John Crowley's Blog, page 33

Miscalculation

 Lucius Shephard posts this link, a site replete with further predictions, and which explains (to me, anyway, for the first time) the almost ludicrously baseless arithmetic of Camping.  Sophisticated mathematicians have spent years on these matters, and (though of course all wrong too) far outshine old Harold in ingenuity, not to say hard work.  Th e Naometria of "Simon Studion" (1604) runs to a couple thousand pages.

www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl18.htm 

But looking at this site it occurred to me -- do predicters of exact dates using info out of the Bible abd counting forward to this month or year take into account the correction of the Gregorian calendar in the 18th century by which some nujmber of days (15?) were lost or discarded?  Maybe, remembering that, Harold can add a couple weeks to his account.  

The Rupture

 I am touched to learn that some Christian group or groups are setting up an encampment around the Christian Family Radio site in California, ready to comfort disappointed rapture-expecters and assure them that God  still loves them. 

History Squid

I bet many of you have come upon this -- and probably have opinions. I have a few but am not so learned as Clute nor so presumptuous as the creator of this wonder, Ward Shelley, so I will (for the moment) hold my peace. I do know (and my new version of it, on the way slowly -- my fault -- from Small Beer Press, will prove it) that The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz belongs with the forebears.

scimaps.org/submissions/7-digital_libraries/maps/thumbs/024_LG.jpg 

Cleverest idea was to send certain tentacles down their own holes, leading to Harry Potter or Crime Fiction etc.

Not the basketball one

 

The NBA has announced its judges for 2011 in Publishers Weekly:

"The fiction panel consists of Jerome Charyn, John Crowley, Victor LaValle, Yiyun Li, and Deirdre McNamer (chair); nonfiction: Yunte Huang, Alice Kaplan (chair), Jill Lepore, Barbara Savage, and Rebecca Solnit; poetry: Elizabeth Alexander (chair), Thomas Sayers Ellis, Amy Gerstler, Kathleen Graber, and Robert Tejada; and young people's literature: Marc Aronson (chair), Ann Brashares, Matt de la Peña, Nikki Grimes, and Will Weaver."

Apparently we will receive, as the summer wears on, upwards of 200 books in the fiction category (hard to imagine that nonfiction won't be larger). This is a solemn duty which I am sure, when I am able to look back oin it many years later, will fill me with pleasure and pride to remember. The stack I have got so far reaches almost to my knee.

iPad Illusion

The title of this YouTube video is  Aegypt series by John Crowley on iPad.

www.youtube.com/watch 

Cursed Cursive

More fast-breaking news on the evolving cursive story:

www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28cursive.html

Everything you know is wrong, also illegible

 

From today's Times (for those of you behind the pay wall) the news you need to know:

"New research finds that people retain significantly more material — whether science, history or language — when they study it in a font that is not only unfamiliar but also hard to read."

My new book will be in 9 point Fraktur. Though actually I guess it doesn;t matter if you retain anything of a novel except a pleasant sense of gratification. The actual contents are hard to recall exactly. But I worked hard on those contents. So hard fonts from now on, smaller and tougher than my readership.

In Chinese

 

I've sold the rights to Little, Big  in mainland China.  (Actually my agent sold them; that "I" is a metonymy).  This is obviously the step to great fortune (as a fortune cookie indeed did once promise me).  Do you know how many people there are in China?   1.3 billion, give or take, mostly give.  By the time the book is published it will be more!  If even .1% of those people buy my book, I will be rich!  A royalty to me of just one dollar a book, whittled down by agents' takings to 50 cents, would be... well what would it be?   .01% would provide for my old age.  I think.  Actually I have no idea how much books cost in China, or how much that translates to in $US.  I get 7% of royalties up to some thousands of copies (my contract's not to hand), and then 8% on copies over that (I think 8000).   Samuel Johnson, helping Mrs. Thrale to sell the brewery owned by her suddenly deceased husband, told potential buyers they were offered not mere buildings and hardware but "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."   So does China. 

Stacton At Last

 

Longtime readers of this journal will remember a long discussion about the books of David Stacton, short-lived novelist and author of a number of historical fictions very unlike any others.  He was then out of print and largely forgotten, and he still is largely our if print, but now the estimable New York Review Books is reissuing his novel "The Judges of the Secret Court," about the assassination of Lincoln and the trial of the so-called conspirators in a military court,  (This is also the subject of a new film being produced by Robert Redford.)  I contributed an introduction.  It's announced but -- I think -- not quite yet available.

Disgusting Wonders of Nature

 My poor daughter Hazel, left alone in the house while I labor in Boston.   First she has to keep the fire going, hauling wood and building it up at night to last through the cold and dark.  Then -- I set mousetraps before leaving, and she called a day later in horror to say that the usually very effective (and mercifully sudden) guillotine-style mousetrap had gone off and caught an unfortunate mouse by the leg; she could hear it in the cupboard thrashing around.  I insisted she open the door, get out the mouse-trap combo, and free the mouse.  My suggestion was to flush the mouse down the toilet, but rather than do that she carried it -- with much crying out in sympathy and disgust -- outside, where she did manage to open the jaw of the trap - whereupon the caught leg came off altogether, and the now three-legged mouse escaped under the house. Her dreams may be haunted by three-legged mice seeking revenge or offering gratitude.

Then when cleaning the bathroom she noticed tiny ants around the tip of the electric toothbrush.  Looked closer:  More ants.  (She hates ants, which don't bother me.)  She pulled off the tip/brush part, and ants poured out.  Then when she bulled the handle part off the charging base THOUSANDS of ants poured out.  It was DISGUSTING.,  What were they DOING in there, stuffed in, COPULATING and making more ants and EATING OLD TOOTHPASTE or what?  I said I thought it was more likely that they got in and couldn't get out -- I explained that ants don't in fact copulate, not workers, and probably one followed another's path, and another that one, and another, and so on, and got in and couldn't get out.  But I really have no idea.  She threw out the whole apparatus, which wasn't cheap.  I will have to replace,.  It is essential for Tooth Health.