blog.rightreading.com

Feliz cien duodécimo, estimado señor autor!

V. S. Naipaul continues to provoke and offend. In a talk at the Royal Geographic Society he said:

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me….[A] woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too…My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don’t mean this in any unkind way.

Nothing needs to be said. The statement speaks for itself.

The Guardian did a follow-up, posting short passages from various writings. Now you can test your mettle against Mr. Naipaul. I scored 7 out of 10 correct. The Guardian‘s quiz informs me “Not bad, but you’re no Sir Vidia.” That’s probably a good thing.

Take the test.

*

Image via The Telegraph

I have a month to polish up the book I’m currently working on, and I’m experimenting with a randomized editing process.

Most writers spend a lot of time on the beginnings of their books, and rightly so since they set the tone and either welcome or drive away potential readers. Endings get some attention as well, but authors and readers alike bog down in the problematic middle, especially around three-fifths of the way through.

In revising, you can start from the beginning and just go as far as you can, or all the way to the end, repeatedly, but this will likely result in a mid-book slump. You can also just identify the most important parts, or the parts that need the most work, and concentrate on them, sanding down the rough patches one after another.

If you’re working in short bursts — in breaks in your day job, for example – you might want to test the water by just dipping in here and there. But, if you’re like me, your dipping is not likely to be very random, so you’re not really doing a good test.

There’s a site called random.org, where you can generate a random sequence of numbers within a certain interval. According to the site, “The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs.”

A random sequence, as opposed to a random set where numbers can be repeated, is like pulling numbers from a hat, where once a number is used it can’t be used again. So I’ve generated a random sequence of numbers between 1 and 384, and I’m reviewing pages in the that order. I’ll do this a few times with a few different random sequences.

Is this a good idea? I’m not sure, but I think it might be a helpful corrective, or at least complement, to the kind of directed attention that you’re going to give your manuscript anyway.

***

image from kevindooley’s photostream

More fun with computer morphing. What did Shakespeare look like? It’s possible one of these computer morphs might provide a clue. The image on the left morphs the Sanders and Chandos portraits. The image on the right morphs in three equal parts the Sanders, Cobb, and Chandos portraits.

For a full discussion of what’s going on here, see this previous summary of Shakespeare portraits, with a morph of the Chandos and Cobb images. I have made these new morphs in response to Jim Hale-Sanders’s arguments in favor of the Sanders portrait.

For reference, here are all three morphs, with the original Chandos/Cobb on the right:

What did Shakespeare look like? I will come to how I created the above image in a moment. First we need to review the existing portraits that are claimed to be of Shakespeare.

All of the three or four likeliest images of him are problematic in one way or another. The three likeliest portraits are the Cobbe portrait, which portrays the forty-something Shakespeare as a gallant young courtier; the Chandos portrait, which presents him as a comfortably well-off bohemian; and the Droeshout portrait — the familiar one from the first folio — which is so inempt and cartoonish that it gives little sense of any real person. (A Scientific American article once put forth the bizarre theory that it actually depicts Queen Elizabeth). Brice Stratford has helpfully assembled the three portraits, along with some supporting text, on this page. As you can see from the details below, all of the portraits share points of similarity, notably the high forehead, deep-set eyes, and long nose.

The problem with the Droeshout portrait (right) is that its young and inexperienced artist never met Shakespeare. He may have worked from the Chandos portrait, although this is speculation. Still, Ben Jonson and others who knew Shakespeare seem to have approved the image.

The problem with the Chandos portrait (middle) is that its ultimate provenance is unknown, and the sitter is not identified as Shakespeare. Still, the National Portrait Gallery in London, which has researched the issue, believes that this is probably Shakespeare, though there is no proof of that. I like this candidate because it is from the right period — the first decade of the seventeenth century; the black robes suggest affluence, and we know Shakespeare was doing pretty well by this time; and the rakish earring suggests a bohemian or artistic lifestyle. Moreover, this image simply has more presence than the others.

The Cobbe portrait (left) only came to light recently. It had been in the possession of the Cobbe family for 300 years. They had thought it a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh but it is now believed that it may be a portrait of Shakespeare. It too dates from the right period, and there is at least a tenuous provenance for it, as the Cobbe descent can be traced back to a patron of Shakespeare. Stanley Wells, chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and co-editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, vouches for the authenticity of this one. The problem that I have with it is that it does not appear to depict a man in at least his mid-forties as Shakespeare would have been at the time the painting was made. In addition, the Cobbe family had good reason to think it a portrait of Raleigh, since it depicts its subject as a nobleman rather than a working playwright. (Although by the time this painting was made the status of playwrights had risen, and Shakespeare had even obtained a court of arms.) Nor does the hairline conform to the other images. But it’s conceivable that the artist simply went overboard in the direction of flattering the sitter.

A fourth image is a bust in Stratford-upon-Avon. This one was made by Gheerart Janssen, an artist who lived near the Globe theater during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and it was presumably approved by people who knew the playwright well. The problem with it is that the painted features had been removed and then reapplied in the eighteenth century, long after anyone who remembered him was alive. In addition, it is likely that the conservative Stratford community wished to make their native son look more like a respectable burgher than something as doubtful as a frequenter of London’s rowdy theater scene. The bust looks like this:

I reject the Droeshout image because it is more of a cartoon than a portrait, and the Statford bust because the loss of the original paint compromises the image too grossly. Despite serious doubts, I am inclined at least for now to entertain the idea that the portraits claimed as images of Shakespeare on the authority of the National Portrait Gallery and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust convey something of his appearance (these, if you have been paying attention, are the Chandos and Cobbe portraits).

For my Shakespeare, therefore, I computer morphed those two portraits into a new image of Shakespeare — splitting the difference if you will; the midpoint morph makes him a little less rough than the Chandos Shakespeare and a little less prettified than the Cobbe Shakespeare. If both of those portraits are indeed Shakespeare, then this intermediary version should probably be a fairly reasonable likeness. On the other hand, if the Cobbe portrait actually represents someone else — Sir Thomas Overbury has been suggested — well then we have something like an Overbury-Shakespeare morph. In any case, I think the result is an interesting image. Do you agree?

*

UPDATE: In response to Jim Hale-Sanders’s arguments in favor of the Sanders portrait (in the comments below), I have made new Shakespeare morphs incorporating the Sanders portrait.

*

Today I initiate what I am hoping will become a more or less weekly feature here at blog.rightreading.com — a report on book news from newspapers and journals around the world. (I say “more or less weekly” because I am currently working on a big project that is taking most of my time, and this has reduced my blogging, which had been steadily daily up for years until a few months ago; more on that project in time.)

I think I will eventually move this feature to Thursdays. My plan is to spotlight one interesting story selected from a variety of sources of world book news, include a screen shot linking to the original, and briefly recap or comment on the story. Please let me know if this would be of interest, and I would love to hear suggestions regarding international sources I should include when looking for stories (in my languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian).

Today’s story may be a little different from most because it’s more of an entertaining feature than news about book publishing or authors and books. It’s a fun story from the Guardian (London), which surveys a number of writers — Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy — and asks them to list 10 tips for writers.

Read more »

Now that he’s passed away everybody who has ever read a book is writing about him. Enough! I call time out!

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.

–Wang Yangming, 1471-1529

Mark Bromberg of Bellemeade Books writes on the subject of Jonathan Williams, author and publisher of the Jargon Society (we published his The Magpie’s Bagpipe at North Point Press) and generously includes the above scan of a Jargon Society publication, which I take the liberty of sharing.

… I have been a long-time reader and admirer of the late Jonathan Williams and his Jargon Society Press, the website here now run by his friend and collaborator, Thomas Meyer (A selection of 1960s correspondence between Davenport and Williams about publishing, art, and life can be found here).

I thought you might enjoy this cover image of “Elite/Elate Poems” (Jargon, 1975) — with authentic-era coffee stains! — and a BellemeadeBooks post about Mr. Williams from the archives. You will be able to access the entire blog with more timely posts once you are there.

Thanks, Mark!

I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you….

This is Julio Cortazar, enormisimo supercronopio, reading chapter 7 of his novel Rayuela.

I am reading and enjoying Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. It is my misfortune, I realize, to be so sensitized to colonialist attitudes as to imagine I detect in the book a faint taint of colonialist condescension.

But I am not here today to rant about colonialism but rather to share the following amusing passage from the book. The detective, Mma Ramotswe, muses about her feelings about hospitals and doctors. After reflecting that she is not ashamed of her weight or her corns she continues:

Now constipation was quite a different matter. It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them to form a political party — with a chance of government perhaps — but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail.

Here in California the Constipation Party — with its two warring wings — is already in power. Will it also dominate our national politics, currently focused on the struggle to pass health insurance legislation?

.

Image from the blog of the LA Times

.

• Maurice Bendrix, The Ambitious Host
• D. B. Caulfield, The Secret Goldfish
• Vivian Darkbloom, My Cue
• Nicholas de Selby, Country AlbumGwendolen Erme, Deep Down, Overmastered
• Andrew Hibbard, The Chasm of the Mind
• Robin Penrose, Domestic Angels and Unfortunate Females: Woman as Sign and Commodity in Victorian Fiction
• Boris Alekseyevich Trigorin, Days and Nights
• Harriet Vane, Murder By Degrees

Answer after the break . . .

Read more »

Here’s Peter Laufer, three or four of whose books I published at Mercury House, on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

.

Cortazar’s unpublished works have been collected and will be released at the Feria Internacional del Libro en Buenos Aires within a few days.

This should be a big book. If no one in the U.S. has snatched it up yet, some enterprising publisher should get in touch with Carmen Balcells right away.

.

In his 1913 classic (if that’s the right word) publication entitled Poets Ranked by Beard Weight, Upton Uxbridge Underwood (1881–1937) ranked poets according to the gravity of their beards, assigning each one a “pogonometric index” score. (So I have learned from A Journey Round My Skull, which informs me that Underwood was “a deipnosophist, clubman, and literary miscellanist with a special interest in tonsorial subjects.”) A score of 10, for example, was “very very weak,” whereas a score of 58 was “very very heavy.” Leaving aside for the moment the particulars of his methodology, let’s see how the poets stack up.

Read more »

James D. Houston died last week after a struggle with cancer. I published his In the Ring of Fire: A Pacific Basin Journey at Mercury House in 1997. He was a pleasure to work with.

Read more »

Just a week ago a portrait of Shakespeare emerged that was supposedly painted by a contemporary. Now a fellow named John Casson (“an independent researcher and psychotherapist”) who “spent three years studying writings thought to be connected to Shakespeare” (wow! three years!), claims to have discovered six “new” works by Shakespeare.

Considering that there has been a sizeable full-time Shakespeare industry churning away in academia for at least a hundred years, I think this claim must be taken with many grains of salt until verified. It would be interesting to see the works though. English writing has been all downhill since Shakespeare.

.

Is this really a contemporary’s portrait of Shakespeare?

.

Which author wrote these lines about a lover’s vagina?

[It] did not feel like Phyllis’s. Smoother, somehow simpler, its wetness less thick, less of a sauce, more of a glaze . . .

Read more »

.

But we can make an exception for Joe Lieberman.

.

via thedailyaphorism.com/

.

BTW, There are a few quotations here at rightreading.com as well, including this one from Wilde.

.