Perfect Punctuation
Big Picture
The cartoonist Joe Sacco has a new graphic novel out that uses a twenty-four-foot panorama to depict the first day of the Battle of the Somme. At Salon, Sacco tells Daniel D’Addario that his upbringing in Australia, where the landings at Gallipoli have great patriotic significance, helped to spur his interest in the War to End All Wars. (Related: we interviewed Sacco last year.)
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Book bits – Sherlock, the Unbearable Dave Matthews, Renaming Google Print
Stanford “will rerelease a collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes, just as they were originally printed and illustrated in The Strand Magazine.”Maciej Ceglowski suggests that Milan Kundera “is the Dave Matthews of Slavic letters, a talented hack, certainly a hack who’s paid his dues, but a hack nonetheless.” And offers up a number of Eastern European books that young lovers might give to one another instead of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.Google Print has been renamed Google Book Search. “Why the change? Well, one factor was all the comments we got about how excited people were that Google Print would help them print out their documents, or web pages they visit — which of course it won’t.”
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Kickstarting The Riveter
That Kickstarter is offering more opportunities than ever to literary projects, from Coffee House Press’s Catstarter to the Joan Didion documentary to the Reading Rainbow spin-off, is indisputable. Now there’s yet another worthy cause turning to the crowd-sourcing platform in search of an audience: The Riveter, a magazine of longform journalism by women.
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A Midnight Literary Meal
Looking for a new literary magazine to submit to? Check out Midnight Breakfast. The Rumpus’s Rebecca Rubenstein edits the online free literary magazine, which is looking for fiction, nonfiction, interviews, and art that will “spark a conversation.” The first issue includes a Jason Diamond coming-of-age essay and a short story by Matthew Salesses.
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Leftover Links
Some seriously deranged Amazon customer reviews. (via Doc Searls)A year ago “Our Lady of the Underpass” was a Chicago phenomenon. Eric Zorn revisits.Chimney sweeps and flower pots are the stuff of poetry for Sam.Dale Peck’s recent judgment in the Tournament of Books is scarcely worth mentioning, but I did very much enjoy Kevin Guilfoile’s commentary on the topic as well as his tale about meeting Ken Kesey.Kakutani’s reign of terror turns 25.The Literary Saloon points us to Jonathan Franzen’s new book. It’s a memoir, and like Ed, I am disappointed by that.The Rake chats with Charles D’Ambrosio
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Writers Pensions: Should We Have Them, Too?
More than 80 published writers in Buenos Aires receive monthly pensions meant to strengthen to “vertebral column of society.” Sums can reach nearly $900 a month.
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Whitman Passes Away
George Whitman, owner of the storied Parisian English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company, died this week at the age of 98.
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Flummoxing Florals
With the cold front in America right now, you would never know it’s meant to be spring. To get yourself in the season, take The Guardian’s floral poetry quiz. Sample question: “What reminds Ezra Pound of ‘petals on a wet, black bough’?”
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Punctuation marks have unique personalities, and if they formed a large dysfunctional family, forced to gather together for some sort of mandatory event would be:
a.) Parenthese: Passive aggressive, snipey aunt who throws cold water over everyone’s good news with stink bombs of insults surrounded by insincerely-voiced congratulations.
b.) Em-dash: Uncle returned from extended tour of English-teaching in Thailand. Furtive eyes, caught kicking the cat in the pantry when his brandy runs out and blizzard prevents run to “packie” for more.
c.) Ellipses: Cousin with light brown hair, light brown clothes, light brown eyes. No one can ever remember her name. Has never been able to complete a whole sentence at dinnertime without someone else interrupting her.
d.) Colon: Grandfather, 42 year employee of Government Printing Office, everything he says is an official-sounding pronouncement about weather. Is actually recalling the 1978 Blizzard and thinks it is still 1978. Found wearing several Red Sox baseball caps at the same time and tinkering with the furnace in an alarming manner.
e.) Period: Father, 26 year employee of Government Printing Office, all pronouncements are official-sounding. With add additional period and become a colon by 2035.
Punctuation Alert!
Today (12/4/2014) the Washington Post reviewed “Suspended Sentences – Three Novellas” by Patrick Modiano. The first, “Afterimages,” describes an odd, furtive character who disappears one day without a trace:
“As the narrator remarks, ‘Of all the punctuation marks, he told me, ellipses were his favorite.”
Moe Murph
Still Favors the Em-dash for Characterization
Whoa, Moe Murph — Packie? Red Sox caps? Blizzard of 1978? Furnace??? I hear the siren call of the Bay State. If you ah not from they-ah, I am wicked impressed with the authenticity of yaw voice. A tad dispirited that I still don’t know what an em-dash is (perhaps one should have been used above?) but loved your dysfunctional family, especially the ellipses . . .now get outta he-ah . . .
@priskill
Ha Ha… yes, I am from Boston. This is not quite “my” family, but a couple of the bits and pieces fit, including my poor grandfather and his furnace fiddling and multiple hat wearing at the end of his life. Also, our entire family does tend to all speak at the same time and we do have one cousin who never can get a word in edgewise. And she is quite “beige” in affect. :)
The uncle, dad, and the aunt are bits and pieces cobbled together from my fetid swamp of a brain…
If you want to read some wonderful examples of Em-dash, read the poetry of Emily Dickinson! The Em-dash creates a wonderful sense of motion and ease.
(I laughed out loud at the Modiano review today!)
Best Regards, Moe Murph
@Moe Murph Well, I loved it (that poor and beige cousin!) and thank you for clarifying things — I thought the Belle of Am’erstt just used plain old dashes — I’m a big dasher, myself, but mostly from indecision regarding commas and such — as always, you entertain and elucidat, MM!
@priskill
Just a bit more elucidatin’…..
My personal favorite for grammar guides is “The Deluxe Transitive Grammar: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed” – Karen Elizabeth Gordon (Pantheon; Revised Edition – 8/10/1993).
The title alone makes it awesome, but the contents are wonderful as well.
Moe Murph
Oh Bosh! Correct Title:
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed”
@Moe Murph — I am all of the above! I, E, & D — I will look for this — vampires and serial commas in the same title ! Thank you, MM!