Blood & Rhetoric

New York Magazine asks: So why didn’t anyone at a big publishing house recognize the best-selling genius of The Shack, William P. Young’s million-selling Christian-publishing sensation profiled today in the Times?

Apparantly William P. Young submitted his manuscript for The Shack to several secular and Christian publishers only to be rejected and forced into self-publishing.

Personally, I wouldn’t pick up a novel touted as Christian (or Buddhist, or Muslim, or Atheist) for the same reason I wouldn’t pick up the Bible or insert-religious-text-here: I’m not in the market to have The Message shoved down my throat.

Now, a novel with Christian themes (or Buddhist, or Muslim, or Atheist, or whatever) is a different story, but I’m weary of things that would proclaim themselves into any religious category as I’d instantly suspect the work in question to less about the story and more about The Dreaded Message.

Anyways, good for William P. Young. A self-publishing success story? That is impressive.

In other news: The Motley Fool has an interesting article about Making Books Interesting Again.

And two 21-year-old women pen a 400 page fantasy novel, Havemercy, in just 18 days — and sell it!

Danielle Bennett, from Victoria, and Jaida Jones, from New York, managed to attract the attention of a major publishing house with a fantasy novel featuring flying metal dragons, magicians and an all-out battle between warring rivals.

You’re not alone Ian McEwan!

Dr. Andrew Bostom is speaking tonight at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills about anti-semitism in the Muslim world.

Author of “The Legacy of Anti-Semitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History,” a book that argues anti-Semitism is a problem in Islam’s history and present, Bostom is also the author of “The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the fate of non-Muslims.”

And so the circle of hatred, misunderstanding, and intolerence continues unabated on all sides.

Because after all, Hitler liked Islam.

Quote from the New York Times:

“I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on — we know it well.” He called fundamentalist Christians with similar views “equally absurd,” though at least they are not trying to kill people.”

Well, killing abortion doctors does kinda count as “killing people,” but only in the technical sense of the term.

And we all know what this means: Breaking News! Author Ian McEwan Murdered by Islamic Extremist Group Over Racist Comments!

“ketchcraft”

The hangman’s craft.

– Sir James Murray, New English Dictionary, 1901.

After Jack Ketch, an infamous London executioner, who died in 1686, and was apparantly either very awkward or sadistic with his beheading techniques.

Lisa Jewell wins top prize at Melissa Nathan Award for comedy romance. The novel in question is 31 Dream Street, the author’s sixth, and the article does a very un-patrionizing job of covering “chick-lit” and the misconceptions surrounding the genre which is a welcome change.

Over in Australia, Steven Carroll’s novel ‘The Time We Have Taken’, won this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award for his tale of a suburban family living in a run-of-the-mill part of Melbourne.

And next time you go dumpster-diving, children, you may just find a literary gem; like what happened to Lily Koppel, who while rooting through her Manhatten dumspter — for reasons hillariously left unexplained in this article — and came up with a 1930’s era personal diary who she tracked down as belonging to Florence Wolfson, who is now 90 and living in Florida. Koppel has crafted The Red Leather Diary (Harper, 336 pages, $23.95), a story of a curious, creative Upper East Side young woman in Depression-era Manhattan

There’s also a broadcasted interview with Koppel linked in this article that I have not listened too because the idea of someone randomly rooting through dumspters is fprobably funnier than the reality of why she was doing it.

Baltimore hosts it’s first-ever Lesbian Literary Festival.

Author and illustrator Tasha Tudor dies at age 92 She was best known for her 1944 edition of ‘Mother Goose’.

One of the Eastern Cape’s most celebrated authors, Noni Jabavu, has died.She was 88.

Calgary novelist Jaspreet Singh is no longer on the no-fly list at Air Canada Poor guy had to cancel promoional events for his book ‘Chef’ after having difficulties boarding a flight. Why? His name matched the name of a terrorist. Jesus Christ, I feel bad for brown people around the world, this is not the first time, and I’m sure, not the last time this will happen to some innocent person.

Model Tara Moss writes book. Article discusses how pretty she is. No one wins.

Then again, maybe sex can sell books.

And I seriously doubt that anyone picking up a novel in the store will put it back down for the mere fact that it was written by a model. Get over yourself.

i died for beauty… 

Get your own WORDLE.

“pokeweed religion”

– The sort of religious excitement that springs up rapidly and seems impressive, but has no permanant value. The terms lightnin’ bug revivals carries the same meaning.

Vance Randolph, Down in the Holler: A Galery of Ozark Folk Speech, 1953

No I haven’t seen it. No I am not going to see it. And NO, being in possession of a vagina does not mean I am a fan of the show.

Just stop already.

Stop telling me how much you relate to the show. Stop telling me how you and your friends are just like Carrie and the girls. You’re not. You’re not a 40-something single woman fucking your way through every virile man in whatever big city you come from while wearing over-priced clothing and eating at the trendy over-priced shitholes where other soulless assholes love to congregate.

Fucking “like a man” while desperately looking for a meaningful relationship does not make you liberated or independent or strong. It makes you a whore. A stupid whore at that. And not because of all the ungratifying faceless sex you’re having, but because you keep trying to convince everyone around you that those meaningless one-night stands are what you wanted in the first place. You’re lying.

One night stands are not fun. You tell me you come every time? Bitch, please, no you do not.

Drunken sex with a stranger is generally one of the most awkward things you can do, and if you had just stayed home and masturbated, not only would you have a guaranteed orgasm (or four) but you wouldn’t wake up the next morning with that empty feeling in the pit of your stomach you never talk about or acknowledge.

(Or a burning feeling down there for that matter.)

Does your entire life really revolve around sex/men, whining about sex/men, and boozing it up with the girls like a vapid college student who doesn’t know any better yet? Are you really incapable of, at your age, having a normal relationship with a man? Do you ever stop and think that maybe you are the problem? Because underneath your cheap and trendy clothing, and even trendier lifestyle that you have nothing of value to offer to another person or to society as a whole?

You’re a piece of ass swathed in shiny accessories and tacky makeup that never learned to have a conversation not centered on your pathetic existence. And you fear that underneath your posturing and shrill laughter that it’s all you’ll ever be.

And you’re probably right.

So please, just stop talking to me about “Sex and the City.” Because you’re driving me mental.

Oh those damn potatoes again!

“bog-oranges”

“Potatoes. A phrase perhaps derived from the term ‘Irish Fruit,’ which by some peculiarity has been applied to potatoes, for even the most ignorant Cockney could hardly believe that potatoes grow in a bog. As, however, the majority of the lower classesof London do believe that potatoes were indigenous to, and were first brought from the soil of Ireland… they may even believe that potatoes are bog-oranges.”

– from John Camden Hotten, Slang Dictionary, 1887.

This is guaranteed to bring me to tears every time I read it. 

From “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje:

And all the names of the tribes, the nomads of faith who walked in the monotone of the desert and saw brightness and faith and colour. The way a stone or found metal box or bone can become loved and turned eternal in a prayer. Such glory of this country she enters now and becomes part of.

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography — to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.

All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.I carried Katharine Clifton into the desert,where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.