the young visiters

In the long summer of 1890, a young lady decided to write her first novel. She wrote a chapter a day between breakfast and bath-time and delivered it to her parents in a stout twopenny exercise book exactly 12 days later. The young lady’s name was Daisy Ashford and she wrote it when she was 9 years old.

She called it, The Young Visiters; or Mr. Salteena’s Plan. After several years a publisher discovered it amongst her mother’s papers. To this day it has never been out of print.

i wrote a novel when i was nine called, raynor’s giant sandwich. without giving too much of the plot away, it was about a giant sandwich named franklin and how i went about eating him and the lessons that i subsequently learned after consuming my only friend in the world. my parents humored me by telling me that it was super-phat—but everyone else who read it said it smelled worse than asparagus urine.

but whatever: the young visiters is sublime. it doesn’t need to be contextualised in terms of the age of its author. it’s not juvenilia. unlike raynor’s giant sandwich or your roommate’s latest dream, it has a cohesive plot and interesting characters. and it’s world-view is absolutely captivating. here is how it starts:

Mr. Salteena was an elderly man of 42 and was fond of asking people to stay with him. He had quite a young girl staying with him of 17 named Ethel Monticue. Mr. Salteena had dark short hair and mustache and wiskers which were very black and twisty. He was middle sized and he had very pale blue eyes. 

the published version (with an intro by j.m. barrie) retains miss ashford’s charming misspellings: brekfast, idiotick, bronkitis, &c, and is worth your perusal.

also: the novel was adapted into a beebeecee movie in 2003 and stars: harold zidler, house,  billy mack, and cleopatra. 

finally: i would be thoroughly scolded by my niece if i didn’t use this occasion to plug her novel called the great day. 

a taxonomy of noses

so i was p90x-ing last night while reading one of my all-time favourite tracts on nose classifications systems. it’s called nasology by george jabet* (1848). the preface states:

We have a belief founded on long continued personal observation that there is more in a Nose than most owners of that appendage are generally aware. We believe that besides being an ornament to the face or a convenient handle by which to grasp an impudent fellow, it is an important index to its owner’s character… It will not be contended that all the faculties and properties of mind are revealed by the Nose, for instance we can read nothing of Temper or the Passions from it… The proposition which is sought to be established is this THE NOSE is AN IMPORTANT INDEX TO CHARACTER

here is a key to what jabet says your nose says about you:

• the Roman nose: indicates great Decision, considerable Energy, Firmness, Absence of refinement, and Disregard for the bienséances of life
• the Greek nose: indicates Refinement of character, Love for the fine arts and belles lettres, Astuteness of craft, and a preference for indirect rather than direct action
• the Cogitative nose: indicates a Cogitative mind having strong powers of Thought and given to close and serious Meditation
• the Jewish nose: indicates considerable Shrewdness in worldly matters, a deep Insight into character, and facility of turning that insight to profitable account
• the Snub nose: indicates natural weakness, mean disagreeable disposition with petty insolence, and diverse other characteristics of conscious weakness
• the Feminine nose: indicates refinement and purity of taste and the ability to excel in the minor domestic departments of life.

i should point out that this book is an absolute LAUGH FACTORY especially for all fans/h8ters of phrenology and m. alphonse bertillon. there is not a single paragraph of pseudoscientific quackery in this volume that will not cause you to belch with laughter. i highly recommend that you peruse it the next time that you are cranking out plyometrics or whatever it is that you like to multitask reading 19th century literature with.

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*a pseudonym of victorian prankster, eden warwick. [the small print: this nasology tract was actually a satire on phrenology and why it is totally stupid]. for a book in a similar vein, you can give this a looky-loo.

the great bowel shift

as i have not officially called off show and tell day, i am still receiving the odd submission. and thus i have recently received a hot lead on the great vowel shift from an internet celebrity of such magnitude that i’m not even going to say his name, nor am going to link to a picture of him in camo pants holding a dead snake.

anywho, while i have always been captivated with the great vowel shift and the mystery behind it (which is referenced in the dinosaur comic above), my favourite part has always been the EXCEPTIONS and the eventual spelling fallout that would soon take place. wikipedia elaborates:

Not all words underwent certain phases of the Great Vowel Shift. ea in particular did not take the step to [iː] in several words, such as great, break, steak, swear and bear. Other examples are father, which failed to become [ɛː] / ea, and broad, which failed to become [oː].

Shortening of long vowels at various stages produced further complications. ea is again a good example, shortening commonly before coronal consonants such as d and th, thus: dead, head, threat, wealth etc. (This is known as the bred-bread merger.) oo was shortened from [uː] to [ʊ] in many cases before k, d and less commonly t, thus book, foot, good etc. Some cases occurred before the change of [ʊ] to [ʌ]: blood, flood. Similar, yet older shortening occurred for some instances of ou: country, could.

if the history of the english language is your bag (it is the bag of the ragbag), you might enjoy the following (raynor recommended) books. they are written for the general public and are a real gas.

• the mother tongue by bill bryson (1990).
• the adventure of english: the biography of a language by melvyn bragg (2006).

if you want to skip the foreplay and go right to the authority, then look no further than a history of the english language (5th edition) by albert c. baugh & thomas cable (1951).

how i became a famous novel reviewer

a very good friend of mine° by the name of steve hely is about to release his debut novel, bombastically titled how i became a famous novelist. steve was courteous enough to send me an advanced proof which i have read (and re-read) and am now ready to say a few things about.

the novel is a keen satire of the modern literary milieu which chronicles a crafty slacker (pete tarslaw) working at an essay mill as he attempts to develop a formula for becoming a bestselling author (he eventually does become one for reasons that, ironically, he cannot control (this is not a spoiler since it is revealed in the title)).

steve has taken a note from us bloggers and filled the novel with hilarious lists. consider the protagonist’s goals as a novelist

1. FAME—Realistic amount. Enough to open new avenues of sexual opportunity. Personal assistant to read my mail. grocery shop, and so on.
2. FINANCIAL COMFORT—Never have a job again. Retire. Spend rest of life lying around, pursuing hobbies (boating? skeet shooting?).
3. STATELY HOME BY OCEAN (OR SCENIC LAKE)—Spacious library, bay windows, wet bar. HD TV, discreetly placed. Comfortable couch.
4. HUMILIATE POLLY AT HER WEDDING.

or some of the possible metaphors/moving scenes that the protagonist comes up with for his book:

• Woman who says stuff that turns out to have extra meaning when it’s revealed that she’s in a wheelchair.
• They pull over by a prison and see the prisoners working on the farm. One of the prisoners tips his hat.
• Overheard conversations at truck stops (blue collar earnestness).
• Everybody singing along to the same song (Patsy Cline?) on the radio. It reminds them all of different stuff (first kiss, night before he shipped out, etc.)
• They pass some kids going to the prom. Genevieve says she never had a prom, so Silas dances with her in a cornfield.

the novel that the protagonist winds up writing is every bit as awful and as contrived as his lists make it sound—and this is where steve excels. it is very very difficult to write bad prose well. when i was a kid i devised a plan that if the cops ever nabbed me (for doing whatever) i would plead insanity and just say wacky incongruent things until they let me off the hook scot-free. writing bad prose well (like pretending to be non compos mentis) is a delicate balance of believability. too much on one side of the spectrum and it will be jarring and conspicuous, too much on the other side and it will lose its edge.

steve is adept at humorously crafting a convincingly run-of-the-mill bestselling book within a book and this is why how i became a famous novelist shines. there are yucks, to be sure, but like all successful black comedies, the yucks are funny until the reader realises that they are based on a darker truth. and when that darker truth is the state of modern literature, the reader’s bellowing guffaws may soon turn to whimpering sobs.

you can (as i have done) become a fan of steve’s novel on facebook, gossip about it on goodreads, or purchase it from amazon.

there is a third option

i will be watching deep water tonight (not to be confused with deep impact which is a bruce willis movie where he and ben affleck drill for gold on mars). normally i would lob some predictable adjectives at you like profound and gripping and haunting. i’m not going to do that this time. i WILL tell you that it’s about a solo yacht race around the world, but i will also hint that it’s REALLY about so much more than that. this is a movie that will stay with you in the way that only the best book or movie or song can.

also: (if you can help it) don’t read up on the documentary (or the race that it documents) beforehand, there are some twisty turns that take place in it that are best experienced WITHOUT prior knowledge and the internet loves to spoil.

other doc recommendations: this one and this one.

to craunch the marmoset »

English as She Is Spoke is the common name of a 19th century book credited to José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino, which was intended as a Portuguese-English conversational guide or phrase book, but is regarded as a classic source of unintentional humour.

The humour is a result of dictionary-aided literal translation, [from Portugese to French and then to English] which causes many idiomatic expressions to be translated wildly inappropriately.

• He is beggar as a church rat
• Friendship of a child is water into a basket
• Burn the politeness
• After the paunch comes the dance
• To make paps for the cats

Mark Twain said of English as She Is Spoke that “Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect.”

try the technique at home for FREE.

a severe constraint

yesterday, i received a very curious volume from a friend who knows how much i relish (1) well designed books, and (2) texts written under an elected constraint. the book is severance by robert olen butler (2006). the book’s jacket says:

After decapitation, the human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes.

In a heightened state of emotion people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute.

Inspired by the intersection of these two seemingly unrelated concepts, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler has written sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, capturing the flow of thoughts and feelings that rush through a mind after the head has been severed. The characters are both real and imagined - Medusa (beheaded by Perseus, 2000 B.C.), Anne Boleyn (beheaded at the behest of Henry VIII, 1536), a chicken (beheaded for Sunday dinner in Alabama, 1958), and the author himself (decapitated on the job, 2008). These final thoughts are not a morbid or macabre reflection on death; they are a very distilled way of looking back on life and capturing its essence.

here, the author reads some of his stories on all things considered.

thornton gone wilder

i don’t want to get all gary vanderchunk on you, but this article in the hudson review is worth a look-see in the hopes that it might convince you that thornton wilder (and his works) are worthy of a longer look-see:

He was born in 1897, the same year as William Faulkner, a year after F. Scott Fitzgerald, and two years before Hemingway; he published his first novel in 1926, the same year as Soldiers’ Pay and The Sun Also Rises, a year after The Great Gatsby and Arrowsmith, and a year before Elmer Gantry, and was immediately hailed as one of the best writers of his generation. He went on to write several more novels, almost all of them critically acclaimed bestsellers, and to win three Pulitzer Prizes, one for fiction and two for drama (he is still the only writer to have won Pulitzers in both categories). One of his novels was among the twentieth century’s great publishing sensations; one of his plays is the most performed American theatrical work of all time; yet another of his stage efforts was the basis for one of the most successful Broadway musicals in history. Some consider him the equal or superior of Hemingway and Fitzgerald as a novelist, and some place him alongside—or above—Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams in the pantheon of American drama.

Why, then, can it seem as if Thornton Wilder has fallen between the cracks?

an impersonal passion: thornton wilder by bruce bawer. in the hudson review (autumn 2008)

up on the up series

friends,
one of the things that i don’t do is tell you what to do. i don’t tell you that your breath is too garlicky on certain days (it is) or that you post too many pictures of gimmicky knick-knacks captioned only with “WANT!!!” I don’t tell you that, while your posts about clipping your toenails are enthralling, they should not be written entirely in the title field because some people (not me of course) could find that to be obnoxious.

i don’t tell you these things so that on the rare instance that i do tell you something, you will take me seriously. and now is one of those times. watch (if you have not already done so) the up series. a wikinopsis:

The Up Series is a series of 7 documentary films that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. Every seven years, the director, Michael Apted, films new material from as many of the fourteen as he can get to participate.

it might not be all happy, it might not follow a hollywood script, it may even be boring in parts, but it is the drama of human life—presented in a way that no other work of art can. and trust me, this is a work of art.

for maximum effect, watch the whole series in marathon fashion over the course of a weekend. rent it from netflix, buy it from amazon, violate its copyright, or borrow it from me. watch it with a loved one. it will be worth it.