Halt! Who Goes There?*
Monday, May 19, 2008

Hey, check out this awesomely textured and stunningly professional CD case!





I had long hair and a beard back then. Also? Dignity.

==========

Remember these? The equal sign dividers? Man, those were the days.

==========

I wrote a longer post, but it would have bored the fuck out of all of you, so instead I'll just summarize: these bastards have polluted my writing style, and I'll never escape their shadows.

Those who find this shit boring, skip to the end of this post and enjoy the WTF moment.

Now...

• William Gibson, the first author to clue me into the idea of GOOD WRITING. Sure, I love Asimov, but... "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Clever and evocative metaphors are one thing, but to conjure up an entire world, an entire atmosphere... an entire genre? Damn, yo.**
  
• An unreadable, terribly formatted collection of his short stories appears here. I'd suggest searching for "Burning Chrome," at the very bottom of the page, as it sums up what he's known for (gritty gritty greedy grit) best. However, "Hinterlands" continues to freak me out.
• But, come on, you've read Neuromancer, right? Right?!
  
• Emma, my cousin-- she writes brilliantly. She puts me to shame, in that she makes the jump from "flowery prose" to "flowery prose draped over powerful stories." Seriously, my stuff can't hold up next to hers. But more importantly, she made me the pretentious, literary snob I am today; she introduced me to
• Vladimir Nabokov, the single greatest prose stylist of the English language.*** I mean, there's just nothing I can say about him that will do him justice. Pale Fire makes me laugh every time, even as my eyes run over the (third) most beautiful lines ever written.**** His writing's so good, you can't help but like Humbert Humbert, the murderous pedophile narrating Lolita. Yet his words contain some emotional power-- Lolita, a darkly comedic work with a despicable protagonist, ends with a touching, emotional catharsis.
• Signs and Symbols, by Vladimir Nabokov.
  
• I'm going to keep going, because even if my words can't do him justice... well, fuck it. For a while, after reading his work, I could only write in a poor imitation of his style. Anything else seemed not even worth it, to me. It's only recently I've broken out from under his shadow... and into the shadow of
• Haruki Murakami, a Japanese Philip K. Dick with a sense of humor, as one critic described him. This is almost true. I'd describe him more as an optimistic, wistful PKD.***** Murakami writes dreams... wonderful, surreal, realistic, quiet, noisy, hopeful dreams. I read After Dark while in the psych ward, and I'm fairly sure it's the sole reason I get out of that hellhole with my sanity intact. He's been a huge influence on my current WIPs, both the Wholly Unique Experience story and the Alice story. His prose is deceptively simple... and beautiful. His lucky streak of talented translators helps.
  
• The Second Bakery Attack versus On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl: which wins?
• Max Barry, Australian author of artistically... autistic... ah, shit. He writes funny books about corporate life and marketing. Here's Chapter One from his first book. The opening paragraph also happens to be my facebook "About Me" so, yeah, does that say something about me?******
• He actually hasn't influenced my writing, per se, I just wanted to plug him. Guy's blog is also very funny, and very smart.
  

==========

And now for something completely-- uh, I mean, and now for your moment of Zen: The Soviet Red Army Choir singing "Sweet Home Alabama", in English.

ever populist,
jdl

* back with the shakespeare.
** brought to you by awkward white boys, inc.
*** fuck off, eric blair.
**** after shakespeare, and omar fitzgerald, ahead of borges and hemingway and... hmm. maybe i shouldn't rank art? just maybe?
***** people's kommunist division? people of korea's democratic party?
****** actually, no.

Labels: art, bored, funny, i miss alice, me, there's actually a funny story behind all the asterisks, writing

3:14 PM
2 comments :

• At May 20, 2008 9:19 AM,
   Just a girl said…
  
  Do mine eyes deceive me? Colour photographs?
  
  As for the Russian/English (I'm confused...) chorus..."You couldn't make this up." So true. And so funny. The best part was they were totally getting into it!
  
  x
  JAG
   
• At May 20, 2008 11:18 PM,
   ally_vg said…
  
  Holy shit, that video was funny.
   

Post a Comment
<< Home


* * *