Ramblings & ephemera
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I recently received a letter from Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist, who told me that he had a somewhat similar problem following a stroke: “The area affected,” he relates, “was my ability to read. I can write, but I can’t read [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, science, weird | No Comments »
In Clay Shirky’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007), he takes on the persona of someone talking about what new changes are coming with the Gutenberg movable type press. At one point, he says, “Such a change would also create enormous economic hardship for anyone [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, art, business | No Comments »
From Douglas Rushkoff’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
But I think many writers - even good ones - will have to accept the fact that books can be loss-leaders or break-even propositions in a highly mediated world where showing up in person generates the most [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, art, business | No Comments »
From Adam Parfrey’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
I like the internet and computers for their ability to make writers of nearly everyone. I don’t like the internet and computers for their ability to make sloppy and thoughtless writers of nearly everyone.
Related posts
The shift from [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, Technology, art | No Comments »
From Mark Dery’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
But we live in times of chaos and complexity, and the future of writing and reading is deeply uncertain. Reading and writing are solitary activities. The web enables us to write in public and, maybe one day, [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, Technology, art | No Comments »
From Ask Yahoo (5 March 2007):
There are only so many ways to construct a story.
Writers who believe there’s only one plot argue all stories “stem from conflict.” True enough, but we’re more inclined to back the theory you mention about seven plot lines.
According to the Internet Public Library, they are:
1. [wo]man vs. [...]
Posted on July 26th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature, On Writing, Writing Ideas, art | No Comments »
From Northrop Frye’s “The Mythos of Autumn: Tragedy” (128):
The moment of discovery or ‘anagnorisis’, which comes at the end of the tragic plot, is not simply the knowledge by the hero of what has happened to him … but the recognition of the determined shape of the life he has created for himself, with an [...]
Posted on December 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, On Writing, art | Comments Off
From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “A Speech Delivered In The Committee of the House Of Commons On The 6th Of April 1842” (Prime Palaver #4: 1 September 2001):
It is the law of our nature that the mind shall attain its full power by slow degrees; and this is especially true of the most vigorous minds. Young [...]
Posted on July 29th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, art | Comments Off
From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “A Speech Delivered In The House Of Commons On The 5th Of February 1841” (Prime Palaver #4: 1 September 2001):
The question of copyright, Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is neither black nor white, but grey. The system of copyright has great advantages and great disadvantages; and it is our [...]
Posted on July 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, art, history, law, politics | Comments Off
From Marc Weingarten’s “The White Album“:
To be sure, [Joan Didion] certainly tries. She goes on a little later in the essay [from The White Album]: “We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting [...]
Posted on June 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, On Writing | Comments Off
From The New Yorker’s “The Disappearing Poet” (4 July 2005):
[Weldon] Kees himself was toiling on a script, a spy thriller called “Gadabout” … Kees was introduced as “Mr. Weldon Kees, poet, painter, artist, etcetera, composer, critic, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum.”
Related posts
The escape of Mr. Flitcraft
The botnet hunters
Word of the day: Synecdoche
The shift from interior to [...]
Posted on May 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature, On Writing, True Stories | Comments Off
From Brian Hayes’ “The Post-OOP Paradigm“:
Christopher Alexander [a bricks-and-steel architect] is known for the enigmatic thesis that well-designed buildings and towns must have “the quality without a name.” He explains: “The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is [...]
Posted on April 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing | Comments Off
From Bertrand Russell’s “How I Write“:
Until I was twenty-one, I wished to write more or less in the style of John Stuart Mill. … I had, however, already a different ideal, derived, I suppose, from mathematics. I wished to say everything in the smallest number of words in which it could be said clearly. … [...]
Posted on April 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, science | Comments Off
From The New York Times Magazine’s “Skin Literature“:
Most artists spend their careers trying to create something that will live forever. But the writer Shelley Jackson is creating a work of literature that is intentionally and indisputably mortal. Jackson is publishing her latest short story by recruiting 2,095 people, each of whom will have one word [...]
Posted on April 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Cool Stuff, Fiction, Language & Literature, On Writing, weird | Comments Off
From Jim Hanas’ “The Story Doesn’t Care: An Interview with Sean Stewart“:
I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, during the winter. There are two very essential conditions in Edmonton. There’s inside and outside, and there’s no real doubt about which is which. There’s a sharp line preserved between the two.
I now live in California. California is [...]
Posted on February 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing, Wash U: Social Software, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society | Comments Off
From Jim Hanas’ “The Story Doesn’t Care: An Interview with Sean Stewart“:
I think that every means of communication carries within itself the potential for a form of art. Once the printing press was built, novels were going to happen. It took the novel a little while to figure out exactly what it was going to [...]
Posted on February 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, Wash U: Social Software, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society | Comments Off
From InfoWorld:
In chapter 4 of Klaus Kaasgaard’s Software Design and Usability, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) alumnus Austin Henderson says that “one of the most brilliant inventions of the paper bureaucracy was the idea of the margin.” There was always space for unofficial data, which traveled with the official data, and everybody knew about [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature, On Writing, Technology, history | Comments Off
From Yahoo! News (March 2004):
Andy Rooney certainly knows how to stir the passion in his viewers. The ‘60 Minutes’ curmudgeon said Sunday he got 30,000 pieces of mail and e-mail in response to his Feb. 22 commentary, in which he called ‘The Passion of the Christ’ filmmaker Mel Gibson a ‘wacko.’
It’s the biggest viewer response [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing, True Stories | Comments Off
From Tom Van Vleck:
In “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,” Borges describes “a certain Chinese Encyclopedia,” the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into:
1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing | Comments Off
Scotland’s worst poet, William Topaz McGonagall: From “The Tay Bridge Disaster”:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time. …
Or here’s a few lines from “Glasgow”:
And as for the [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing | Comments Off
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