John Crowley's Blog, page 40

Britishisms, maybe

 

The TLS, which I read every week always tosses up a few remarks or qualifiers I don't get.  Sometimes I look them up.  Here are a couple from lately:

a Skittles-like grand horizontale (I get the French part).

A bun penny ring  (I could understand this if it was "a penny bun ring," i.e. a ring as big as a penny bun, whatever size that might be, but this is how it appeared.) 

Maybe a lack of grammatical adroitness

 

Good if somewhat confused me

  I have of course always loved and defended animals.

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100916/NEWS/100919864/-1/NEWSMAP

Mars Attacks

 

So while thinking about a really wonderful new Paul Park novella to be published soon by Nick Gevers's PS Publishing (I contribute a forward of sorts and Liz Hand an afterword, what a deal) I got an idea for a story about an alien invasion.  (Buy and read the novella to see why.)  I can't imagine this idea hasn't been used and probably more than once, so I put it out here to see if I'm right.  Also to present the idea (which I will never write), if it is original, to anyone who'd like to exe...

P,P, F

 

This from the NY Times' review of William Gibson's new novel (a review not as good as, and far talkier than, Paul Difilippo's in Barnes& Noble, found here bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/The-Speculator/Zero-History/ba-p/3290 :

"To read Gibson is to read the present as if it were the future, because it seems the present is becoming the future faster than it is becoming the past."

That's not quite right, is it?  I don't mean as a description of the book, which I haven't read,but as a description ...

This is my own, my native land

 
"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience.  Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return."   -- Kafka

Nevertheless, we would know it if we did.  Auden's categories are a bit narrow, some superfluous and some trivial, but here are my Personal Edenic Preferences:

Landscape:   A mountainous height far above a lowland leading to a warm ocean.  So high up that the heights are temperate in climate and the lowland semi-tropical.  My Eden is LA...

Edenic Personal Preference Disclosure Form

Hoo. I'm temporarily befuddled and dazed by all the hard thinking I and others have put into large questions related to building the New Nice Totalitarian World State. Eden figured largely in the question, as alternative, source, hope, antonym, etc. The best thinker about Eden in a practical way, I think, is W.H. Auden in his essay "Dingley Dell and the Fleet" included in The Dyer's Hand (Vintage edition, 1968 [speaking of Eden:], the one I have.)

In addition to the thoughts in that essay,...

Impossible

I just noticed -- could have before, but didn't -- that the name of the evangelical group who are holding Burn a Koran Day is "Dove World Outreach Center." Dove, I guess, as in peace; world,as in world.

The Big Maybe

 

Some thoughts about the totalitopia I'm planning for our descendants (supposing we don't get to live forever whether in the meat package or in the cloud):

"Freedom is all about authority."  -- Rudy Giuliani

"Authority is all about freedom."  -- Me

W.H. Auden makes a beautiful distinction I have often drawn on between Eden and the New Jerusalem. The Utopian, Auden points out, looks always forward. His griefs are irritation and rage at incompletion. The dreamer of Eden looks backward to a world ...

Our Favorite Mom

 

This from Slate online:

"A new Vanity Fair poll finds that more Americans believe in UFOs than believe Sarah Palin would make an effective commander-in-chief."

I don't know how far I would trust a Vanity Fair poll (as far as I could throw Gwyneth Paltrow?) but I'd think that there would be a pretty good overlap between the positive responders here.