Cosmic Antipodes: Reviews, Local Fame, Cosmogony, Crime, Etc.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Reviews, Local Fame, Cosmogony, Crime, Etc.

Charles Payseur of Quick Sips Reviews fame has reviewed Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Issue 35, and appears to have enjoyed "White Rainbow and Brown Devil." There's no better feeling than knowing that you wrote something that gave someone pleasure, so, thanks, Charles!

On the other hand, there's no worse feeling than knowing that you wrote something that brought someone nothing but annoyance and impatience, so I won't link the other review I've gotten so far.

I haven't been posting here much lately, have I? That's partly because I got a monthly column (about STEM matters) in the local paper, and the samples for my pitch and the first installment have sucked up most of my light nonfiction-writing energy. But now I'm so famous that people tell me all over town that they enjoy my writing, so it's definitely worth it. This month I wrote about honeybees and melon-stacking. The next installment will be about the tesseract, because a movie based on a certain book is coming out in March and will undoubtedly be showing in the local theater. I have small hopes for the movie, alas.

I have revised the Eladogran Cosmogony a bit, bringing my translation more in line with the original texts. You can now find it under the Library of Enoch tab at the top of the page.

I've been reading quite a bit of crime fiction from the forties and fifties lately, mostly thanks to a Library of America collection I checked out at the library. I'm also still working through the correspondence of Flannery O'Connor and The History of the Conquest of Mexico and a few books about four-dimensional geometry. I recently read and greatly enjoyed several volumes of Hellboy ~~comics~~ graphic novels. I got into these through the excellent Guillermo del Toro movies. A big red devil with sawed-off horns battling Nazis, Rasputin, and evil gods out of H. P. Lovecraft: what's not to love? The art is wonderfully expressive and minimalistic; I find that I'm not a big fan of the hyper-realistic, cinematic presentation of superhero comics these days.

All matters that might get turned into full-fledged posts at some point, if I feel like it...

ADDED: And here's an appreciative review of "White Rainbow and Brown Devil" by Fletcher Vredenburgh. Thanks, Fletcher!

2 comments:

The WaspMarch 3, 2018 at 8:11 AM
Congratulations on the column. Boy, do I love Hellboy and I think the BPRD books are even better. I really liked the first HB movie but am not a fan of the second one. I find it takes all of del Toro's liberties with the material to such an extreme I felt I wasn't watching Mignola's character anymore.
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Raphael OrdoñezMarch 3, 2018 at 8:45 PM
Yes, I see what you mean about the del Toro movies. I haven't gotten to the BPRD but will do so eventually. So far Hellboy has been awesome. I'm about to start on Vol. 4.
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Books I've Read This Year (2018)

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
The High Window by Raymond Chandler
The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt *
The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Playback by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
Dracula by Bram Stoker *
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement by Susan Ferriss and Ricardo Sandoval
Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
The Big Gold Dream by Chester Himes
The Crazy Kill by Chester Himes
Loaves and Fishes by Dorothy Day
Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith
The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson *
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens *
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
Colegio Cesar Chavez, 1973-1983: A Chicano Struggle for Educational Self-Determination by Carlos S. Maldonado
Smiley's People by John le Carré
The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard
The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carré
"Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau
Vatnsdæla saga *
The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
Call for the Dead by John le Carré
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Street of No Return by David Goodis
The Pastel City by M. John Harrison
The Moon in the Gutter by David Goodis
The Burglar by David Goodis
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls *
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson
Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
Down There by David Goodis
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende *
Pick-Up by Charles Willeford
Nightfall by David Goodis
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Dark Passage by David Goodis
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
The Great God Pan and Other Weird Tales by Arthur Machen

Write in a way that draws the reader’s attention to the sense and substance of writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author. If the writing is solid and good, the mood and temper of the writer will eventually be revealed and not at the expense of the work. Therefore, the first piece of advice is this: to achieve style, begin by affecting none—that is, place yourself in the background. A careful and honest writer does not need to worry about style. As you become proficient in the use of language, your style will emerge, because you yourself will emerge, and when this happens you will find it increasingly easy to break through the barriers that separate you from other minds, other hearts—which is, of course, the purpose of writing, as well as its principal reward. (E. B. White)

The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things—like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right, they can hit all the notes. (Raymond Carver)

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Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Reviews, Local Fame, Cosmogony, Crime, Etc.

2 comments: