Shopgirl
Better than King Kong.
See also: Le Cineclub with Emma and Lauren’s take
Siesta
Since the thing to do seems to be to stay very, very quiet, don’t expect much here until next week. Yesterday, I crashed and burned after the 700-mile neverending odyssey that was Christmas (thanks for the Magnum), managing only to accomplish lunch with a friend and the pending tweaks to GG (word to the wise: make sure you haven’t inadvertently skipped a chapter, like say eighteen, in numbering). Today the Magnum goes back to its Rental Home and I get my car back, and hopefully a new stereo installed. I have a terrible cold again, or perhaps it’s just exhaustion.
My to-do list is just the right length for a long holiday weekend: getting a massage (a present even!), mailing some stuff, finishing up interviews for and writing a freelance piece, writing up my notes on a friend’s most excellent novel, revisiting my Roanoke research and revising a short story. Oh, and somewhere in there drink champagne and resolve stuff. And see Syriana.
I may break in with an RIP for the Magnum and a list of things that made me happy this year. Then again, I may not. Either way, I wish you an enjoyable last few days of the year and a better next one.
Mockbee, I Love Thee
Fred Bernstein visits Alabama to look at some amazing buildings:
Music Man’s house, with colorful glass embedded in concrete floors and shelves that move on skateboard wheels, is one of about 40 buildings conceived and built by the Rural Studio, an ever-changing troupe of architecture students who bring their tools, tenacity and talent to impoverished western Alabama. The 13-year-old program, under the auspices of Auburn University, is sometimes called the "redneck Taliesin."
Like Frank Lloyd Wright, the master of Taliesin, Samuel Mockbee, the Rural Studio’s founder, was a larger-than-life figure. Born in Mississippi, Mr. Mockbee established the Rural Studio in dirt-poor Hale County, Ala., a place where trailers teetering on cinderblocks and disintegrating barns were two of the most common building types.
I highly recommend the amazing photo chronicle of some of the project’s best work, Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency.
Mockbee, I Love Thee Read More »
Found in Translation
Grossman vs Montero in the WaPo:
Grossman : That’s true. It’s like music. You can tell who the composer is after a bar or two because of particular stylistic characteristics. I read a paragraph or two of a writer, and I know exactly who I’m reading. Just as you would never hear Miles Davis and think he was Dizzy Gillespie, or that Mozart was Ives, it would be hard to mistake your writing for, say, Mario Vargas Llosa’s.
Montero : You know that musicians as well as authors are always looking for their own language. But it’s more than the language. It’s something to do with ethics and aesthetics.
Amazing conversation between these two. Do read the whole thing.
Found in Translation Read More »
Monday Hangovers
- The neverending holiday has ended. Let all rejoice and drink champagne once the exhaustion has passed.
- I keep forgetting to mention that Scott is now a NYT-approved expert on dogs chewing off faces… or something like that. He extracts the goods for you. Also, Uglies, the book that made him such, made Amazon’s top 10 books for teens. (And Looking for Alaska’s on there too; although, the lack of Valiant is truly scandalous.)
- Relatedly, possible record prime number found.
- Good luck to Didi on his new (ad)ventures. (Scroll down.)
- A little Factsheet Five post at the Esoteric Science Resource Center.
- Another fabulous recipe care of Mr. McLaren, cookies with bourbon. (We have had far too many sweets here at Casa Bond/Rowe, and yet still we immediately devoured chocolates sent by friends as soon as we got home.)
- More MFA talk: Maud has an excellent post excerpting David Hollander in the most recent issue of Poets and Writers on what MFA programs are not looking for (reductively put: in his opinion, writers who knock your socks off need not apply). See also: Maud on Caitlin Flanagan and the inner housewife.
- Holtzbrink, the overlords of Tor, Picador, St. Martin’s and others, have launched a blog and lots of other goodies. Check it out.
- Matt Cheney at Emerald City on "Literary Fiction for People Who Hate Literary Fiction."
- Jeff reveals the ugly truth that Christmas is really all about hippies.
- For full contact sport enthusiasts, Miss Snark is critiquing synopses submitted by her readers. In the response to the first one, she says: The purpose of a synopsis for an agent is, in the words of Lucienne Diver "to make sure aliens don’t arrive on the farm in chapter 14". However, that’s not the writer’s purpose for a synopsis. A synopsis for a writer is part of your arsenal of persuasion. Yes, you write a capsule of the novel but you also make it enticing. You want an agent to read this and think "oh yes I want to read this".
Hannibal Goes Bad
The WaPo has a story about the rising crime rate in Mark Twain’s home town:
Apart from some murder and grave-robbing in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," Mark Twain immortalized his home town of Hannibal as a sleepy place where life rolls by as slowly as a barge going down the Mississippi. But that’s pure fiction nowadays.
Drugs and a lack of jobs have brought a boom in armed robbery and theft to this community of 18,000 that calls itself "America’s Hometown."
Flatline
Yes, we’ve been sucked into the holiday vortex. It looks as if it’s a 72-hour journey to the other side this year, so see you late Monday. Much must be eaten to avoid getting trapped forever. (And the holiday bitchiness continues to grow at an alarming rate…)
Anyway, those at the right are less lame than me, so check them out in the meanwhile. Also, Jeff VanderMeer has put up a "kind of" holiday tale from the Secret Life, for your reading pleasure.
Last but not least, drop Mr. Rowe a holiday line or comment on his practically nonexistent birthday (aka TODAY), at CVROWEATGMAILDOTCOM or on any random entry over here. Sadly, he’s still computerless so he may not respond right away, but he’s sharing mine and frequenting the library so it won’t be too long. And how lame is it that he gets no real birthday? Very, very.
And hey, hope you got some loot. You deserve it.
Wednesday Hangovers
A few tiny things, as the household prepares for the impending apoca–holiday.
- Time magazine’s so smart they put Magic for Beginners on their best of the year list. Whoop! Holla! (Thx, Gavin!) And bonus for inclusion of the fabulous 1491 in the nonfiction list.
- Nicola Griffith is interviewed at Strange Horizons. (Via a smarty.)
- Cassie Claire’s top 10 fictional couples.
- The fabulous Jenny D on things she must do before she dies.
Wednesday Hangovers Read More »
The Meaning of Extraordinary
The Washington Post has a fascinating article about Yiyun Li’s immigration woes:
In the summer of 2004, Li petitioned the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to become a permanent resident of the United States. To approve her application for a green card, USCIS would need to agree that she was an artist of "extraordinary ability," defined in Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 204.5(h)(2) as "a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor."
To the upper echelons of literary publishing, Li looks like a slam-dunk to meet this definition. Not to the USCIS, however. A year after she filed it, her petition was rejected.
She has appealed. A USCIS spokesman says she is likely to get her answer in a few weeks.
"Things change a lot," as a character in one of Li’s stories says. "Within a blink a mountain flattens and a river dries up. Nobody knows who he’ll become tomorrow."
The Meaning of Extraordinary Read More »
Four by Four
This one’s going around. I caught it from OGIC and Tito.
Four jobs you’ve had in your life: bartender, reporter, waitress, PR flack
Four movies you could watch over and over: Midnight, Happy Accidents, Rushmore, Run Lola Run
Four places you’ve lived: Bond, Ky.; Menomonie, Wis.; London, England; Lexington, Ky.
Four TV shows you love to watch: Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, America’s Next Top Model (addictive), Arrested Development
Four places you’ve been on vacation: Hawaii, Mexico, Las Vegas (I’m only putting this one on for sentimental reasons, because it was over X-mas), Paris
Four websites you visit daily: Bloglines (in other words, where I read most everything), MetaxuCafe, About Last Night (damn your partial RSS feed!), Washington Post online
Four of your favorite foods: pizza, sushi, burritos, champagne
Four places you’d rather be: in a museum, at the movies, in the bathtub, in a zeppelin, among friends