![]() Most writing used to be regulated (or self-regulated) there were postcards and diary entries, but even those had standards. But, as the linguist Gretchen McCulloch reveals in “ Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language,” her effervescent study of how the digital world is transfiguring English, informal writing is relatively new. The first pours from political orators the second winds around friends at a bar. ![]() We’ve long had both formal and informal modes of speech. This is, of course, the difference between informal and formal expression, between language that serves as a loose and intuitive vehicle for thought and language into which one must wrestle one’s thought like a parent forcing his squirming kid into a car seat. ![]() ![]() Often, this insight is accompanied by the rueful observation that tweeting is easy. A common refrain from writers on Twitter is that writing is hard. ![]()
0 Comments
![]() ![]() "What interested me most was the efforts James Stewart made to recreate a woman from the image of a dead woman", Hitchcock declared to François Truffaut (1). When he meets the brunette and ordinary Judy (also Kim Novak), it is Madeleine he is seeking to bring back to life. Soon falling for this mysterious blonde, Scottie cannot prevent her from killing herself. Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), a former inspector, is charged with shadowing the elegant Madeleine (Kim Novak), who was said to identify with a suicidal ancestor (Carlotta). In 1957, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) made his 49th film: Vertigo, inspired by the novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac D'entre les morts. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He observes with amazement that they seem to have learned how to entertain themselves with conversation. In the first essay, “Us and Them,” Sedaris spies on a neighboring family, the Tomkeys, to try to understand how they manage without television. He characterizes his parents and siblings as people who manage to stand out in any community, no matter how liberal or eccentric. The first handful of essays in the collection deal with Sedaris’s early childhood on the East Coast. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim received positive criticism for its vivid portrayal of many peculiarities of suburban American life. The collection, Sedaris’s fifth, focuses primarily on memories of his dysfunctional and eccentric family in North Carolina. Each of the essays reflects on a different part of his early life, blending his trademark cynicism with an acute sensitivity to the absurdities of seemingly banal experience. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a 2004 collection of twenty-two autobiographical essays by American humorist David Sedaris. ![]() ![]() “…a fruitful prayer life is cultivated by constant practice, not the comprehension of propositions.” Here is a list of 10 of my favorite quotes. If you’d like to read a review of the book by Warner Aldridge on The Front Porch you can check it out here, and if you would like to purchase the book you can do so here. As far as I can see, there’s nothing that should keep you from reading this book. ![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes the messages we need to hear most need to be repeated to us so that they’re drilled past our brains and into our hearts. However, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t mind it. Also, it seems most books on prayer want to teach us how to pray and show us what we should pray, but what makes this book different is that Pastor Onwuchekwa wants us to understand the importance of praying together.Īs an obligatory and slight critique, the book gets occasionally redundant. And if we’re honest, that’s probably what writing with the Church in mind should always aim to do. John wrote it in a way that I feel I could hand this to anyone in my church, from the least to the most educated, and they would all walk away edified by it–in fact, that’s what I plan to do. It’s striking how relatably and accessibly it was written. I read through this book over the past week or so, and I really enjoyed it. ![]() ![]() ![]() Though known as a masterly practitioner of Gothic fiction, Poe did not invent the genre he was following a long-standing popular tradition. ![]() His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. He often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy. Poe pursued originality in his works, and disliked proverbs. Meaning in literature, he said in his criticism, should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface works whose meanings are too obvious cease to be art. Poe's writing reflects his literary theories: he disagreed with didacticism and allegory. These works are generally considered part of the Dark romanticism movement, a literary reaction to Transcendentalism. ![]() His fiction spans multiple genres, including horror fiction, adventure, science fiction, and detective fiction, a genre he is credited with inventing. The works of American author Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) include many poems, short stories, and one novel. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The woman observes the man and never looks at him as a savior or stereotypical lover. Dusapin's novel avoids clichés in the woman's developing relationship with the lonely foreigner, who turns out to be an internationally renowned graphic novelist looking for inspiration for a new book. ![]() Despite pressure to marry, the young woman is ambivalent about her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Jun-oh, an aspiring model in Seoul. After work, she visits her mother, who works in the fish market and is renowned for her delicious octopus soondae. The novel unfolds in brief vignettelike chapters that reveal the unnamed woman's daily life. She has never met her father, a Frenchman who left her mother after a brief affair, but has studied French language and literature in school and dreams of traveling to the country someday. When a mysterious middle-aged Frenchman named Yan Kerrand arrives, off-season, in the midst of the winter slump, the woman is intrigued. An atmospheric novel about an independent young woman in a South Korean beach town.ĭusapin's debut novel depicts a young biracial Korean woman living and working in a small guesthouse in Sokcho, South Korea, a beach town 60 km from the North Korean border. ![]() ![]() ![]() In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. ![]() The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. An up-to-date annotated guide to further reading Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases Newly revised explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play Shakespeare’s play keeps this debate alive. Renaissance writers disagreed over the assassination, seeing Brutus, a leading conspirator, as either hero or villain. ![]() For it, he turned to a key event in Roman history: Caesar’s death at the hands of friends and fellow politicians. Julius Caesar opens with the tribunes (the elected representatives of the people) reproaching the commoners for celebrating Caesars victory over Pompey the. Shakespeare may have written Julius Caesar as the first of his plays to be performed at the Globe, in 1599. ![]() The authoritative edition of Julius Caesar from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Amanda immediately begins to make rather elaborate plans for the gentleman caller. A few days later, Tom tells Amanda that he has invited a young man named Jim O'Connor home for dinner. They have an argument, and the next morning after Tom apologizes, Amanda asks him to find some nice gentleman caller for Laura and to bring him home for dinner. When Tom goes out to the movies that night, Amanda accuses him of doing something else rather than going to the movies every night. Amanda decides that they must have a gentleman caller for Laura, and Laura tells her that she has liked only one boy in her whole life, a high school boy named Jim. Amanda is shocked and wonders what they will do with their lives since Laura refuses to try to help and spends all her time playing with her glass menagerie and her old phonograph records. A few days later Amanda comes home from Laura's school after finding out that Laura had dropped out several months earlier. Amanda then tells Laura to practice her shorthand and typing. Amanda remembers the time that she had seventeen gentlemen callers all on one Sunday afternoon. At dinner she tells her daughter, Laura, to stay nice and pretty for her gentlemen callers even though Laura has never had any callers and expects none. Louis, the mother, Amanda, lives with her crippled daughter and her working son, Tom. ![]() ![]() ![]() Processing traumatic experiences through the frame of affective truth-as opposed to testimonial or objective fact-is already an interpretive act. Through a shared emphasis on the concept of “necessary fictions” and the gathering-together of promiscuous or nontraditional archival materials, each novel centers feelings-oriented approaches to processing grief and isolation that are less readily addressed through normative therapeutic means. This article argues, drawing from the work of Ann Cvetkovich, that Kiernan’s novels self-consciously produce and serve as provocative archives of queer trauma. ![]() ![]() Kiernan’s The Red Tree (2010) and The Drowning Girl (2012) are disquieting queer ghost stories about feeling bad and bad feelings-metafictional novels masquerading as journals or memoirs that present their “hauntings” as the afterlife of pain that echoes, repeats, and distorts space/time. ![]() ![]() ![]() *I have very fond memories of reading this comic miniseries on my bed as a teenager. Fritz Leiber ranks among the giants of fantasy and science fiction visionaries, capturing multiple Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards and influencing a generation of writers. I really wish these comics were twice as long as they were to let them breathe a bit. The comics adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser returns to print in an omnibus format from Dark Horse Books. Their rollicking adventures in the fantastic land of Nehwon have influenced the work of some of the best in modern fantasy, including Michael Moorcock. Since their first appearance in 1939, Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have ranked among the most beloved characters in fantasy. For example, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser find a barrel of brandy at a story's end and discuss it as if it resolved some mystery, but I wasn't entirely sure about its significance. Fafhrd And The Gray Mouser Paperback April 3, 2007. Chaykin's script whittles the tales down to bare bones and some of the smaller elements of storytelling get lost. This story is obviously more fantastic than the other, and also a great deal of fun.īut they're both too breezy, I think. The second story allows the two heroes a stroll on the ocean floor, seeking a night of romance with two sea-maidens. The first story features a little satire on religion, which, oddly enough, involves the least amount of fantasy of all of the stories in the series. This one features great art like the others, and Chaykin is cheeky as ever with the dialogue. ![]() The last of my nostalgia-fueled re-read of the F&GM books by Mignola, Williamson, and Chaykin.* ![]() |