keesey published an interview with Murakami in The Oregonian, in 2002, in which she reported,

It's tempting to try to assign specific meaning to Murakami's odder images. What is the meaning of the sheep in The Wild Sheep Chase?  What is the underwater volcano in The Second Bakery Attack?  What is the flatiron in Landscape with Flatiron? But perhaps sheep, volcano and iron cannot be decoded in that way. These images may be the irreducible coin of Murakami's individual imagination, not symbols of something else ...

Murakami responded to a question about the meaning of the underwater volcano by saying, "Don't you see a volcano in your mind when you get hungry? I do."

Which makes me think Murakami knows a thing or two about conversation-stoppers...

Or, failing that, maybe he points at something behind you with a look of astonishment, and when you look to see what it is, he runs off.

Sign the PEN China petition.

Via Amitava Kumar's site: Francine Prose, PEN President, has sent the following letter to PEN members.  There's a link below.  You can also go here.

I am writing to ask each and every one of you to stand up and be counted in support of our campaign to free 38 writers and journalists from prison in China.

As part of our We Are Ready for Freedom of Expression campaign, PEN American Center will be delivering a petition to the Chinese Consulate in New York on April 30, 2008–100 days before the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies–requesting the release of our jailed colleagues and seeking an end to internet censorship and other restrictions on freedom of expression in China. We want to make sure the name of every single member of PEN American Center is included among the thousands of signatures we are gathering for this petition.

If you have not already done so, please take a moment right now to sign this petition: www.pen.org/chinapetition

Your efforts will make a difference. Since the launch of this campaign on December 10, 2007, four writers and journalists have been released from Chinese prisons.

If you would like to do more, also sign our parallel petition to United States Congress to prohibit U.S. internet companies from helping China censor the internet and jail cyber-dissidents. Visit our campaign page at: www.pen.org/china

With your help and the help of all who support literature and freedom to write, we will free many more of our jailed colleagues before the Olympic Games begin.

Eliot Spitzer seen reading, enjoying "Petropolis," "Ovenman"; reportedly lukewarm on "The Savage Detectives."

Spitzer's having a really bad month.  Your Tournament of Books update:

1. It would have taken an act of God to move a book about a wacky cast of pizza parlor punks past a Big Vietnam Book.
2. Vida takes down Bolano; millions protest.  I don't see anything wrong with Kiem's decision here; this contest is, in the end, as arbitrary as your NBCC, your NBA, your what-have-you, except tournament-fashion.  She gave a rational enough explanation, more so than we've received from certain other judges in other years.  I haven't read either of these books yet, but Bolano's elimination certainly levels the playing field for everyone else.  Why all the fuss?  (Of course, if "That Strange Old Person Smell" takes down "Number One Existential Superbook", you'll see a real protest.)
3. I'd like to take this moment to recommend the audiobook version of Then We Came to the End (abridged, alas, but approved by Mr. Ferris) for your morning commute.  Again, little to say re: Petropolis, but as the judge noted, if you've had your soul eviscerated by working for the man - and most of us have - Ferris' debut is all that much better for you.  I, for one, have never been a young Russian woman on the lam. 
   

Roundup.

Take notes: how much your cup of joe will cost you as you travel the world.

Aaron Burch is a source of literature & beard-growing encouragement. 

George the ninja notes that the supposedly good development of writers being able to "integrate sounds and images into their story lines" is really dumb.  Honestly people, enough already with the "new art form" silliness.  Leave the video games to the kids.

Andrew wonders about how fiction writers will react to the lack of piracy protection on audiobooks.

Bill Clinton went on Rush Limbaugh's show to promote his wife; in other news, some Democrats still think HRC is a good idea! 

"Then We Came to" Ferris' next book.

Is it unnamed, or "Unnamed"?

Miramax Films and producer Scott Rudin have acquired screen rights to "The Unnamed," an upcoming novel by Joshua Ferris about a man who comes down with a mysterious affliction that fractures his family.

Deal comes the same week that Ferris' last novel, "Then We Came to the End," was awarded the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award; the novel is also a finalist for the National Book Award. Ferris is adapting "End" for HBO.

I'm glad it's going through HBO; no need to kowtow to Hollywood bigwigs, ruining one adaptation after another.  Speaking of which: though I love them both as actors, this looks like bad casting:

Rudin is currently in production on a Stephen Daldry-directed adaptation of Bernhard Schlink novel "The Reader," with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes starring.

Twice as hard to cut it in half: Norman Maclean's writing.

My writing has always leaned toward bloviation.  In my starry-eyed youth, I tore out a piece of Nabokov's Despair and ate it; it's lodged in my midsection, preserved intact, and has exerted an evil/good/evil force on my writing ever since.  I like complex, long sentences, with Tinker-Toy fragility (one actual grammarian's sneeze and the whole thing collapses) and yes, I likes me the semicolon; I likes it a lot. 

I also like simplicity, though, both in writing and in life.  Give me a drrrrty realist any day of the week.  I've done some work recently with an outfit built around providing 100 word summaries of other media, and I have an account at 100 Words (unused).  It's a good challenge for me, trying to pare it back.  It hurts, but it's good hurt. 

Coming up at The Morning News today, along with the first match of this year's Tournament of Books, is an article about some of the better film adaptations of books and stories.  An open subject, one I could gas on about at great length.  I was told to keep my contribution to 75 words.  75 words?  My husbandly-noncommittal-male grunts are longer than that.  I didn't pick it, but the adaptation of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It came to mind.  Great movie, and of course the scene where the father is home-schooling Norman in writing: young Norman brings in his essay/story and his father goes at it with a red pencil, not dictating changes so much as posing questions, and then he sends Norman off with his instructions for revision: "Half as long."  And then again.  When you're limited, you have to be more choosy.  Every word has to be weighed for its value to the piece; instead of throwing it all at the wall and seeing what sticks (hello Condalmo!), you need to know exactly what you're conveying.  It's good practice for me.

I think I could say more about this, but I'll restrain myself.

Titlepage: not exactly the cure for a sleep disorder.

It's official: the Titlepage format is much more enjoyable when you can't understand word one of what anyone is saying!

Marquis de Sade
Uploaded by assistab

Calming; soothing.  Thank you, France.  (and.)

Writer-in-chief: the stylings of Obama and Clinton.

I find this sort of thing fascinating.  Granted, you can only take so much of this, and with a grain of salt, but I'm of the mind that it does matter.  An ability to write well doesn't necessarily indicate an ability to govern well; but an inability to write well, or speak well - you needn't look too far for an example of how that goes. 

The books of Hillary and Barack are stacked up against each other, and Hillary doesn't fare very well.  I'm sure HRC supporters will add this to their tally of grievances against the media for attacking HRC and heaping hossannas on BHO, but the piece dishes out criticism of Obama's stylings, too.  I question the assertion abut HRC's sincerity, but the self-pity - and both the authenticity/narcissism of BHO - have some truth to them.  The whole thing's worth a read, but here's an excerpt:

Indeed, whenever Mrs. Clinton lashes out at her political enemies — President Clinton's opponent in an Arkansas governor's race, or the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, or Kenneth Starr — it is always in a tone of self-pity. This is not to pass judgment on her complaints, simply to note that, unlike most politicians, Mrs. Clinton sees political attacks as personal grievances — especially when she feels that her good intentions are being questioned. For if self-pity is Mrs. Clinton's major vice, that is only because it corresponds to what she understands to be her biggest virtue: sincerity. While she will admit to losing her temper or to misjudging the consequences of her actions, nowhere in the pages of "Living History" does she admit to a bad motive. She always sincerely means well; and it follows that, if her opponents disagree with her, they must be insincere and mean ill...

Conversely, if Mrs. Clinton's favorite anecdotes have to do with demonstrating the sincerity of her feelings, Mr. Obama's have to do with overawing people with the force of his authenticity. He writes that his constituents "tell me that they have great hopes for me, but that they are worried that Washington is going to change me and I will end up just like all the rest of the people in power. Please stay who you are, they will say to me."

As these lines suggest, if the vice of sincerity is self-pity, the vice of authenticity is narcissism — the belief that one is virtuous and lovable simply for being one's self. When one of Mr. Obama's supporters, questioned on a television talk show, notoriously couldn't name a single one of the candidate's accomplishments, he was inadvertently carrying to its conclusion the logic of authenticity: the idea that what you are matters more than what you do. The overreliance of Mr. Obama's campaign on his personal charisma is already emerging as the favorite target of his opponents. Ironically, if his books weren't so well written, they wouldn't offer such credible support for the charge.

(via.)

And we're back.

Life around here lately has been like "Mickey Blue Eyes", the Hugh Grant vehicle from some time ago where British meets mob life - think "Keeping Up Appearances" meets "Goodfellas" without the laughs - in that there's been a whole lot of nonsense, and one or two genuinely funny moments to break the stupor.  ("Fug-ged about did?")  I mean this site, and life in general.  I've been sidelined from work by a disablity; the insurance company has delivered on the promise of "Sicko" and as such, my short term disability coverage is, in fact, useless.  This has left us in financial dire straits, scrambling to figure out the mortgage, the childcare, the groceries.  Medication changes have sent me into highs and lows, neither of which especially manageable.  Not everything has been bad, of course; my daughters and wife have had general good health, got a regular reviewing gig with a magazine, we didn't lose all of our photos saved on the ill computer (no backup copies! dumb!)  But still.  If the difficulties weren't enough to put the kibosh on updating Condalmo, the computer breaking down sealed it.  Working on the site with a mobile phone: joyless.

Well, the computer's back.  So, there may be an increase in posting here.  (Remainder v. Old People Sex!  It's got to be Remainder, or I'm moving.)  But it's going to be spotty; I'm in the final weeks of preparing to sit for the counseling exam, and there's still the matter of the disability, the bills.  I considered the idea of shifting the content of this site, for a while, more toward the personal side; I don't know, though.  Anyone want the details on a sleep disorder?

A little bit of housecleaning:

• Fonts every designer should own, and somewhat-irked-designers' blood spilled in the comments.
• More about The Last Samurai, which I've had in the "when I have a lot of time" pile for a while.
• Don't write what you know.
• Hobart (have you seen the calendar?  The Canada/America issue?  Nice) links to Lamination Colony, with Michael Martone and David Markson - sort of.
• "It is not a book to be left where a sensitive child may come upon it at twilight," a librarian reviewer wrote.

• "So accept this token of our love / Which is now in the past / For you to unleash / Upon unchartered toast!"

• Small Press Month.