Collected Miscellany

Ok, The Far Side by Gary Larson is not exactly a serious book with deep meaning and impact but his work is some of the funniest stuff on the planet. I have often been amazed at the humor Larson could create with a one panel cartoon. Michael Dirda of the Washington Post is a fan too. He decontructs the cartoons a bit but he is clearly a fan not just a critic:

As one turns the many pages of these two volumes, happily lost in a surreal and witty world, it’s all too easy to overdose on the Larsonian sensibility. But resistance is futile. In the newspaper the wackiness could be spaced out to a panel a day. Here, after gorging for an hour or so, the reader may end up feeling a bit like one of the cartoonist’s overstuffed anacondas.

He even picks his favorite Far Side of all time. I won’t spoil it for you. If you want to know read the whole thing.

Today I conducted a 40 minute interview with a author of an upcoming sure to be bestseller. I went out and bought a digital recorder and a doohickie that allows you to record cell phone conversation. I tested the system prior to the interview and was ready to roll. I conducted the interview assuming that everything was in order and that the conversation was being captured. I even made sure to ask permission to tape the call.

It turns out that I had failed to flip a switch or do something because when I went to listen to the interview all I got was weird noises and an occasional garbled voice. It is embarrassing and frustrating to have gone to all this trouble and then have nothing to show for it! I didn’t really take notes because I thought I was recording it and I was concentrating on the conversation. What an idiot. I betcha John Hawkins never pulled something like this . . .

I have begun to dable in author interviews and so I am fascinated by them. If the interview makes you want to read the book and dig into the author more, that is a good sign of success. The Atlantic Unbound has just such an interview, with Peter Carey author of My Life as a Fake. I was particularly intrigued by the discussion surrounding Carey’s decision to change the first person perspective of the novel, from one character to another. Here is the author on what it was like to make such a drastic change:

Q: What made you decide to make that change? What goes through a novelist’s mind when making such a drastic shift after dedicating a long period of time to a particular character’s way of seeing the world?

A: Panic. All writers have bad days. You have problems and you work your way through them. But with this book, no matter how I worked on it and tinkered with the sentences and worked on this and that, all I seemed to be doing was digging myself deeper into the ground. I knew I wasn’t going to fix it up by sandpapering it or refining it anymore. So at the end of one day I came to the conclusion that this could not work. As you can imagine, that’s a really bad feeling. I had a horrible night. The next day I woke up, and I decided there was a good idea here and there was a good story, and I asked myself if there was another way to do it. All that day I worked very energetically. By the end of that day, I had discovered a totally different way into the material. So it went from one day being probably the worst day of my writing life to the next day being one of the really thrilling ones. I knew I had a completely unexpected way to deal with it.

What a fascinating experience! This, and other sections of the interview, really reveal the complext combination or creativity, imagination, research, and technical expertise that goes into writing a novel. If you are interested in books this is well worth a read.

Speaking of neat little books (see entry below), A fun book I picked up a while back, Fighting Words: Writers Lambast Other Writers, includes this quote:

He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic, although courteous manners, corresponding well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty.
– Nathaniel Hawthorne, on Henry David Thoreau

Was that a backhanded complement or a sophisticated insult?

I think I have found the Official Book of Collected Miscellany: Schott’s Original Miscellany. Here is Publishers weekly’s blurb:

Ever wonder how one ties a sari? Or who makes the Queen of England’s pork sausages? How about which three films managed to take all five of the top Oscar awards (picture, director, actress, actor and screenplay), or which Burmese kings died “curious deaths”? Answers to these questions and hundreds more can be found in this delightfully eclectic collection of facts, diagrams, quotations and symbols. Charmingly designed (with its various typefaces, columns and occasional graphics, it looks a little like an old-fashioned almanac), Schott’s slim volume was an unexpected bestseller in England. Now the 28-year-old British designer-photographer has updated the book for American readers. Among its additions, the North American version includes a chart of cattle branding symbols, a list of notable Canadians and a description of the Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Internationally essential trivia-such as the recipe for a martini, instructions for tying a bow tie, and a selection of quotations from Dr. Johnson-has, of course, been preserved. Schott declares that the purpose of his little book is to “gather the flotsam and jetsam of the conversational tide.” Readers may find its smile-provoking pages absolutely addictive.

What with the Miscellany tie in and the fun subject it sounds perfect no? Actually it sounds like a description of my college education . . .

I have yet to read The Bookseller of Kabul, although I have a copy and it is on the “To Read” list, but there appears to be a controversy surounding this hot selling book (it sold 220,000 copies in Norway alone). The book is the account of Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad’s experiences living with a bookseller in Afghanistan after the US defeat of the Taliban. Seierstad covered wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq prior to taking on this project. The compelling story and the books success made the author, already a bit of a celebrity in Norway, the toast of the Scandinavian publishing world.

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