Category: Literary Matters

Books

John Winkelman

This weekend I read, from cover to cover, The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham. To call it a good book would be a shameful understatement. I wish I had picked it up about fifteen years ago.

The principle character (not the main character) is a Christ-like man named Larry Darrel. Since I am a child of the 80s and a product of my upbringing I couldn’t help but be reminded of the characters Larry, Darryl nad Darryl from Newhart . This is most likely coincidence, but if not then Bob Newhart is a much more subtle man than I gave him credit for.

There is a company called ibooks which is in the midst of reprinting the works of the late Roger Zelazny. If you have any interest at all in science/speculative fiction, then you owe it to yourself to read his books. His short stories are of a calibre which is so far above the standard of the genre that I would feel comfortable putting him on a shelf next to Chekhov and Kawabata.

This weekend I picked up Changeling and To Die in Italban. Of the books that I currently own, my favorite is the short-story collection The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.

That’s all for now; I am busy reading.

Obligatory Political Post

John Winkelman

The king sits in Dunfermline town,
Drinking the blude-red wine o:
“O whare will I get a skeely skipper
To sail this new ship of mine o?”

O up and spake an eldern-knight,
Sat at the king’s right knee:
“Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever saild the sea.”

Our king has written a braid letter,
And seald it with his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the strand.

The first word that Sir Patrick read,
Sae loud, loud laughed he;
The neist word that Sir Patrick read,
The tear blinded his ee.

“O wha is this has done this deed,
And tauld the king o me,
To send us out, at this time of the year,
To sail upon the sea?”

“Make ready, make ready, my merry-men a’!
Our gude ship sails the morn.”
“Now ever alake, my master dear,
I fear a deadly storm!

I saw the new moon, late yestreen,
Wi’ the auld moon in her arm;
And if we gang to sea, master,
I fear we’ll come to harm.”

O laith, laith, were our gude Scots lords
To weet their cork-heel’d shoon!
But lang or a the play was play’d
They wat their hats aboon,

O lang, lang may the ladyes sit,
Wi’ their fans into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand!

And lang, lang may the maidens sit,
Wi’ their goud kaims in their hair,
A’ waiting for their ain dear loves!
For them they’ll see na mair.

O forty miles off Aberdeen,
‘Tis fifty fathoms deep,
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet.

–Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spens

Think about it.

The Year at a Glance

John Winkelman

These are the books I read for the first time in 2002:

MetaMagical Themas by Douglas Hofsteader
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofsteader
The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
The Aztec Treasurehouse by Evan Connell
Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell
Physics for Game Developers by David M Bourg
AI Game Programming Wisdom by Steve Rabin (ed)
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
Mad Ship by Robin Hobb
Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb
Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb
Off to the Side by Jim Harrison
Tulips and Chimneys by E.E. Cummings
22 and 50 Poems by E.E. Cummings
Xaipe by E.E. Cummings
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Dostoyevsky
Living Philosophy by Stephen Rowe
The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod
The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram

Of books re-read, picked up and partially completed, or forgotten, there are too may to list.

Yes, it was a slow year, reading-wise.

Genius Loci

John Winkelman

“Moving water is forever in the present tense.”
– Jim Harrison, Off to the Side

“The first Ch’in Divine August One
learned, to his satisfaction and to his dismay,
that he had conquered every civilized land;
for he believed that beyond the borders of his empire
nothing existed but howling winds and barren waste.
At this same time Alexander
had overrun the Western World. So it was
that two men not knowing of the existence of each other
shared a common delusion.”
-Evan S. Connell, Notes From a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel

ESTRAGON: A relaxation.
VLADIMIR: A recreation.
ESTRAGON: A relaxation.
VLADIMIR: Try.
ESTRAGON: You’ll help me?
VLADIMIR: I will of course.
ESTRAGON: We don’t manage too badly, eh Didi, between the two of us?
VLADIMIR: Yes yes. Come on, we’ll try the left first.
ESTRAGON: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?
-Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Notes From Saturday Night

John Winkelman

So I was with the Usual Gang at a wedding reception and we were trying to decide which male character, out of all of Fantasy Literature, in any media, was the most ‘bad-ass’. Science fiction and superheroes needed not apply. It couldn’t be just strength — personality and ability counted equally. Ultimately it came down to which character would do ‘whatever it took’ to win in situation X. We had to decide, finally, that it was the character that passed the ‘Kidmail Test’.

Huh?

The Kidmail test is as follows: Say Mr Bad Guy has sewed several small children together, alive, to make himself some armor. In order to vanquish Mr. Bad Guy, would Mr. Good Guy be willing to hack through that Kidmail? Upon that question lay the answer to Who Is the Most Bad-Ass Male Fantasy Character.

We finally went with Raistlin. Gandalf , we felt, would not willing hack through children in order to get The Bad Guy. Raistlin might make it a requirement. Also in the running were Elric , Richard Cypher , and Pug/Milamber .

Science Fiction characters will have to wait for another day, as will Comic Book characters. However!!! If you have ever wondered who would win a fight between, say, Moses and Yoda, or a Borg Cube and the Death Star, or even Steve Irwin and Godzilla, check out Electric Ferret’s Comic Book Universe Fight Pages . Comic books and oh, so much more.

Raven Hill, A Novel About Kung Fu

John Winkelman

I have studied martial arts for 13 years; two bouncing around from school to school, and the last eleven as a student of Master Lee, Hoa Yen. Having studied one style for so long, I sometimes lose track of what else is out there, so now and then I will spend a few hours surfing, seeing what Google has to say about the state of the Martial Arts in America.

While surfing yesterday I rediscovered Raven Hill , a site which I first came across a couple of years ago. Back then, it was just a link to a story. Now it is a full-blown martial arts website, put together by someone who wields at least a little mojo.

I was delighted to find that the original story is still up, and has been added to significantly. Basically one of the students of this school sat down and wrote a historical/fantasy novel about a group of 17 young men who go off on their own to learn 17 different styles of kung fu, then from what they learn create a new style. Someone put a great deal of time and thought into these stories. The writing is decent; not Pulitzer material but better than most anything you will find on the New York Times rack at the local McBookstore. Where these stories truly shine is in the descriptions of the training these young men go through in the course of learning their kung fu. As a serious martial artist myself I can say that the methods used in the stories make good sense, and to utilize them for eight, ten, fourteen hours a day, as the characters do, would indeed create martial artists of the highest calibre.

So if you feel like being inspired to practice hard, read these stories. The first, Chu Jeng, can be accessed from the link above. The rest can be found linked to the resource page of the Raven Hill site.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go stand in horse stance for a few hours.