Asymptotia

A little while ago, this season’s edition of the USC College magazine came out, and it is available online. Notably, it is featuring writers and writing, and there are several pieces in there about both faculty and students and their writing, in various forms. There are articles about superstars such as TC Boyle and Aimee Bender, as well as pieces by excellent writers such as California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes, and M. G. Lord. I recommend having a read of it.

It is with a mixture of mild amusement and embarrassment that I mention that among all that excellent writerly material is, perhaps oddly, an article on yours truly. It is about this blog, what it is about and for, and why I do it. (The blog is, of course, not to be mistaken for great writing, and so I will apologize personally to Aimee Continue reading ‘The Write Stuff’

This week’s New Yorker has an article by Dana Goodyear on Neil Gaiman. There’s also an online chat with him and Goodyear and readers here. I like a lot of Gaiman’s writing and am impressed with his imagination. It is interesting to note that such a prolific and influential talent has managed to not become a household name. This might be beginning to change. As a result I myself a bit conflicted, as I often am in this situation when someone like this, whose work I’ve followed for years (or that I’ve simply privately noted is really excellent, early on), is maybe about to break into mainstream recognition. I’m happy for them, want to share them with my friends and the world at large while at the same time being a bit worried about it having Continue reading ‘Gaiman in the New Yorker’

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Do you know who said that? I’ll break the post here to give you a moment to think about it. I’m not going to ask for the answer in the comments since you have Google on your side, but you can, if you like, share in the comments whether you knew or guessed it right before you moved to the rest of the post below to learn the answer. (Image above is an illustration by Walter Crane for ‘Snow White’ (1882).) Continuing…
Continue reading ‘On Art, Fairy Tales, and Creativity’

I’ve spoken about Haruki Murakami, one of my favourite writers, here before (Image right by Elena Seibert). See my earlier post, which highlighted an essay of his. Well, I learned from The Writer’s Almanac that it is his birthday today. Since I’ve been thinking a lot about great writing recently, I thought I’d celebrate by noting it here to you on the blog. Do go over there and read a bit about what Garrison Keillor and his writers say about him. Extract:

Continue reading ‘Murakami’s Birthday!’

I’m taking a short break from it while I wait for my soup - that wonderful soup I made a huge vat of last night, using the essence of the left over carcass of a roast chicken I served on Christmas day combined with various delicious vegetables from the farmer’s market - to heat up for dinner. I need the break, as I’m mentally exhausted. Although I strongly feel like having a nice evening glass of wine, I am forbidding myself from having one since I must stay sharp for much longer this evening, despite my exhaustion. So a bit of blogging about my ongoing task will somehow serve as my relaxation. Oddly enough. Well, let’s see if it does.

I’ve been wandering an incredibly striking landscape, with such remarkable variety, detail, texture and hue. There are features that move me to tears at times, reduce me to fits of uncontrollable laughter at others, but mostly intense reflection throughout. I should be simply enjoying it for its own sake, drinking it in where I want to, letting it simply wash over me at times, while at others, cupping some of it in my hands and looking at it close up, before letting it flow away and moving on. But I do not have that freedom. Instead I have to look at it all with a view to ranking various features over others - putting it all into some sort of order. This is a terrible task to have to do, since so very much of it is simply wonderful in its own right, and there’s hardly any meaning to ranking some parts over the other.

What on earth am I talking about?

Well, as is so often the case with some of the things I get myself involved in, I can’t tell you much detail, since the process itself is ongoing, and rather sensitive. I’d not Continue reading ‘The Read’

I’m not normally a giddy fan of anyone, but I’m super-excited! Margaret Atwood is talking at UCLA on Friday about her new book (The Year of the Flood, sequel - kind of - to the excellent Oryx and Crake) and I managed to snag a ticket online to see her. (There’ll be readings from the book and also some illustrative performances/enactments by actors and musicians.) I was scalped 25% on the ticket price in “service charges” by ticketmaster, which left a bad taste in my mouth, but then I remembered her voice and wit and humour and it somehow made it all ok.

If you’ve not read any of her work, perhaps begin with The Handmaid’s Tale and go from there. I love her brilliant writing style, wit, cleverness, humour and searing Continue reading ‘Margaret Atwood’

Mark your calendar for Sunday! The West Hollywood Book Fair is on from 10 am to 6:00 pm that day, and there’s so much to see and do with readings, panels, discussions, authors, special celebrity guests, food, exhibitions, writing workshops, discount book offers, signings, swag (no doubt), and so forth. I’ve not been before, but as you know from reading here I’m a big fan of cities going gaga over books for a while, being a regular visitor to the LA Times Book Festival when it comes in the Spring. The calendar of events and much more about the event can be found at the website here.

Here’s another thing. Despite the fact there was no mention of a spankingly splendid Continue reading ‘More Book Fun!’

On Sunday evening (perhaps after a lovely day at the Festival of Books), come along to the Mt. Hollywood Underground for a fun evening of poetry, organized by Smart Gals in the Speakeasy series! There’ll be food, fun, and even celebrity (!) poetry judges, (plus me), on the panel. There’ll also be live music form the Red Maids. Here’s some of the description from their website:

L.A.’s intentionally lowbrow, literally underground literary salon returns! Now running as a seasonal series, Smart Gals’ Speakeasy celebrates National Poetry Month with its fourth annual Dead Poets Slam. Year one, the Suicide Poets stood down the Natural Death Poets by but a few points. Year two, the Men took on the Women. Year three pitted East Coast against West Coast. And now, Smart Gals’ Spring Speakeasy presents a fresh challenge, ripe for a Continue reading ‘Poetry Slam!’

It was Burns’ night last night, and I do love hearing his work read out loud. It is quite wonderful to read too. It’s his 250th birthday (Hmmm… something else to add to the year of celebrations of big anniversaries along with Darwin and Galileo). One of my favourites, which you possibly know, is the following (reproduced here in tribute):

A Red, Red Rose - Robert Burns. (1759–1796)

O MY Luve ’s like a red, red rose
That ’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve ’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune!

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

Now go to NPR and listen to Alison Jones read it out quite wonderfully, after having a Continue reading ‘Love Burns’

More encouragement (see my earlier piece about education and about science and more science) comes around the matter of poetry and the presidency. Larissa Anderson, on Weekend America this Saturday, reported on the president-elect’s evident interest in poetry. Derek Walcott was featured in the piece as well (I was pleased to hear this since I like his work, and it is also good to hear about the work of a Caribbean thinker on the national stage - it does not happen often enough for my liking) and had some very interesting things to say. From the transcript of the piece (see that link for audio):

Walcott says it’s good for people in power to read poetry because human beings are complex and contradictory, and poetry can capture that. Like in Langston Hughes’ poem “Theme for English B” when the black student writes to his white teacher, “Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. / Nor do I often want to be a part of you. / But we are, that’s true!” Or in Walt Whitman’s line, “I am large — I contain multitudes.”

Walcott likes the idea of a president who reads poetry and thinks about this kind of human truth. Someone who can see beyond the act of political posturing.

Then he read his recent poem, “40 Acres” that he wrote for Obama, which I thought was rather good. He also described some of the process of writing it - also excellent to hear. Finally, the piece reported on something he said that reflects my own Continue reading ‘Presidential Poetry’

I’ve been meaning to tell you more about Michael Pollan. I’ve been planning a post or two about Summer reading, and was going to discuss the books of Michael Pollan to kick off a possible series. That plan was hatched in the late Summer of 2007… then the Fall came, and then the Winter and Spring… then Summer of 2008… never got around to it. Drat. (Checking back, I see that I started the series by talking about Haruki Murakami, here. So I’ll call this part of the series too, even though it is not really Summer.)

Anyway, the good news is that Pollan was on Fresh Air (NPR) yesterday, and as usual he was excellent:

In an open letter to the next president, author Michael Pollan writes about the waning health of America’s food systems — and warns that “the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”

The future president’s food policies, says Pollan, will have a large impact on a wide range of issues, including national security, climate change, energy independence and health care.

Here’s the link to the audio. Before you rush off to that, let me continue what I was going to say, at least in brief.

Pollan has risen to prominence, justifiably, mostly as a result of his excellent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals”. It is a delightful examination of the food industry, charting the route of much of the food that you eat Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Fresh Air From Pollan’

Aha! Regular commenter Yvette Cendes (over at The Chocolate Fish) has thrown down the gauntlet! She thinks that we can come up with more, and better, poetry about the LHC. The successful LHC song of Kate McAlpine (deserving of thunderous applause for raising awareness) should clearly be considered just the beginning. So she starts off the challenge to you all with some work of her own, which I shamelessly reproduce below. (Go over to her blog to submit your new writing - or do it both here and there. Up to you.) (My money’s on our regular commenter Elliot producing a marvellous LHC haiku or something like that.)

Yvette calls it an LHC Poetry Slam. Hmmm. I submit that it should be an LHC Poetry Event, or LHC Poetry Collision, or…. anyway, here’s her poem, and wow - true to form, it is good!

Continue reading ‘Yvette on LHC Poetry’

Spotted on a wall (near BevMo, West Hollywood). (Click for larger view.)

Continue reading ‘Selected Quotes’

One great thing to do when it is super-hot outside is to sit in an air-conditioned movie theatre. Yes, and watch a movie. And when its really hot, do it for a really long time. How about seven hours?!

Over the last two nights I watched something wonderful on screen, at the Bing Theatre at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). A rare gem, in fact*. Sergei Bondarchuk’s film of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, (Voyna i mir) released (USA) in 1968, and in four parts (matching those of the book), each a full movie. I went with three friends (M, R, and R), since movie marathons are fun in company. The full print, in Russian and French with English subtitles, is seven hours long. This is not to be mistaken for the relatively paltry dubbed version cut down to a fleeting six hours duration. This is (closer to) the proper original version. It is rare…apparently not shown in the USA for a very long time, and apparently not available on DVD. (Arguably, it shouldn’t be seen on DVD on a screen that is inappropriate to the task, and without good company. This is a movie theatre movie if there ever was one.) It’s a national treasure, and frankly I have no clue how they made it so well.

The cinematography, set/production design, art direction, and - of course - direction Continue reading ‘Seven Hours of Wonder’

I’m a big fan of Haruki Murakami’s writing. (Photo right by Elena Seibert). A huge fan, even though I’m only on a second book by him.

I read “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” last year and am on “Kafka on the Shore” right now. In each case, I read the opening paragraph and was immediately sucked right into the book.

The writing is, quite simply, wonderfully stirring, with stunning light, chilling darkness and everything in between (including, notably, a great sense of humour). The light and darkness are to be found in the interior worlds of the characters that are explored in the writing and how they connect to the rest of the world as they move through it. A person’s place in the world, relationship to the world, and how they affect the world Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Distance Writing’

Don’t forget - The LA Times Festival of Books is on this weekend. As I said earlier:

It’s a Los Angeles celebration of the written word, done in wonderful sunshine, with hundreds of marvellous events in three days for young and old - Yes, it is the LA Times Festival of Books, coming up the weekend starting April 25th. The main daytime proceedings take place on the 26th and 27th (Saturday and Sunday) and I recommend them to you if you’ve not been. Mark your calendar. (Once you’re over there on Sunday, stay for the Categorically Not! event in the evening (entitled “Loops”), which will involve among others, science writer Dava Sobel!!) (Above right: One of the 2008 theme images from the Festival’s website. More here.)

Enjoy!

-cvj

It’s a bit more than a month away. It’s always fun every year. It’s a Los Angeles celebration of the written word, done in wonderful sunshine, with hundreds of marvellous events in three days for young and old - Yes, it is the LA Times Festival of Books, coming up the weekend starting April 25th. The main daytime proceedings take place on the 26th and 27th (Saturday and Sunday) and I recommend them to you if you’ve not been. Mark your calendar. (Once you’re over there on Sunday, stay for the Categorically Not! event in the evening (entitled “Loops”), which will involve among others, science writer Dava Sobel!!) (Above right: One of the 2008 theme images from the Festival’s website. More here.)

The Friday evening will see the book prizes given out, kicking off the festival as usual. I remembered this just now because I found myself curious about the shortlist of books in the Science and Technology category. I wondered if there was something on Continue reading ‘Festival of Books’

My always-ignored advice to anyone studying for exams is that the best thing you can do the night before is get a good night’s sleep. Long study periods long before the previous night should have been used to build up your skills and knowledge. Late-night cramming at the expense of being fresh and having your wits about you in the morning is not really going to help much, if at all. (Heh… long study periods….call me old-fashioned.)

On this very matter, Yvette (one of our regular commenters here) has outdone herself once again with her literary skills! Here is part of her seasonal (as in finals season) poem:

The Night Before Finals

By Yvette Cendes

T’was the night before finals
And all through the dorm
Crazed cramming and panic
Was quite the norm.

The students were restless
And none touched their beds
While theorems and formulas
Danced in their heads.

With textbook in hand Continue reading ‘’Twas the Night Before Finals…’

This was originally posted on Cosmic Variance on May 3rd 2006. It was a report on the Categorically Not! event that took place on 23rd April 2006, entitled “Really?”. I’ve decided to reproduce it here as a happy memory of the wonder that Artist and Educator Bob Miller brought into the lives of many. (See next post.) It was a marvellous event overall (probably my favourite Cat Not! event), with several excellent presentations, and so I’ll reproduce the post in its entirety (with slight corrections) to give you a sense of the evening. -cvj

Well, apologies to all concerned for taking so long to post this, but here it is. The Categorically Not! two Sundays ago was -as usual- extremely enjoyable and informative. This one was all about Illusion, in some sense, the theme being “Really?”.

We started out with a few opening remarks by Bob Miller, who specialises in what some might call “light art”. He’s well known for creating a large number of wonderful works using light and shadow, several of them forming the cornerstone of exhibitions in the Exploratorium in San Francisco, for example. Have a look at the “lightwalk”, linked here.

Bob did not talk much, because he wanted everyone to just play, learning from getting involved. And play they did. He’d been up all night preparing (with KC Cole’s help) various fun things for people to do (see the table in the picture above, for example). All simple, and all with a little printed explanation about what to do, and the operation of the thing they were playing with or effect they were seeing.

Continue reading ‘Really Excellent’

Aha. I’ve been meaning to get around to some Doris Lessing for a long time. The Academy is trying to tell me something:

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007 is awarded to the English writer Doris Lessing “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.

Do you have any favourites of hers you recommend?

Here are some passages from her biography on the Nobel site, talking about some of the works that really got her a great deal of wider recognition, emphasizing her important intersection with other genres such as feminism and science fiction (to pick Continue reading ‘Even More for my Reading List’

The MacArthur Fellowships were announced today. These are particularly great, as it’s awarded across so many different fields, and I always learn about interesting work going on by reading the synopses at the website. Congratulations to all recipients!! Before I point to the list, I’d like to make a plea that will, of course, go unheeded.

Please please, people of the media, stop calling them “genius grants”. Just stop. By way of explanation, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the term just seems to strike the wrong tone about what these things should be about. It seems to me to push the recipients away as being “other” rather than encouraging us all to embrace the qualities that they are being encouraged to show by getting the fellowships. Ok, that’s the end of my plea.

Here’s a reminder of what the Fellowship is about (extract from their site):

Continue reading ‘MacArthur Mashup’

My hand hovered over the August issue of SEED last night in the magazine section of a bookshop. I was not really sure whether I was going to buy it or not, to be honest. Then I glanced through, and two things made me go for it. The first was seeing that there’s something on Chuck Hoberman. I love his designs and constructions, and am dismayed by the fact that they are not just everywhere in our cityscapes. The second was a photograph. There’s some extracts from the collection of photographs of Nobel Prize winners taken by Peter Badge (beware, the cover makes you think that all 295 are in the magazine… there’s actually eight). I flipped to that part of the magazine and landed immediately upon the one of David Gross. It’s just great, in that it captures certain aspects of David just perfectly. There’s the intensely penetrating gaze of a great physicist combined with playful movie-star quality of the same. You end up convinced that if Hollywood was casting an actor to play the physicist, they’d have no choice but to use him to play himself.

There looks to be some interesting things in there to read. I see that there’s a piece on Science Journalism by Chris Mooney (also available here), and there’s what reads a bit like a commercial by Paul Steinhardt for his cyclic universe models with Neil Turok, and a discussion about the definition of life by Carl Zimmer. I hope it’s all as good a read as it looks.

-cvj

Yesterday was (depending upon who’s counting) the 16th anniversary of that thing we call the World Wide Web becoming a public entity. The Web is not to be confused with the Internet, which is much older, of course¹. I’m talking about Tim Berners-Lee’s idea and implementation thereof. (I should not neglect to mention that this was done at CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Europe.) His original posting (on the newsgroup alt.hypertext) proposing the structure can be viewed here, and here’s an extract:

The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.

Reader view

The WWW world consists of documents, and links. Indexes are special documents which, rather than being read, may be searched. The result of such a search is another (”virtual”) document containing links to the documents found. A simple protocol (”HTTP”) is used to allow a browser program to request a keyword search by a remote information server.

The web contains documents in many formats. Those documents which are hypertext, (real or virtual) contain links to other documents, or places within documents. All documents, whether real, virtual or indexes, look similar to the reader and are contained within the same addressing scheme.

To follow a link, a reader clicks with a mouse (or types in a number if he or she has no mouse). To search and index, a reader gives keywords (or other search criteria). These are the only operations necessary to access the entire world of data.

What am I going to do to celebrate?

Since everyday I celebrate the WWW by using it a lot, to commemorate the event I think I’m going to pay a visit to the (real, physical) library, then read a good old-fashioned book for a while, and then hand-write a letter. I used to write so many letters, long ago, and from time to time I try to stop everything and pick up a pen and write one. I got in the mood the other day while in Aspen, and went and found some letter-writing paper and envelopes, curled up on a sofa, and wrote for a Continue reading ‘Reading, Writing, and ’Rithmetic’

I forgot to post this yesterday, when it was more relevant, but here I go anyway. I’m not looking to offend anyone here, I’m just curious, and have been puzzled about this for years. I’m reminded of it every year at about this time. What am I talking about? Wimbledon.

Not the event itself (which I have not followed in over a decade or so) but the word, or rather its pronunciation. I’ve noticed that a lot of people in America - from people I encounter day to day to newscasters on NPR - seem to get very confused about the “d” and pronounce it as a “t”. So you get people talking about the “Wimbleton” final a lot at this time of year, especially when someone from the US is in it (see photo at right [credit: AP Photo/Andrew Parsons, PA]). Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just my hearing? (Or worse, perhaps it is pronounced with a “t” and I’ve just not been paying attention all these years, and somehow I just hear it more clearly over here when some people say it.)

I’ve been wondering why this happens. Here’s some additional data, I’ve painstakingly Continue reading ‘Teesandees’

The Cat

  by Ryan Alexander

She came to me skittish, wild.
The way you’re meant to be,
surrounded by cruelty.
I did not blame her.
I would do the same.

A pregnant cat, a happy distraction;
some sort of normal thing.
Calico and innocent.

The kittens in her belly said feed me.

And I did.

She crept with careful eye,
Body held low to the dirt,
Snagged a bite,
And carried it just far enough away.

She liked the MREs,
the beef stew, the chicken breast, the barbeque pork,
but she did not like canned sardines.
I do not blame her.
I would do the same.

She came around again and again
finally deciding that I was no threat,
that this big man wasn’t so bad.

I was afraid to touch her as the docs warned us.
Continue reading ‘The Cat’

I don’t know about you but I melt each of the (very few these days) times I receive a real letter, by post, that contains… stuff we used to put in letters. Not the endless formal letters from business, nor the fake personal ones from businesses (like the amazing fancily embossed wedding invitation I got a while back that turned out to be from HBO… it was an ad for the new TV series on polygamy, “Big Love”… did anyone else get that? Must have cost them a huge amount…. I’ve been to a few fancy weddings, and that invitation was in fact comparable in quality to some of those…)

It is all so rare to get real personal mail the old fashioned way these days. So many things done by email. Hundreds of emails. Too many sometimes. Fast. Too fast sometimes. Or is it just me?

I love the look and feel of a nicely addressed (airmail especially) envelope, with firm, flowing writing by an actual human being… I really miss that. I loved getting this one so much, loved the look of the exterior so very much, that it took me a while to actually (carefully) tear it open to get at the contents.

In fact, at the beginning of this Summer in a fit of good intentions, I bought some airmail envelopes and a pad of writing paper, with lots of mutterings about starting to actually write real hand-written letters again. It has not happened yet. Sigh….

-cvj