Having completed my scriptorium and tabularium and got my books somewhat organized, I found myself with a bunch of duplicates and some other books I no longer needed. So I gave some away and boxed a bunch more up to exchange at a used bookstore.
At the store the buyer rejected most of the books (as is to be expected). Then she “softened” her rejection with the condescending concession (and I quote) “It’s good stuff. It’s just stuff whose time has passed.” So there you have it, laid out as starkly as could be: books as a perishable commodity!
I was tempted to look pointedly around the store and then reply, “Oh, I know. That’s why I’m replacing them with a Kindle.”
These are preliminary design pages for a new book about the art of Bali. The font is Garamond Premier Pro. The image is a cool piece by I Ketut Ngendon (1903–1948) called Goodbye and Good Luck to Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, 1938 (Batuan, Bali. Ink on paper. Mary Catherine Bateson).
The pages are the same, except that in one spread the main text block is ragged and in the other it is justified. I’m curious which version people prefer.
Back in the Jacobean period, the early seventeenth century, Shakespeare was seeming a bit old-fashioned to the lord and ladies in the expensive seats. They wanted a little pomp and spectacle — well, a lot of pomp and spectacle actually — and they got it in the form of the court masque. The masques were little dramas that combined song and dances and a lot of stage machinery that allow gods and goddesses to descend from the heights. The stage machinery was usually designed by the king’s architect, Inigo Jones. The words were usually written by the foremost playwright of the day, Ben Jonson. Inigo and Ben had a falling out: Jonson said the words were the most important thing in a masque, but Jones said they were secondary to the spectacle.
I’ve never been a big fan of the Grammys, but I watched some of it this year. Talk about big productions! (Tacky, but big.) Clearly the Jones school of thought has triumphed.
News that Sarah Palin’s political action committee has bought more than $63,000 worth of Going Rogue shows that the ex-governor knows how to manage her books. Going Rogue retails for $28.99. If the books were bought at full retail price and author got a 15 percent royalty off the retail price, that means that 15 percent of the $63,000, or $9,450, ended up in Palin’s own pocket.
The books were used by the PAC to mail copies to potential donors, so that more money could be raised, presumably to purchase more books, which could be then sent to more donors . . . and so on. All the while increasing the book’s sales rank in the marketplace.
This strikes me as quintessential Wikipedia. I love that someone thought that a reader interested in the Russian tsar Boris Gudunov (1551-1605) would want to know about a character in the animated cartoon Bullwinkle, and that a moderator would challenge this information with a request for a citation. Wonderful!
A play on the name Boris Gudunov was Boris Badenov, an antagonist of Rocky and Bullwinkle.[citation needed]
When the ancients wrote books they were trying to get at reality and transmit spirit. But all they could convey was a general idea, in order to help lead people to the truth. Much of their spirit, their energy, their words and laughter and actions, could not be captured.
When modern generations write books they ape the form of the ancients. To show how clever they are they add false analyses and additions. And so they get farther and father from the truth.
I don’t know what you call this — it appears to be some form of motorized paragliding. There were a couple of guys taking off from Anna Maria Island when we were there in Florida during the biting cold spell this January.
Whatever it is, like jet skiiing, off-road biking, and similar activities it’s probably fun to do but seems a little noisy for the context.
The video was taken with a Kodak EIS camera that my sister gave me. It shoots high-res videos, is slim enough to fit in your shirt pocket, and includes a built-in usb connection.
BTW, if a youtube video does not appear to be high-definition you can force the issue by appending &fmt=6 &fmt=18 or &fmt=22 after the url. But I think that soon most or all high-res videos will have an option at the bottom to simply select high definition. (Or, you can go to your youtube account page and tell it to always show high definition.)
Great moments in language-related journalism : Presenting prescriptivism as if it were a new thing, all the while following the established rules of the literary elite (which is to say, yo, prescriptivists, you aint fresh, aint no new thang, dawgs)
“The district is already beleaguered by homicides, sideshows, illegal dumping and other issues. Residents should not have to endure art parties as well.” — East Oakland city councilman Larry Reid, quoted by Carolyn Jones, San Francisco Chronicle
After 32 years, the Stanford Professional Publishing Course has permanently closed. The decision reflects the constraints of the economic recession, but it may also signal a general retreat from a commitment to print publishing in the context of today’s online world.
I took the course in 1978 or thereabouts — I think it was the second year it was offered. I was working on my dissertation in comparative literature at the time. At the conclusion of the course I noticed an ad for a marketing copywriter with Jossey-Bass Publishers. I applied for the job and got it. I didn’t work at Jossey-Bass for long, but I did pick up the basics of book publishing and copyediting. The following year I began working as an editor for North Point Press, and I have worked in publishing ever since Thanks, SPPC, for derailing my academic career!
One could argue that with print publishing undergoing its current painful redefinition the course is needed now more than it was then. It looks like Martin Levin will be exploring new possibilities.
I received the following comments from a reader named Glenn Beard, who presents objections to my suggestion that East Asian printing with movable metal type could have influenced the development of similar printing during the European Renaissance. If you read my article you will see that it does not depend on direct European contact with Korea because the vast Mongol empire connected West Asia and East Asia and provided efficient cultural transmission to from Korea to Turkey, which had abundant contact with Europe. The invention of paper traveled a similar route from China to the West. I discuss this process in some detail. As for the specifics of the manufacture, I think this is a better argument, but we should distinguish between technology as a concept and the specifics of its implementation — besides cast bronze type East Asians also experimented with baked clay type cast in iron forms and with tin type (the latter referenced in a document from 1313). The director of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz has called the possibility of Asian influence on German printing an open question.
Mr. Beard writes:
I read your article on Korean printing, and I would like to point out that evidence strongly points out for an independent development of metal moveable type by Gutenberg. Both the type of metal Gutenberg used and the method of manufacturing the type are vastly different from the Korean method. Had the Korean inspired Gutenberg, then his metal type should have first been made of bronze like Korean type, but that is not the case. There is no evidence that bronze moveable metal type was ever used in Europe.
Also the way the moveable type was made was totally different. Gutenberg used a hard steel punch to form molds in metal plates, while the Korean used wooden punches to form molds in sand. The methods are quite different. Plus, there is the issue of both the distance and short amount of time. Korea, unlike China, was not a country that Europeans had a lot of contact with or trade with at that time. There is no indication that Europeans were traveling around Korea at that time either, or that there were any Europeans who could speak Korean. Also, Gutenberg was a craftsman in the middle of Europe, and was very unlikely to have been in contact with anyone who had contacts with the Far East. There is no evidence that he had any dealings with scholars, merchants who traveled to China, or anyone else who would have been in a position to learn the art from Korea or China. All evidence strongly points to an independent invention by Gutenberg, and the simple fact that Koreans happen to invent a form of metal moveable type slightly earlier is no support for the idea of his having learned about metal type from the Koreans when compared to all the contrary facts.
The great Montreal-based singer Lhasa de Sela died January 1 of breast cancer at the age of thirty-seven. Lhasa was born to an American mother and Mexican father in a small town in the Catskill Mountains. As a child in the U.S. and Mexico she lived the life of a nomad in a converted school bus (she had nine siblings), and as an adult she continued to travel widely, living for a time in Marseilles. Life, she said, is “a road constantly changing and, being on it, you change too.” Her music is trilingual, freely mixing English, Spanish, and French. I love it.
These are the lyrics of “Con Toda Palabra,” the song performed in the video above.
Con toda palabra
Con toda sonrisa
Con toda mirada
Con toda carici
Me acerco al agua
Bebiendo tu beso
La luz de tu cara
La luz de tu cuerpo
Es ruego el quererte
Es canto de mudo
Mirada de ciego
Secreto desnudo
Me entrego a tus brazos
Con miedo y con calma
Y un ruego en la boca
Y un ruego en el alma
Con toda palabra
Con toda sonrisa
Con toda mirada
Con toda caricia
Me acerco al fuego
Que todo lo quema
La luz de tu cara
La luz de tu cuerpo
Es ruego el quererte
Es canto de mudo
Mirada de ciego
Secreto desnudo
Me entrego a tus brazos
Con miedo y con calma
Y un ruego en la boca
Y un ruego en el alma
Here’s a quick, rough English translation
With every word
With every smile
With every glance
With every caress
I come to the water
Drinking your kiss
The light of your face
The light of your body
Loving you is a prayer
The song of the mute
The gaze of the blind
Secret nakedness
I surrender to your arms
Fearfully, calmly,
A prayer in my mouth
A plea in my soul
With every word
With every smile
With every glance
With every caress
I come to the fire
That burns everything
The light of your face
The light of your body
Loving you is a prayer
The song of the mute
The gaze of the blind
Secret nakedness
I surrender to your arms
Fearfully, calmly,
A prayer in my mouth
A plea in my soul
Within the last few months, I sent you a query regarding my book, [title redacted], which you kindly declined to represent. In the interim, I have built my own website , and I’ve since had grown my audience to hundreds of enthusiastic readers. I’d like to invite you to check it out at [url redacted],
If you are interested in representing this book, then I would be interested in speaking with you.
Commenter Ajay on the Making Light Forum has deconstructed the genre:
I. Exordium. The narrator introduces himself, establishes his experience in computing (ethos) and exhorts the listeners to gather round.
II. Prolegomenon. Customarily, the hardware spec of the machine is outlined here.
III. Praeinstallatio. The narrator describes his initial attempt to install Windows.
IV. Contrainstallatio. The installation goes wrong.
V. Descendo. The narrator describes his increasingly desperate attempts to get things to go right.
VI. Depilatio. The narrator is reduced to despair and frustration.
VII. Inertio. The narrator sinks into a horrified stupor as his machine gurgles and clunks to itself for anything up to three days.
VIII. Peroratio. The narrator rises into fury as he describes how long and painful an experience the install was; which may be followed by
IX. Aptenodytes forsteri, the narrator switches to Linux.
These are preliminary design pages for a new book about the art of Bali. The font is Garamond Premier Pro. The image is a cool piece by I Ketut Ngendon (1903–1948) called Goodbye and Good Luck to Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, 1938 (Batuan, Bali. Ink on paper. Mary Catherine Bateson).
