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J.A. Pak's Blog, page 12
November 7, 2011
Font For Dyslexics
Wouldn't it be great if the right font made all our problems disappear? That hasn't happened yet, but the Dutch graphic designer Christian Boer has designed a font that will help dyslexics with their reading. It's not the prettiest font with all the strange slantings of "b"s and "d"s but it's very practical. His font was featured in a Scientific American article which has some fascinating facts about the written word and dyslexia. Now if they can just come up with a font to help my spelling…
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October 24, 2011
Foreign Flavours
Foreign Flavours
If you've been following me on Twitter, you might know that I lived in England for several years. So when I found out that Writers Abroad was doing an anthology on food written by expats, I thought I'd contribute an essay on the glories of British food (don't laugh). The anthology is Foreign Flavours and it's now available at Lulu. Not just essays, but also recipes and fiction with a forward by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. All proceeds go to The Book Bus, a charity which brings literacy and the joy of reading to children in the developing world. Now that's a worthy cause!
To preview the book, please click here.
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October 16, 2011
Favorite British Words And Phrases
On Twitter, @ChrisGNguyen and I were talking about doing a post on favorite British words and phrases. I lived in England for many years and still use my faves because there really aren't American equivalents. Here's my list.
Chuffed: to feel proud of oneself as in "I'm really chuffed about my new book Seal Skin."
Used in anger: meaning to use something for the first time like "I finally used my new laptop in anger." (Based on the British military expression "shots fired in anger" (as opposed for practice or military exercise).
Lollipop lady: a school crossing guard; in Britain, the crossing signs they hold up are round like a lollipop.
Punnet: a small basket used to hold fruit, usually used at markets—"I'll take a punnet of strawberries".
Take the mickey: this is one of those phrases that's pretty impossible to translate correctly; it sort of means making fun of someone but there's an extra harsh, contemptuous edge to it—"You're not taking the mickey out of me?"
Agony aunt: an advice columnist.
Auntie: slang for the BBC; have to have lived in England to understand why this is absolutely perfect.
I'm going to have a lie down: to take a nap.
Whinger: a whiner.
Boffin: a scientist.
Prat: a fool.
Butty: sandwich.
Having a flutter: making a bet.
Punter: a customer, but used derogatorily like "sucker".
What are your favorites?
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October 15, 2011
The Art Of Translating
Conversational Reading has a fantastic interview with Ottilie Mulzet on translating László Krasznahorkai's Animalinside. Translating is always tricky, more art than science. I've read translations that were accurate but absolutely dead. Translation isn't just about words and grammar but also about culture and voice. Reading about how one translator goes about translating language and voice is really fascinating. Now I really want to read Animalinside!
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October 12, 2011
Seal Skin, The Book
I am happy to announce the delivery of my first print book.
Name: Seal Skin.
Midwife: Amazon.
http://ow.ly/6Vpix
Seal Skin
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September 28, 2011
The Monkey King over Tiananmen Squre
This video is of Jennifer Wen Ma's "The New Adventures of Havoc in Heaven over Tiananmen Square". She and her team projected a giant image of the Monkey King over Tiananmen Square, an image that could only be seen when smoke passed over it. It's beautiful and courageous, the Monkey King representing freedom and justice, Tiananmen Square representing suppressed freedoms. Art in every sense of the word.
September 25, 2011
Xu Bing's Calligraphy
Square Calligraphy
I love it when there's this thing that's so old, so ancient, we hardly think about it at all even though we use it daily—I love it when someone comes along and reshapes all that's ancient about this thing so we have to think about it—see it—like it was entirely new.
That's what Xu Bing did with Chinese calligraphy. He took the ancient form of Chinese writing and created new characters that had nothing to do with the language. And then he took that idea and blended Chinese character writing with English words. Like in the photo above where he's writing Little Bo Peep as if the letters were native Chinese calligraphy strokes. His projects are at his website Xu Bing.
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September 19, 2011
September 5, 2011
How the 'Harbrace Handbook of English' Changed the Way Americans Learn About Writing » Metro Pulse
I'd never even heard of the Harbrace Handbook of English but I guess it's a pretty big deal. Now in its 70th year, Harbrace is the bestselling college textbook of all time. The Metro Pulse article is a pretty comprehensive and entertaining shakedown on John C. Hodges, the professor responsible for the little manual.
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August 30, 2011
Fantasm
Sometimes I have a whole novel planned out—all the intricacies of plot and character development swirling away in my brain—I just have to put it down on paper. But as I write, the words boil away and a novel of 70,000 – 90,000 words concentrate into a mere 5,000 words.
This is what happened to my story "Fantasm". The novel that was Fantasm slowly distilled into a short story—at least a short story in terms of word count. I still think it's a novel, a novel reduced into a tiny perfume bottle.
It's not an easy story to appreciate, the distillation having swirled conventions. That's why I felt very lucky that Fantasm was accepted by Atticus Review and was featured there in last week's issue.
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