A Tyrannosaurus Rex [Tyrannosaurs baatar] skeleton ostensibly excavated in Mongolia, and allegedly illegally transported therefrom, was sold at auction on Sunday for just over a million dollars by Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas to an unnamed phone bidder. On June 19th and 20th, London will host the International Colloquy on the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, even as Greece teeters on the brink of withdrawing from the Euro-zone. Lord Byron graffitied his thoughts on national patrimony and plunder on a plaster wall at the Parthenon.
1.
“Before bidding on the skeleton began, the auctioneer announced that the sale would be ‘contingent upon a court proceeding dealing with this matter.’ Almost immediately, Robert Painter, a lawyer representing Elbegdorj Tsakhia, the president of Mongolia, stood up with a cell phone held to his ear and yelled, ‘I’m sorry, I need to interrupt this auction. I have a judge on the phone’ … Despite the ruckus, the auction continued, and the considerable artifact sold for $1,052,500, to an unidentified phone bidder. The small audience, slightly confused, applauded.”
—Laura L. Griffin, “T-Rex Wreck: Mongolian Representative Disrupts Skeleton Auction,” The New York Observer, 21 May, 2012.
2.
“The neo-fascists are hunting down immigrants in the middle of downtown Athens, in the streets north of the central Omonia Square. They call it cleansing. They hunt people like Massoud, a 25-year-old Afghan from Kabul. He has been living in Athens for five years without a residency permit, even though he speaks fluent Greek…The gangs also hunt the dark-skinned man pushing a shopping cart filled with garbage and scrap metal through the streets. Or the woman with Asian features, who now grabs her child and the paper cup with which she has just been begging in the streets…The Greeks may have come to terms with the fact that the luster of antiquity is long gone. But the notion that Athens, a once-proud city, has now become synonymous with political failure and mismanagement is difficult to take.”
—Julia Amalia Heyer “Amid Debt Crisis, Athens Falls Apart,” Der Spiegel, 28 March, 2012.
3.
“Quod non fecerunt Goti Hoc fecerunt Scoti. [What the Goths left undone has been done by the Scots].”
—Graffiti on the west side of the plundered Athenian Parthenon, source of the so-called “Elgin Marbles,” attributed to George Gordon, Lord Byron, circa 1810.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the gaslight, candlelight, torch, or starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The citational constellations work to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” They are offered with astonishment and largely without comment. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Did you hear? The English language is on its deathbed.
Maybe a peppy blurb is all it needs to bring it back to life.
After all, there's nothing quite like a Hemingway endorsement to make anything legitimate.
Although, David Foster Wallace could probably give him a run for his money in the fanbase department.
But as long as what you're doing can be turned into a catchy song, you're good.
Though, writing such a thing is hardly a walk in the park.
If only everything came with a convenient FAQ, life would be so much easier.
But not even a piece of flash fiction can be summed up that easily.
You're probably just better off scribbling away furiously in your Moleskine.
Carlos Fuentes, author of two of my favorite novels, The Eagle’s Throne andThe Crystal Frontier, died yesterday. He also wrote a book called Gringo viejo (Old Gringo), which imagines the undocumented end of Ambrose Bierce’s life during the Mexican Revolution. Bierce’s satirical lexicon, The Devil’s Dictionary, was known in its first edition of 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book. Bierce’s pursuit of truth and political engagement in the Mexican Revolution was decidedly uncynical, however, and his disappearance approaches Quixote-esque proportions of melancholic folly. Fuentes considered Don Quixote the best novel ever written.
1.
“[T]ime will not only tell: Time will sell. One might think that Cervantes was in tune with his times whereas Stendhal consciously wrote for "the happy few" and sold poorly in his own life…Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a somber graveyard of dead books. Yet permanence is not a willful proposition. No one can write a book aspiring to immortality, for it would then court both ridicule and certain mortality. Plato puts immortality in perspective when he states that eternity, when it moves, becomes time, eternity being a kind of frozen time. And William Blake certainly brings things down to earth: Eternity is in love with the works of time.”
—Carlos Fuentes, “In Praise of the Novel,” 2005.
2.
“DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.
As, pent in an aquarium, the troutlet
Swims round and round his tank to find and outlet,
Pressing his nose against the glass that holds him,
Nor ever sees the prison that enfolds him;
So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him,
Yet feels the narrow limits that impound him,
Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it,
And finds at last he might as well have paid it.”
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911.
3.
“ ‘Oh!’ responded Sancho, weeping. ‘Don’t die Señor; your grace should take my advice and live for many years, because the greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to let himself die, just like that, without anybody killing him or any other hands ending his life except those of melancholy. Look, don’t be lazy, but get up from that bed and let’s go to the countryside dressed as shepherds, just like we arranged…If you’re dying over sorrow of being defeated, blame me for that, and say you were toppled because I didn’t tighten Rocinante’s cinches…”
— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote Part II, 1615.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the gaslight, candlelight, torch, or starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The citational constellations work to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” They are offered with astonishment and largely without comment. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
The geography of subway maps is constantly changing.
Just like the evolution of words. (Thanks for inventing pop music, George Eliot.)
Even the tried and true obituary occasionally gets a chance to get creative.
The same goes for fuddy duddy old textbooks, who are raised into cities.
Can the same be done to used books during this digital renaissance?
We could say that it'll only get worse, but where's the fun in that?
Afterall, you have to fight for your right to stay optimistic.
It's the kind of sentiment that most mothers everywhere would encourage.
Image source: Liu Wei
Last weekend, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery held a three-day conference in Washington D.C. to “review, discuss and debate” the research that has been and will be done to recover Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated Lockheed Electra Aircraft. On the island where she is believed to have died, glass fragments bearing a resemblance to a 1930 freckle-treatment jar have been discovered. As summer approaches, the good doctors at Scientific American will help us keep our skin spot free, but beware the devil…he leaves his footprint on desert isles for reasons subtle and inscrutable.
1. “When reassembled, the glass fragments make up a nearly complete jar identical to the ones used by Dr. C.H. Berry’s Freckle Ointment. The ointment was marketed in the early 20th century as a concoction guaranteed to make freckles fade. ‘It’s well documented that Amelia had freckles and disliked having them,’ [said] Joe Cerniglia, the TIGHAR researcher who spotted the freckle ointment as a possible match.”
— Rosella Lorenzi, “Earhart’s Anti-Freckle Cream Jar Possibly Found,” Discovery News, 30 May, 2012.
2. “At this time of year there are few questions which are more frequently addressed to the ‘family chemist’ and fewer still to which he ordinarily gives so unsatisfactory a reply as, ‘What shall I do to cure my freckles?’ Knowing as we do how greatly the popularity—i.e. the business prosperity—of the majority of our friends depends upon the votes and interest of their lady customers, we have been at some pains to lay before them such an amount of practical information upon the above subject as will enable them to retain the good will and material gratitude of their fair interrogators, on the one hand, and to put a little extra profit in their hands, on the other.”
—B. & C. Druggist, “The Treatment of Freckles, Moles, Etc.” Scientific American Supplement no. 507, 19 September 1885.
3. “What marks were there of any other footsteps? And how was it possible a man should come there? But then to think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place where there could be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even for no purpose too, for he could not be sure I should see it…I considered that the Devil might have found out abundant other ways to have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot.”
— Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the gaslight, candlelight, torch, or starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The citational constellations work to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” They are offered with astonishment and largely without comment. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Image: cosmeticsandskin.com
“I WANT A PSEUDONYM.”
I looked at my friend like he was saying he wanted manicured eyebrows.
“Come again?” I asked.
“You heard me. I don’t want to use my real name.”
“Sure, but a pseudonym? Why not just get it legally changed?”
“I don’t need to get a new driver’s license. I just don’t want my name on the manuscript.”
“Look at me. You’re cool. You’re brilliant. Your name is awesome. “
“It’s not about what I like or don’t like. Did you see that one HTMLGiant post? Sylvia Plath went as Victoria Lucas in the first editions of The Bell Jar. There's a whole book on pseudonyms." He poured himself a shot of Cutty Sark. “I like my real name just fine. But I don’t want an editor googling my name when she or he picks it up.”
I sighed. “Okay, fine. But you’ll get it published with your real name?”
“Sure, if you say so. We’ll have to see what the marketing people say. They got Jo Rowling to call herself J.K. Rowling, and it worked.”
“So what kind of name were you thinking of?”
“I don’t know. Something classy, something aristocratic.”
“Well, F. Scott Fitzgerald is taken. So's Edward St. Aubyn.”
“Wasn’t Evelyn Waugh good?”
“Sure, but why copy him?” I thought for a second. “Hey, I knew this guy named Cambrian.”
He snorted. “Cambrian? The geologic era?”
“Hey, you wanted sophisticated. You can’t do better than Latin. Throw on a double-barreled name, and you’ll fit right in at the Crillon Ball.”
“Okay. So I could be Cambrian Williams-Burke.” He emptied his glass. I poured him another.
“I think you should be a bit more honest, though. You’re from the South. Say you’re from the South.”
“I could do that. If I want to say I’m like Breece D’J Pancake or that Confederacy of Dunces guy, I’ll just find myself a hillybilly name. Clayton Rambler. Colt McCoy!”
“That’s a cheap joke,” I said as I poured myself some Cutty as well. “You can do better than that. Come on, make it an honest pseudonym. Just use your pet and street name and make a Porn Star name.”
“I never had a pet, though. I’ll make my first name Wythe.”
“I like first names as last names. James, Ryan, Kirby...”
“Kirby. Wythe Kirby. That works.”
I smirked. “Hey, that rhymes with your real name. See, I told you your real name was good enough.”
“Nah, man. ‘Wythe Kirby’ doesn’t pull anything real up on Google. I’m using it.”
“Great. Does that mean you’re ready to start writing your book now?”
image: vice.com
Apparently all men have a required reading list, and it doesn't seem to include much female writers.
Which supports the case for pseudonyms, though J.K. Rowling seems to have done alright for herself.
If this Warner Herzog note to his cleaning lady had been real, then he'd probably need to find a pseudonym as well.
Though that note isn't something you'd want to re-read, there are plenty of books that people just keep coming back to.
Perhaps they are particularly influential books that were read to them by their geeky parents.
Such parental acts are important, considering that we may be facing a Ray Bradbury-ian future ahead of us.
And looking back at some of the trends of the 90's, that may not be such a bad thing.
Though an entire generation can't be summed up so easily, unlike some of these classic genres.
But if you ask the Pulitzer prize committee to do it, they'd probably just keep putting off until the last minute.
Illustration by Maximilian Bode.
Between the dog gardener and the talking Pineapple, this year’s New York State English Language Arts test sounds like an absolutely hilarious failure. In addition to the menagerie of ambitious flora and fauna, it appears another question, this time featuring a talking yam, has excited some debate. State education spokesman John Burman draws a comparison between the yam and Martin Luther King Jr., an Invisible Man considers a life in the "sweet yellowish," and tuber culture, according to Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, circumvents the whole conversation.
1. “The folk tale involves a farmer startled by his talking yam. Everyone he meets dismisses him as crazy and insists the tubers can’t talk—including, amusingly, other mute objects like a fish, melon and chair. But a version of the yam story appears in a fourth-grade Houghton Mifflin reader and other test prep material available for city schools to purchase, officials said…’It is absurd to suggest that a passage cannot be used on an exam simply because some students may have previously read that passage,’ [State Education spokesman Jonathan Burman] said. ‘Using that logic, we would be unable to ask children to read and answer questions about Dr. King's ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.’”
—Rachel Monahan, “After controversy over pineapple question on city schools test, a question about a yam stirs new troubles,” New York Daily News, 24 April, 2012.
2. “ ‘They’re my birthmark,’ I said. ‘I yam what I am!’ … [c]ontinue on the yam level and life would be sweet—though somewhat yellowish.”
—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 1952.
3. “Wheat, which bears its grains aboveground, ripens all golden in the sunlit air, while potato tubers expand unseen in occulted darkness. Passing through few stages of civilized productive mediation, the potato makes a startlingly abrupt transition from ground to human being. The whole satisfyingly social and symbolic cycle of planting, germination, sprouting, growing, ripening, harvesting, thrashing, milling, mixing, kneading, and baking, which makes wheat into bread, is bypassed in tuber culture.”
—Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism, 2000.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Holograms are all the rage these days. I guess Princess Leia was ahead of the curve.
Though seeing your favorite dead writers duke it out via hologram, should not be on your list of worries.
But it would be nice to hear a good prediction from someone in the know for the future of writing.
Maybe everyone in publishing should just listen to Louis C.K. when it comes to book distribution.
Or perhaps audio books will make a triumphant come back and save us all.
People might read more if we updated the classics with modern-day slang, home skillet.
Or the answer might lie in literary power couples, who could team up to write books of awe-inspiring depth.
But until we find an answer, we can fin comfort in the fact that there will soon be a slurpee on every corner.
(Image Source: F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters; Image: F. Scott Fitzgerald with his daughter, Scottie, in 1924.)
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