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Gwladys and the Ghraem’lan

7 January 2013 by 25 Comments

This essai follows ‘Quakers in Spain’, and like it, is a revised and expanded version of a piece I wrote and put up on LiveJournal in May, 2006.

 

If prose style in fantasy is fraught with peril, naming is a plain old-fashioned minefield. Fantasy writers have a tendency to throw together names from any and all sources that strike their fancy, without thinking how such disparate words came to be in the same language together, or even in the same world. Writers who are very good at other aspects of their craft can still inexplicably fall down in this one area. I am sorry to make a bad example of my friend Jonathan Moeller, but when I first began to read his Demonsouled series, and the first two characters I met were called Mazael and Gerald, I was thrown out of the story long enough to cry aloud to the unheeding night: ‘Mazael is good; Mazael is right and proper. There ought to be a fantasy hero named Mazael, and now, thank God, there is one. But why on earth is he hanging out with someone whose name is a foreign monstrosity like Gerald?’ In Le Guin’s terms, Mazael is from Elfland and Gerald is from Poughkeepsie, and there needs to be some explanation of how they ever came to meet.

There are two bad ways of coming up with fantasy names; or rather, of the many bad ways that one could devise, two are much more popular than the rest. [Read more…]

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Quakers in Spain

7 January 2013 by 14 Comments

I wrote part of this essai in response to an Internet meme, ‘Ten things I hate in a book’, which I got from Glenda Larke by way of Sherwood Smith and others. It first appeared on LiveJournal in May, 2006. I have had requests for this material since; but the first few parts of the series are, in my maturer judgement, sadly inadequate, for I only gradually relaxed and began to speak my mind at full length as I went on. Here it is, updated, extended, and (I hope) brought into better harmony with the whole.

 

Prose style is an endless source trouble for writers in the imaginative genres, and fantasy above all. There is always the temptation to write in an entirely modern, journalistic style. Such a style is like an Interstate highway in America: smooth, fast, easy to travel, with no dangerous or distracting bumps. The drawback is that you can drive from coast to coast without ever really seeing anything but the road itself. Such styles and such roads are good for getting to your destination in a hurry. But experienced tourists, and experienced readers, find it more fun to take the scenic route.

If you are a writer of some ambition, then, you will try to build a scenic route with your prose. [Read more…]

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‘Fairy Tales’, by G. K. Chesterton

6 January 2013 by 2 Comments

Collected in All Things Considered (1908).

 

Some solemn and superficial people (for nearly all very superficial people are solemn) have declared that the fairy tales are immoral; they base this upon some accidental circumstances or regrettable incidents in the war between giants and boys, some cases in which the latter indulged in unsympathetic deceptions or even in practical jokes. The objection, however, is not only false, but very much the reverse of the facts. The fairy tales are at root not only moral in the sense of being innocent, but moral in the sense of being didactic, moral in the sense of being moralising. [Read more…]

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Available from Bondwine Books

6 January 2013 by 1 Comment
Lord Talon’s Revenge The End of Earth and Sky Writing Down the Dragon Death Carries a Camcorder cover art
August 2012 December 2012 February 2013 August 2014
Filed Under: Books

‘La libertà di pensiero’ (‘Freedom of Thought’), by Trilussa

5 January 2013 by Leave a Comment

Un gatto bianco, ch’era presidente
der circolo der libbero pensiero,
senti che er gatto nero,
libbero pensatore come lui,
je faceva la critica
riguardo a la politica
ch’era contraria a li principi sui.
–Giacchè nun badi a li fattacci tui,
–je disse er gatto bianco inviperito–
rassegnerai le proprie dimissioni
e uscirai dalle file der partito:
chè qui la poi pensa’ libberamente
come te pare a te, ma a condizzione
che t’associ a l’idee der presidente
e a le proposte della commissione!
–E’ vero, ho torto, ho aggito malamente. . . .–
rispose er gatto nero.
E pe’ resta’ ner libbero pensiero
da quella vorta nun penso’ piu’ gnente.

—Trilussa

A white cat, who had been made the chair-cat
Of an Association for the Freedom of Thought,
Got news that a black cat,
A member of the same Association,
Would criticize his views
For he did not agree
With the white cat’s political principles.

–Since you won’t mind your own bloody business
– said the white cat to the black one in a rage –
You will resign – out of your own free will –
And leave our Party ranks for good:
’cause here you can think freely and as you please
So long as you accept the chair-cat’s views
And the Political Commitee’s proposals!

–It’s true, I’m wrong, what I’ve done wasn’t right . . .–
the black cat answered;
And to be allowed to remain Freethinker
From then on he never thought anything again.

[Translation supplied by Fabio Paolo Barbieri]

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‘Beowulf Meets Godsylla’, by Tom Weller

5 January 2013 by 4 Comments

I’ve been reading Beowulf in the original, and as you can imagine, having a wee bit of trouble with the language. Still, the stirring descriptions of combat and the thunderous roll of the alliterative metre fully justify the poem’s reputation as the fountainhead of English literature:

Meanehwæl, baccat meaddehæle,     monstær lurccen;
Fulle few too many drincce,     hie luccen for fyht.
Ðen Hreorfneorhtðhwr,     son of Hrwærowþheororthwl,
Æsccen æwful jeork     to steop outsyd.
Þhud! Bashe! Crasch! Beoom!     Ðe bigge gye
Eallum his bon brak,     byt his nose offe;
Wicced Godsylla     wæld on his asse.
Monstær moppe fleor wyþ     eallum men in hælle.
Beowulf in bacceroome     fonecall bamaccen wæs;
Hearen sond of ruccus     sæd, “Hwæt ðe helle?”
Graben sheold strang     ond swich-blæd scharp
Stond feorth to fyht     ðe grimlic foe.
“Me,” Godsylla sæd,     “mac ðe minsemete.”
Heoro cwyc geten heold     wiþ fæmed half-nelson
Ond flyng him lic frisbe     bac to fen
Beowulf belly up     to meaddehæle bar,
Sæd, “Ne foe beaten     mie færsom cung-fu.”
Eorderen cocca-cohla     yce-coeld, ðe reol þyng.

—Tom Weller, Cvltvre Made Stvpid

But somehow methinks Tom Weller, þætte rihte ealde Englisce scop, could have spun out England’s national epic to more than eighteen lines. Still, not bad for a culture that only emerged from the barbarous night of the Dark Ages in 1987, when Þacere ruled in Heorot.

Both Cvltvre Made Stvpid and its companion volume, Science Made Stupid, are unfortunately out of print, but they are now available as free downloads — with the author’s permission! Find them both here:

http://www.chrispennello.com/tweller/

 

Filed Under: Foolishness, Quotha Tagged With: , , ,

On semicolons

4 January 2013 by 2 Comments

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.

—Kurt Vonnegut

Let’s take this bit by bit:

Here is a lesson in creative writing.

Asserted but not proved.

First rule: Do not use semicolons.

Nobody but Vonnegut ever heard of this ‘rule’, and most notable English authors of the last few centuries have used semicolons freely. I conclude therefore that it is not a rule, but merely an expression of Vonnegut’s wishful thinking. It is true that George Orwell wrote Coming Up For Air without using semicolons, as an experiment; but he went straight back to using semicolons in all his subsequent books. I should say that counted as evidence that it is not a rule.

They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.

On the contrary, they represent the same thing as the Greek hypostigme, which was invented over 2,000 years ago. In marking up texts for public reading, as an aide-memoire to the readers, they used to put dots in between words to indicate places where one should pause. There were three of these marks originally:

The stigme teleia or ‘final dot’ served the same function as our full stop, but it was even with the tops of the letters instead of the baseline. In reading aloud, it indicated a relatively long pause.

The stigme mese or ‘middle dot’ was halfway up the line, about where we would put a hyphen, and represented a place where you could pause long enough to take a breath; it corresponded roughly to our comma.

The hypostigme or ‘under-dot’ represented a middle-sized pause, longer than a stigme mese but shorter than a stigme teleia, to show that the reader should pause while the audience took in the meaning of the preceding clause, but that the sentence was not yet over.

Note that these marks were invented long before the question mark, colon, or exclamation mark, which presumably Vonnegut thinks are important enough to keep. If the Greeks found a need for all three, and modern punctuation includes all three, I think it’s safe to say that there really is a function for all three.

All they do is show you’ve been to college.

Pish-tosh. I began using semicolons when I was about ten, and never encountered anybody in college who said anything about them one way or the other.

Filed Under: The Superversive Tagged With: , ,

‘The Fantastic Imagination’, by George MacDonald

4 January 2013 by 1 Comment

From A Dish of Orts: Chiefly papers on the imagination, and on Shakespere (Enlarged edition), 1895.

 

That we have in English no word corresponding to the German Mährchen, drives us to use the word Fairytale, regardless of the fact that the tale may have nothing to do with any sort of fairy. The old use of the word Fairy, by Spenser at least, might, however, well be adduced, were justification or excuse necessary where need must.

Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.

Many a man, however, who would not attempt to define a man, might venture to say something as to what a man ought to be: even so much I will not in this place venture with regard to the fairytale, for my long past work in that kind might but poorly instance or illustrate my now more matured judgment. I will but say some things helpful to the reading, in right-minded fashion, of such fairytales as I would wish to write, or care to read. [Read more…]

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Welcome, and excuse the dust—

2 January 2013 by 20 Comments

For the past seven years, my blog, The Superversive, has been hosted on LiveJournal. I’ll be continuing to maintain it there, but as of today (2 January 2013) I’ve begun the process of migrating over to WordPress on my own domain.

It will take some time to get the conversion done and work the kinks out. For the time being, I plan to post all new blog entries both here and on LJ. Eventually I may drop LJ altogether, or make that edition of the blog inactive. Meanwhile, I invite you to feel at home in either location. Have a seat and put your feet up, because it may not be safe to put them down!

Filed Under: News, The Superversive

The immersive writer

31 December 2012 by 6 Comments

There are, as everyone knows, two ways of doing a thing: one way and the other way. For any given thing worth doing, there may be an infinite number of ways to divide it into two categories; just as there are an infinite number of angles at which you can cut an apple in two. All these lines of division are technically valid, of course, but some are clearly more helpful than others. (Here is an example of an unhelpful division. There are two ways of tying your shoelaces: with a barbecue lighter and without. I think it is safe to say that all the usual methods of tying shoelaces fall into the second category.)

There are, accordingly, two ways of reading books; but infinitely many ways to divide up the act of reading into two classes. One way, which I and others have found useful, is to divide reading into the immersive and the analytic. If you prefer, you can call them ‘reading for the story’ and ‘reading for the text’. The immersive reader dives joyously into the vicarious experience of the story, identifies with the characters, laughs at the funny bits, cries at the moving bits, and generally wallows in the sensuous details of the story-world. The text is translated on the fly into a sort of 3-D movie playing inside the immersive reader’s head. Vladimir Nabokov despised the immersive reader. The analytic reader, who is most often found in academia, stays carefully on the surface of the text, studying the language word by word and sentence by sentence, looking for nuggets of technique and jewels of craftsmanship, and treating motifs and symbols as if they were algebraic variables. Nabokov courted and lionized the analytic reader; which is why Nabokov’s books are read (now that the naughty-naughty of Lolita has been eclipsed by a planet full of Internet porn) chiefly by bored university students labouring their way through the ‘close reading’ of a set text. [Read more…]

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