Institutionalised sexism of high literature

About this time last week, I sallied blithely into print with the unimpeachable aim of throwing a custard pie at a Swede. Horace Engdahl - the permanent secretary of the committee that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature - had made some rather beastly remarks about American literature being "insular" and "ignorant", and boasted that Europe, of all places, was "the centre of the literary world". Pish, I said, and tush - from my position of unassailable global expertise. What about these writers, eh? And these ones? And who have you got, you umlaut-slinging weirdoes?

Anyway, I obviously put the wind up old Engdahl, because his team instantly closed ranks and gave the Nobel Prize to somebody called Le Clezio. Hah. One up to the special relationship, I thought. Then I got an email from our chief fiction critic, Lionel Shriver. Lionel is an American novelist who lives about half the year in England.

"A bone to pick," announced the subject line. "I hope you don't think that I'm some rabid feminist always on the look-out for an opportunity to pounce," she continued, "but the gender skew in your article was so drastic that it leapt out and bit me on the nose."

* Read more from Sam Leith

Nursing her sore nose, Lionel had crunched numbers in my piece. "Total citations of authors: 39 men; 6 women… In terms of appreciative references, the only female writers who made an appearance were A.L. Kennedy, Amélie Nothomb, Banana Yoshimoto, and the below-mentioned Emily Dickinson… In touting American literature, which was what the article was about, the contrast is even more stark. Citations of American authors: 14 men, one woman - Emily Dickinson - who was a poet, not a novelist, and has been long dead. Basically, in defending the vitality and breadth and ambition of contemporary American fiction, the article cited 100 per cent male writers."

There was simply no answer to that. I was mortified. She had me bang to rights. Did it make me more of a sexist pig, or less of one, I wondered, that I didn't notice for one instant while writing that more or less all the names I instinctively reached for were men?

It would be idiotic to argue that "men write better books than women". And it isn't a capitulation to PC, or wet liberal self-castigation, to be embarrassed and alarmed at having cut half of the literary scene clean out of the picture without noticing.

I've read and loved Nicola Barker, A.S. Byatt, Hilary Mantel, Annie Proulx, A.L. Kennedy, Audrey Niffenegger, Ali Smith, Lionel Shriver, Rose Tremain, Marina Lewycka, Lorrie Moore, A.M. Homes, Margaret Atwood, Donna Tartt, Auntie Tamara Cobbleigh and all. My favourite novel - Middlemarch - is by a woman, and Sylvia Plath was the poet to whom I first became passionately attached. Yet when scraping around in haste for Nobel-Prizey-type authors, I went straight to the boys.

I don't think I'm alone in this (though I am a particularly crass example). Lionel doesn't seem to either. She admires Margaret Forster, Amy Bloom, Allegra Goodman, Andrea Barrett and Helen Dunmore, "but these writers do not naturally spring to mind when we reach to grab big literary names out of our heads - and that's what I rue. In defining great American literature with male authors, you were accurately reflecting a cultural prejudice that's a great deal larger than you."

"I'm convinced that high literature is the last redoubt of institutionalised sexism," is her view of it. "Female writers are always put in a different category. And the more purely male icons are promoted as the be-all and end-all of real literature, the more women's implicit second-class status as writers is reinforced."

I think Lionel puts her finger on something with "category". Great novels and big prizes are an oddly macho corner of the literary world. Perhaps there is something characteristically male about the bombastic self-presentation of big state-of-the-nation novels; that when women write state-of-the-nation novels (Marilynne Robinson seems to be a case in point) they get on with it without awarding themselves the full trumpet voluntary. Perhaps "beallandendallism", so to speak, is a male thing; and that assumption is unconsciously adopted by critics.

Already, we're faced with some deeply questionable sexual generalisations. There are some facts on the ground, though. The publishing market tells us a substantial number of men, around middle age, stop reading fiction. That's not true, or much less true, of women. Yet the big noise at the beallandendallist end of things is still made, disproportionately, by Y-chromosomes.

Is this because we tend to read as it were homosexually, men finding male minds on paper more congenial than women's; and men are still the ones in charge of big prizes? Only five of the 17 sitting members of the Swedish Academy are female, for example. Are we looking, I wonder, at the equivalent of the long-standing culinary prejudice that cast women as "cooks" and men as "chefs"?

I don't know what the answer is. But it strikes me as a rather harder and more interesting question than America versus Europe.

---------
by Sam Leith, originally published at www.telegraph.co.uk

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Modern Library's 100 Best English Language Novels

Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century as selected by the Modern Library. It is worth noting that Modern Library and Random House USA, the parent company, are both US companies. Critics have argued that this is responsible for a very American view of the greatest novels. Most British, Canadian and Australian academics, and even Random House UK, have differing lists of 'greatest novels'.

In the spring of 1998, the Modern Library polled its editorial board to find the best 100 novels of the 20th century. The board consisted of Daniel J. Boorstin, A. S. Byatt, Christopher Cerf, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Styron and Gore Vidal.

Ulysses by James Joyce topped the list, followed by The Great Gatsby and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The most recent novel in the list is Ironweed (1983) by William Kennedy, and the oldest are Sister Carrie (1900) by Theodore Dreiser and Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad. Joseph Conrad has four novels on the list, the most of any author. William Faulkner, E. M. Forster, Henry James, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Evelyn Waugh each have three. There are ten other authors with two. Only eight of the novels were written by women, with the top three being Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse at number 15, Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence at 58 and Willa Cather's Death Comes For the Archbishop at 61.

A Reader's List 100 Best Novels was published separately by Modern Library in 1999. With over 200,000 votes in total, readers selected Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand as the two best novels; her other two fictional books—Anthem and We the Living—appear as #7 and #8, respectively. In contrast to the Modern Library List, the Readers List placed Ulysses as #11 and The Great Gatsby as #13. The most recent novel in the Reader's list is Someplace to Be Flying (1998) by Charles de Lint, and the oldest is Sister Carrie (1900) by Theodore Dreiser. Charles de Lint appears on the list 8 times and Robert A. Heinlein appears on the list 7 times.

Criticism of the list includes that it did not include enough novels by women, and not enough novels from outside North America and Europe. For example in the UK many of the novels on the list are regarded as given undue credit. In addition, some contend it was a "sales gimmick", since most of the titles in the list are also sold by Modern Library.


The Editor Choice:
1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara
23. U.S.A.(trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE’S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES’ TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE’S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington


Reader Choices:

1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard
11. ULYSSES by James Joyce
12. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
13. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. DUNE by Frank Herbert
15. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein
16. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
17. A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
18. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
19. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
20. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
21. GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
22. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
23. SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
24. GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
25. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
26. SHANE by Jack Schaefer
27. TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM by Nevil Shute
28. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
29. THE STAND by Stephen King
30. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN by John Fowles
31. BELOVED by Toni Morrison
32. THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison
33. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
34. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
35. MOONHEART by Charles de Lint
36. ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
37. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
38. WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor
39. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
40. FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies
41. SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING by Charles de Lint
42. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
43. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
44. YARROW by Charles de Lint
45. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft
46. ONE LONELY NIGHT by Mickey Spillane
47. MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles de Lint
48. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
49. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
50. TRADER by Charles de Lint
51. THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
52. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
53. THE HANDMAID’S TALE by Margaret Atwood
54. BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
55. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
56. ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
57. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
58. GREENMANTLE by Charles de Lint
59. ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card
60. THE LITTLE COUNTRY by Charles de Lint
61. THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis
62. STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein
63. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
64. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
65. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
66. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
67. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
68. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
69. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
70. THE WOOD WIFE by Terri Windling
71. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
72. THE DOOR INTO SUMMER by Robert Heinlein
73. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert Pirsig
74. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
75. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
76. AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O’Brien
77. FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
78. ARROWSMITH by Sinclair Lewis
79. WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
80. NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
81. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
82. GUILTY PLEASURES by Laurell K. Hamilton
83. THE PUPPET MASTERS by Robert Heinlein
84. IT by Stephen King
85. V. by Thomas Pynchon
86. DOUBLE STAR by Robert Heinlein
87. CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY by Robert Heinlein
88. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
89. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
90. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST by Ken Kesey
91. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
92. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
93. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey
94. MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
95. MULENGRO by Charles de Lint
96. SUTTREE by Cormac McCarthy
97. MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock
98. ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach
99. THE CUNNING MAN by Robertson Davies
100. THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie

source: http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/

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Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim Dead

Indonesian fiction writer, Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim, died on Monday morning at around 9:55 pm. She died at the age of 61 years.

"Before he died, he had three times the Anfal. Sunday 10 am and 4 pm. Continue to the third Anfal 4 o'clock this morning. After that blood tension continued to fall, the upper bound 93 and under 54," Siro, the author's adoptive boy.


Ratna was treated in RSSA since Saturday (26 / 3). According Siro, she diagnosis suffered a stroke, heart, lung, and diabetes. On the first day Rachel also briefly hospitalized unconscious. Previously, Rachel was hospitalized four days since 15 March and then treated six days since 18 March.

Two years ago, the writer born in Malang, 24 April 1949, was also once a week in the RSSA hospitalized since Wednesday, December 4, 2009. The assessment showed that there was a blockage in the head and partially blocked blood vessels that had broken.

At that time she was taken to hospital after experiencing dizziness and tremors or prolonged seizures in his right hand. Additionally, parts of the body difficult to move the right side. Rachel convicted suffered a mild stroke. Experienced similar symptoms this year.

Maintenance costs of Rp 24 million when it is borne brother, friend, friends, acquaintances, and donors. They are from religious backgrounds of professions such as journalists, pro-democracy activists, writers and other artists.

However, this year Ratna run out of money so that some friends held a fund-raising solidarity action by opening a personal account of Rachel.

In a conversation, Ratna said, never seriously ill. He was maintaining a diet that was always healthy and fit. He was often feel tired because involved in many activities.

According to Ratna, she is keeping your diet and lifestyle. Rachel eating enough and even then usually only five spoons of rice. He would prefer a breakfast with bread and eggs. He also diligently eating vegetables and fruits.

Ratna disabled since childhood. But he is known productive. There are about 400 short stories and serialized stories, plus dozens of novels, which he created. Because of disability, the sixth child of 11 siblings of the couple Saleh Ibrahim and Siti Bidahsari Arifin's dead-both-it "writing" with his memory. He dictated the story line, his assistant who wrote the hand or typed with a typewriter or computer.

Some of his works (a collection of short stories and novels), among others, Special Gift, By morning, her name is Massa, The play in Twilight Town, Sumi and drawings, Weak Cape, Chinatown in the city of Malang, and Lipstick in a Bag Doni.

Weak Cape novel is dedicated to the residents who oppose the construction of luxury housing on town forest land. Housing is now named Ijen Nirwana Residence belongs to the Bakrie Group. In fact, Rachel was involved in discussions and demonstrations against the transfer of functions of the urban forest into luxury housing.

Ratna is also known as socio-cultural activist who co-founded and take care of Bhakti Conscience Foundation, NGO Entropic Malang, Malang Pajoeng Cultural Foundation, and the Forum Pelangi Malang.

Recipient of several awards in the fields of literature and feminism had never participated in seminars and training abroad.

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Greatest Literary Works: 10 Marterpieces of Christian Fiction

Christianity was the founding religion of both the Western and Eastern empires and, as is to be expected, enormous amounts of literature has been produced based on the tenets and ideals of Christianity. This list looks at ten of the greatest masterpieces in writing which come from a Christian perspective.

#10
A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
This book makes the list primarily for mixing science and Christianity in a favorable way. The two subjects are often seen as being at odds with each other, but in L’Engle’s book, the protagonist, Meg Murry, and her scientist family, all very intelligent, discover a way to fold space-time and travel anywhere in the Universe, instantly. They go to the planet Uriel, which is like Heaven, where everything is good and winged centaurs sing praises. They then learn that the Universe is being attacked by a monster called the Black Thing. The Black Thing captured Meg’s father when he was working on faster-than-light travel, and took him to the planet Camazotz, where everything is controlled by a disembodied brain called IT. IT demands absolute conformity, to the point that all houses and towns and cities look precisely the same. Camazotz has been enveloped by the Black Thing, of which IT is the ruler.

Throughout the book, Meg and family discover many fascinating things, including three immortal women named Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who, each of whom is very unique. Mrs. Who speaks several languages, and frequently quotes Shakespeare and the Bible. The protagonists finally wind up at Camazotz, and her brother is kidnapped by IT. The rest of them escape, but after learning how to defeat IT, Meg goes back to rescue her brother. IT cannot tolerate the emotion known as “love.” They return to Earth much the wiser about how to live decently and treat others well.


#9Piers Plowman
William Langland (c. 1370)

One of the more explicit allegories, with every character named for the quality or emotion he or she displays. In Malvern Hills, Worchestershire, a man named Will (free will) dreams of a tower on a hill, and a fortress in a valley (Heaven and Hell), and a “fair field full of folk,” between them (mankind). He sets out on a journey to attain the tower. Piers, a plowman, appears and offers to guide Will to the tower. On the way, Piers speaks to him of Truth, while Will searches for anyone who might enter the tower with him, namely Dowel (Do well), Dobet (Do Better) and Dobest (Do Best). Will is searching for how a Christian should live, according to Catholicism.


#8 The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1390)


It is ranked so low on this list because, although it deals with Christianity in post-Black Death England, it is more a critique of English society at that time. It’s reliance on Christian philosophy and morality, however, requires that it be given a spot here. Various characters meet up on a road as they walk to Canterbury Cathedral to see the shrine of Thomas Becket. There is a knight, a miller, a cook, a friar, nuns, etc. They decide to have a story contest to pass the time, and the stories they tell all deal with various principles and ideas of the Catholic Church in England at that time.

Chaucer wrote this work during the Great Schism, as it is known now. The Catholic Church split right down the middle in 1378, and this lasted until 1417, after his death. One pope said the throne should be in Rome. Another claimed himself as pope and said it should be in Avignon, France. It was finally resolved with a Council and a few excommunications, and the election of a new pope in Rome. The tales show a diversity of theological understanding, various disagreements, and yet, the characters remain together in their journey to Canterbury, which Chaucer uses to symbolize Christianity holding all its followers together, whether they agree or not on any issue.

# 7 Psychomachia
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (c. 400)


“Psychomachia” means “Battle for the Soul.” It ranks so high, despite not being well known, for being one of the very first, if not the first, Christian allegories. It is an epic poem of about 1,000 lines, not very long, which tells the story, in the style of Virgil’s Aeneid, of a titanic and desperate battle between virtues and sins, inside a nameless character, intended as the reader. All the famous deadly sins and cardinal virtues are present, though not precisely listed in their modern forms. Pagan idolatry initiates the conflict, bringing Pride into the fray, which is defeated by Selflessness, and so on. The final fight is comprised of the double threat of Hatred and Wrath versus Love, which finally defeats all sin in the name of Christ Jesus. 1,000 Christian martyrs then praise the Faith with a Hallelujah.


# 6 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
C. S. Lewis (1950)

His entire Narnia series of children’s books teem with Christian themes, but the first that he wrote, and most famous, is the most explicit, being a loose retelling of the life of Jesus. “Aslan” is Turkish for “Lion.” And for the child in all of us, Lewis includes talking animals, lots of magic, fantastic creatures like centaurs and unicorns, naiads and dryads, which are like tree spirits (similar to Tolkien’s ents). Narnia is under the spell of Jadis, the White Witch, who has set herself up as the Queen of Narnia, and makes it eternally frozen and snowing, but never Christmas.

Four children from Earth find their way into Narnia, and discover that their arrival is predestined, and heralds the long-awaited coming of Aslan, who will right all the wrongs. Along the way he teaches them what is virtuous, what is sinful, and then deals with the error made by one of them, Edmund. The Witch demands the boy die for the crime of betraying his own siblings. Aslan offers himself in the boy’s place, and the Witch thinks that this Deep Magic will give her control over Narnia once and for all. Boy, is she wrong.




# 5 A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens (1843)


Many critics believe that Christmas is the most popular holiday around the world at present, not because of the Nativity story, but because of its revival in Dickens’s mid-Victorian novella about charity for all, regardless of religion, social standing, or anything else. In secular terms, that is what Christmas should be about, he argues in this book: giving to others without thought of recompense; the one time of the year when all differences should be put aside for a brotherhood of man.

Ebenezer Scrooge is an odious miser, a money lender, who refuses to give money to anyone for nothing. He lends to those he thinks can pay him back, but he charges quite a lot of interest, and is quick to charge more when payment is late. He does not care how poor or unable anyone is to pay him back, or how desperately they need food and shelter. But that all changes on Christmas Eve, when he is visited by the ghost of his old partner, Marley, who warns him that he is in danger of Hell. Then the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, visit him and show him how horrible a man he is. He changes for the better and everyone lives happily ever after, beginning on Christmas Day.

Many of the story’s elements have entered the vernacular around the world. Misers are now nicknamed Scrooges, and people much more frequently say, “God bless us, everyone.”

But is it explicitly Christian? Yes, it must be considered so, because even in secular terms, the root of the word Christmas cannot be ignored, and Dickens chose this holiday over all the others. Thus, the principles of charity for all and generosity and love are evoked in Christ’s name.

# 4 The Pilgrim’s Progress
John Bunyan (1678)


The most obviously allegorical of all Christian allegories. The protagonist is named Christian, who reads the Bible and then is burdened by a heavy packpack, which holds the knowledge of his sin. He is met in the fields one day by a man named Evangelist, who directs him to the Wicket Gate. Christian immediately leaves his wife, children, and home to seek the Gate and a deliverance from his sin, lest he sink in Tophet (Hell). Tophet is thought to be where, in Jerusalem, the Canaanites sacrificed children to the god Moloch by roasting them to death. Christian is diverted on his journey by Mr. World Wiseman, who tempts him to seek deliverance through the law (earthly law). Christian refuses and reaches the gate, where Good Will instructs him further. He finds the place of deliverance, which is Calvary, where the straps of his backpack snap and he is relieved of his burden. In the 2nd part, Christian’s family finally goes after him and thus finds deliverance from their sins, and reunion with Christian in Paradise. Good Will reveals himself as Jesus.

#3 The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser (1590-96)


It is probably the longest single epic poem in English, and Spenser intended it to be twice or four times as long as what he finished. It is 6 Books, each celebrating a particular virtue: holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice, and courtesy. The first book is the most famous, since Spenser wrote in such a laid-back style that it takes him quite a long time to say anything, and most readers quit with the first book. He also invented the Spenserian stanza for the work. In the first book, the protagonist is the Redcrosse Knight, symbolizing King George of England (the red cross was and still is on the English flag).

He rides over the English countryside, getting into adventures, and rescuing Una, a damsel in distress, who symbolizes both Queen Elizabeth I and the Virgin Mary. She travels with a lion (God’s law) and a lamb (God’s love). She recruits him to save her family’s castle from a monstrous dragon (Satan), whom the Redcrosse knight defeats in combat after putting on the armor of God. This duel, near the end of the first book, is one of the most famous events of the poem, and a classic tale of a knight slaying a dragon. The protagonists come across various villains on their journey, such as Duessa, who represents the false Church, Archimago, a sorcerer who represents paganistic heresy, who hates Redcrosse and England, and King Arthur and Merlin.

#2
Paradise Lost
John Milton (1667)


Rather than an allegory, this epic poem is overtly theological, and a masterpiece of explanation as to why God allows people to suffer, how sin began, why Jesus must be the Messiah, etc. Milton enters deep into philosophy many times, especially when God, watching from Heaven, explains that mankind has just committed sin and killed itself by disobeying his law (don’t eat that tree’s fruit). So with Man officially fallen from grace, the Son of God, still in Heaven, having not yet been born mortal on Earth, who has no name, announces to his Father that he will descend into the world of men, become one, and allow himself to be killed to atone for Man’s sin.

Satan, meanwhile, is given one of the most interesting portrayals in literature. He is practically the hero of the poem, from his and his minions’ point of view. They are cast out of Heaven for warring against God. Satan wants to be God, and refuses to quit. Now burning in Hell, he and his minions discuss how to get back at God. Some want more open war. Satan advises against this, and decides on surreptitious treachery: he knows of God’s newest and greatest creation, Man, on Earth, and will travel out of Hell, up to Earth, and corrupt that creation, to make God despair and hate him. How evil!

One of the most fun moments in the poem is a flashback showing the actual war in Heaven. You ask yourself how those already immortal can be killed, but this is not the issue. Satan and his angels fight against Michael and his angels, and whoever is stronger will overpower the other and gain the throne, casting the losers out of Heaven to Hell. Michael and his angels are nearly beaten back to the walls of the Holy City, but are saved at the last moment by the Son of God, who saddles up a chariot of ethereal fire and does what everyone would love to see in a film: Jesus kicking ass. After all, he’s not a tame lion.

#1
La Divina Commedia
Dante Alighieri (1308-21)

The Divine Comedy is the finest work in the Italian language, which is saying a lot. We would be hard-pressed to decide on the greatest work in the English language, or any other language, but Dante has Italian pretty well sewn up. He invented terza rima for the purpose of this epic poem, a rhyme scheme still popular and widespread today. It does a fine job interlocking the 3-line stanzas. The Comedy, as he titled it, doesn’t have one single joke. It’s a comedy in the sense that Dante, the main character, journeys upward from Hell, through Purgatory, to Heaven, and not the other way around. So it has a happy ending and is not a tragedy.

But the most famous Canzon of it, the Inferno, is 34 books of the most awe-inspiringly elaborate, horrifying tortures anyone has devised in fiction. The modern Christian conception of a lake of fire is nowhere to be found. Instead, much more interesting are the punishments Dante devises for the various sinners in response to their particular sins. Hell is in 9 circles, and Dante constructs it as an amalgam of the Ancient Greek and Roman Hells, combined with Christian ideas. Various popes and cardinals are down there, along with all who died before Jesus’s death removed sin from mortal man. The Harrowing of Hell is mentioned near the beginning, after which the Old Testament heroes, such as Noah, Abraham, Moses and King David, are rescued up to Heaven.

The entire poem is a critique of various famous figures from Dante’s time, and antiquity. Some he admired, like Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, are in Limbo. Julius Caesar is there, and Saladin, who was decent and chivalrous. Alexander the Great, however, is eternally boiling in Phlegethon, a river of blood in the 7th Circle. Talk about macabre. And if you’re wondering, yes, lawyers are down there, boiling in a sea of pitch.

For its jaw-dropping brilliance of imagery from page one to page end, and the fact that the reader has been taught quite a few lessons without realizing the work’s didactic nature, Dante must surely secure for his masterpiece the first spot.

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source: http://listverse.com

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Twitterature: Celebrating a Form of Poem in 140 Characters

As literary coincidences go, it might not carry quite the same cosmic portent as Halley’s Comet appearing in the month of Mark Twain’s birth. But Monday happens to be both World Poetry Day and the fifth anniversary of the moment when a young American software designer named Jack Dorsey sent out to the world the first message using the service that soon became known as Twitter.

The ambrosial stuff of poesy it was not, except maybe to Dilbert fans: “inviting coworkers.”

But the confluence of these two events — both having to do with humanity’s deep and sometimes uncontrollable need to communicate — is occasioning a fresh outpouring of opinion about the future of Twitter as a vehicle for real creativity, not just for entertaining train wrecks like Charlie Sheen’s.

For much of Twitter’s life, the idea that its 140-character stricture could be a crucible for a new kind of ambitious writing has been, more than anything else, a punch line. The 2009 publication of “Twitterature” — a book in which 80 works of Western literature are boiled down into Twitter messages (“Laertes is unhappy that I killed his father and sister. What a drama queen! Oh well, fight this evening.”) — didn’t help matters.

But there’s evidence that the literary flowering of Twitter may actually be taking place. The Twitter haiku movement — “twaiku” to its initiates — is well under way. Science fiction and mystery enthusiasts especially have gravitated to its communal immediacy. And even litterateurs, with a capital L, seem to be warming to it.

For two years, John Wray, the author of the well-regarded novel “Lowboy,” has been spinning out a Twitter story based on a character named Citizen that he cut from the novel, a contemporary version of the serialization that Dickens and other fiction writers once enjoyed.

“I don’t view the constraints of the format as in any way necessarily precluding literary quality,” he said. “It’s just a different form. And it’s still early days, so people are still really trying to figure out how to communicate with it, beyond just reporting that their Cheerios are soggy.” (Mr. Wray’s breakfast-food posts are, at the very least, far funnier than the usual kind: “Citizen opened the book. Inside, he found the purpose of existence expressed logarithmically. From what he could tell, it involved toast.”)

The linguist Ben Zimmer said he thought the growing popularity of the service as a creative outlet could be ascribed to the same “impulse that goes into writing a sonnet, of accepting those kind of limits.” But he admitted that his favorite Twitter literature in recent weeks has not been exactly Shakespearean: the wildly profane and popular Twitter musings that purported to be by the Chicago mayor-elect, Rahm Emanuel, but whose real author was recently revealed to be the rock journalist Dan Sinker.

“The deeper you got into it,” Mr. Zimmer said, “the more novelistic it became, and it was really compelling. It’s almost impossible to see it working in a traditional novel format. But as a Twitter creation it was hilarious, and worth every word.”[nytimes.com]

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Judge Rejects Google’s Deal to Digitize Books

Google’s ambition to create the world’s largest digital library and bookstore has run into the reality of a 300-year-old legal concept: copyright.


The company’s plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed on Tuesday when a federal judge in New York rejected a sweeping $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers.

The decision throws into legal limbo one of the most ambitious undertakings in Google’s history, and it brings into sharp focus concerns about the company’s growing power over information. While the profit potential of the book project is not clear, the effort is one of the pet projects of Larry Page, the Google co-founder who is set to become its chief executive next month. And the project has wide support inside the company, whose corporate mission is to organize all of the world’s information.

“It was very much consistent with Larry’s idealism that all of the world’s information should be made available freely,” said Ken Auletta, the author of “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

But citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners.

Judge Chin acknowledged that “the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many,” but said that the proposed agreement was “not fair, adequate and reasonable.” He left open the possibility that a substantially revised agreement could pass legal muster. Judge Chin was recently elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, but handled the case as a district court judge.

The decision is also a setback for the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, which sued Google in 2005 over its book-scanning project. After two years of painstaking negotiations, the authors, publishers and Google signed a sweeping settlement that would have brought millions of printed works into the digital age.

The deal turned Google, the authors and the publishers into allies instead of opponents. Together, they mounted a defense of the agreement against an increasingly vocal chorus of opponents that included Google rivals like Amazon and Microsoft, as well as academics, some authors, copyright experts, the Justice Department and foreign governments.

Now the author and publisher groups have to decide whether to resume their copyright case against Google, drop it or try to negotiate a new settlement.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said in an interview that it was too early to tell what the next step would be. “The judge did expressly leave the door open for a revised settlement,” he said.

Hilary Ware, managing counsel at Google, said in a statement that the decision was “clearly disappointing,” adding: “Like many others, we believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the U.S. today.” The company would not comment further.

Google has already scanned some 15 million books. The entire text of books whose copyrights have expired are available through Google’s Book Search service. It shows up to 20 percent of copyrighted titles that it has licensed from publishers, and only snippets of copyrighted titles for which it has no license.

The settlement would have allowed it to go much further, making millions of out-of-print books broadly available online and selling access to them. It would have given authors and publishers new ways to earn money from digital copies of their works.

Yet the deal faced strong opposition. Among the most persistent objections, raised by the Justice Department and others, were concerns that it would have given Google exclusive rights to profit from millions of so-called orphan works, books whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. They also said no other company would be able to build a comparable library, leaving Google free to charge high prices for its collection. And some critics said the exclusive access to millions of books would help cement Google’s grip on the Internet search market.

Judge Chin largely agreed with the critics on those points. But he suggested that substantial objections would be eliminated if the settlement applied only to books whose authors or copyright owners would explicitly “opt in” to its terms.

When the Justice Department suggested as much last year during a court hearing, Google rejected the idea as unworkable. It would leave millions of orphan works out of the agreement and out of Google’s digital library, greatly diminishing its value to Google and to the public.

“Opt-in doesn’t look all that different from ordinary licensing deals that publishers do all the time,” said James Grimmelmann, a professor at New York Law School who has studied the legal aspects of the agreement. “That’s why this has been such a big deal — the settlement could have meant orphan books being made available again. This is basically going back to status quo, and orphan books won’t be available.”

Some longtime opponents of the settlement hailed the decision, saying that they hoped it would prompt Congress to tackle legislation that would make orphan works accessible.

“Even though it is efficient for Google to make all the books available, the orphan works and unclaimed books problem should be addressed by Congress, not by the private settlement of a lawsuit,” said Pamela Samuelson, a copyright expert at the University of California, Berkeley who helped organize efforts to block the agreement.

Gina Talamona, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement that the court had reached the “right result.”

A group of publishers said they were disappointed by the decision, but believed that it provided “clear guidance” on the changes necessary for the settlement to be approved.

John Sargent, the chief executive of Macmillan, spoke on behalf of the publishers, which included Penguin Group USA, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons.

“The publisher plaintiffs are prepared to enter into a narrower settlement along those lines to take advantage of its groundbreaking opportunities,” Mr. Sargent said in a statement. “We hope the other parties will do so as well.”

He added: “The publisher plaintiffs are prepared to modify the settlement agreement to gain approval. We plan to work together with Google, the Authors Guild and others to overcome the objections raised by the court and promote the fundamental principle behind our lawsuit, that copyrighted content cannot be used without the permission of the owner, or outside the law.”

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Julie Bosman and Claire Cain Miller contributed reporting.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html?ref=books#h[]

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Literature is important for the Nation Civilization

Neglect of HB Jassin Literary Documentation Centre is a mirror of cultural decline of literacy in the country, which have an impact on the lack of appreciation of literature. In fact, literature has an important role in shaping the nation's civilization.

"Leaving the neglected literary documentation center showed destruction of our civilization," said Martin Aleida, prolific writer who wrote short stories and books, on Wednesday (23 / 3). He considered the policy makers ignore the PDS HB Jassin because they do not have a strong cultural literacy, so do not think most comprehensive documentation center in Indonesian literature as something important.

Due to lack of funds, manager of PDS HB Jassin plans to close the documentation center was established in 1977. Tens of thousands of collections of works of literature and documentation relating to the literature were threatened.

The role of literature is very important to build civilization. Through literature, says Martin, one does not only develop the imagination that can be used to build the nation, but also as a medium to pass on the value of local wisdom to the young generation. Local wisdom that has shaped the national identity of Indonesia.

According to Martin, the neglect of literature stems from poor education system in Indonesia, which only entered the literature as reading material to memorize the story, not to be appreciated. Students read literary works through the synopsis prepared teachers. Students understand the outline of the story, but not capable of understanding the values ​​to be conveyed by the author.

This happens because most of the literary work in Indonesia was still in the area of ​​adults. Not many works of literature written back in easily understood language of children or adolescents, as has been done overseas.

Nirwan Dewanto author and poet said, through literature, language owned by a nation turned on and updated constantly. Through literature, people have the media to hang out and "play" with the language. "The development of language is characteristic of advanced human civilization," said Nirwan.

Effort to raise awareness of the literature, according to him, should continue to be done, not only move when already there are cases such as PDS HB Jassin. To save the PDS HB Jassin and other documentation centers, Nirwan saw the need for efforts from all parties, both government and society. For private parties want to get involved, the government need to encourage by providing incentives such as tax relief.

Neglect of documentation centers and libraries in Indonesia, according to Ninis Agustini, Lecturer Department of Information and Library Science Faculty of Communication University of Padjadjaran, Bandung, because people are reluctant to use it due to lack of information about the book or document sought.

This happens because the documentation center and library has not been handled by appropriate experts. There's an understanding that librarians simply a book keeper. "A librarian in addition be responsible for collection management must also be a consultant for visitors who want to access the collection," said Ninis. In some developed countries, librarians in the elementary course should be educated at least master the field of libraries.(

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Tragic Story of PDS HB Jassin

HB Jassin Libarary save 20,000 fiction books, 12,000 books nonfiction, and reference books and also around 600 800 drama, 16,000 clippings literature, collections such as sound recordings, handwritten manuscripts, typed manuscripts, and personal letters.

Governor of DKI Jakarta Decree which establishes the largest documentation centers of Indonesian literature throughout the world just got a budget of Rp 50 million per year has drawn anger among writers and scientists who are concerned with the legacy of literacy that was priceless.

Because SK was the Governor of DKI Jakarta, HB Jassin Literary Documentation Center (PDS HB Jassin) could be threatened with closing. Mafhumlah, with a budget of only Rp 50 million per year, that means do not suffice to pay employees and adequate treatment.

Writing in Kompasiana , writer and literary observers Djalil Linda writes, "Money is not everything. However, if the rescue efforts of Indonesian Literature masterpiece that tens of thousands of species that do not get proper financial support, this certainly makes the heart sore. And this nation feels slighted . Decree (Decree), the Governor of DKI Jakarta No. SK IV 215, dated February 16, 2011, which was signed directly by Fauzi Bowo stated clearly that the PDS HB Jassin only received Rp 50 million a year budget. "

Who was not shocked to read the letter? Moreover, funding for PDS HB Jassin which usually included in the group of funds to the Arts Council of Jakarta, Gedung Kesenian Jakarta, the Jakarta Arts Institute, and the Jakarta Arts Centre Management Board Ismai Marzuki Park is now included in "nations" and the Studio Theatre Land Water Wheel. Imagine, a place that contains tens of thousands of Indonesian Literature masterpiece is classified in the category of art studio, which is only feasible to obtain only Rp 50 million per year.

In previous years, PDS HB Jassin had received Rp 500 million each year. Then, funds dropped to Rp 300 million. Last year, the warehouse manager of the science of the artists, writers, and researchers within and outside the country has been struggling to receive funds to Rp 164 million circumcised. Now, more sprawl again ... Once again, USD 50 million received by the library!

It is clear how the Government of Indonesia, particularly the administration, that in fact it is an umbrella and a shelter for PDS HB Jassin since 1976, is now like a "sudden forget" its obligations to preserve the national heritage and culture of this very invaluable. Again, read the figure of Rp 50 million to finance 12 months to make people consider legitimate the abuse of the nation's work is in progress and may continue to take place repeatedly. I also wonder, from where the calculation of that figure for this giant library?

Is the government of Jakarta has been pretending not to know that for the cost of curing the book alone is over USD 40 million itself and maintenance by fumigation ideally performed twice a year for books not easily destroyed and eaten by moths? Not to mention the payroll 14 employees that have been so faithful to be there with a very minimal salary. They still have an excessive love of the place.

I can not imagine how many tears guliran Doctor Honoris Causa HB Jassin, Pope Literature Indonesia, which is so large for the literary merit of Indonesia, if he is still alive. As a famous author, he is also very thorough and diligent collecting thousands of documents of literature since 1932.

Various authors handwriting when it begins to write the script, biography, or scribble corrections, and correspondence of the authors of literary works also complements the work itself as goods that have become a book. Klipingan past newspaper from the era before World War II until after Indonesia's independence, plus the necessary documentation after the New Order 1966, all previously scattered in Gang Siwalan No. 3 and his home in Gang lute No. 8, his brother's house.

Leave it rest in Education and Language Development Centre, Jalan Diponegoro 82. HB Jassin not toil in vain. By deed dated June 28, 1976, HB Jassin Documentation resmilah Foundation is located in Taman Ismail Marzuki created. Thousands of the manuscript collection belonging to the Regional Government of DKI Jakarta and HB Jassin Literary Foundation Documentation. Who else if not the Governor Ali Sadikin, the governor at the time, which gives full encouragement for this noble purpose.

In addition to thousands of books, plays, pieces of newspaper that contains many literary works of authors collection HB Jassin, eventually many other Indonesian intellectuals, too, was intrigued. Busy-ramailah they donate books to add to this collection of Indonesian Literature library. The books collection professor Dr Damais some shelves, a collection of Haji Agus Salim, Mochtar Lubis collection consists of newspaper Indonesia Raya already bound from 1968 to 1974, the collection Wiratmo Soekito in the form of newspaper clippings and magazine paper, the collection of Dr. Boen Soemarjati, Imam Slamet Santoso professor's daughter, as many as six safes.

Not to mention a few professors of University of Indonesia, such as professors and doctoral Panuti Sudjiman Sri Wulan Rujiati Mulyadi, who used to give subjects of philology at the Faculty of Letters University of Indonesia, and various other figures for book lovers. Rendra handwriting when creating the concept of poetry, handwriting Chairil Anwar, Sutan Alisjahbana, Sitor Situmorang, as well as novel manuscript Pilgrimage of Iwan Simatupang, even amongst literary correspondence, all sitting there waiting destroyed if neglected care due to cost. Imagine, if complete documentation of literature in Indonesia, even in this world just goes away eventually. What a pity!

The more days; books, papers, important documents Indonesian literature increasingly swollen. Collection continues to grow more days, in conjunction with various researchers who stop by and take advantage of this knowledge repository for their thesis and dissertation. Foreign researchers from various universities in Malaysia, Australia, Germany, Holland, America, as well as innumerable. Indonesian journalists, reliable artists, lecturers, and students will understand well the "source" of information in the PDS literature their existence HB Jassin.

Mr. Jassin never dreamed like this when he was alive, "I wish on the first floor library building was special indeed Sastra Indonesia to Indonesian literature and various other areas. Floors two to Asian literature. Floors four European literature. All consists of modern literature or old literature . It was ideal, beautiful, and noble ideals of great writers of Indonesia. Really all come true?

He died 11 years ago. His desire has not been realized. Until now, even coverage to classify the parts of the literature was located on different floors, really far from the dream. What a miserable building PDS HB Jassin. A steep metal ladder and make people have to be extra careful arranging melangkahkah breath and legs, which are still modest reading room, plus storage room of books, documentation somber and filled with folders that do not shine anymore. Place an increasingly narrow and less care maximal just waiting for the masterpiece that there be a rickety slowly.

I can not imagine how "ngilernya" researchers, students hungry for literature. Imagine, up to now there are about 18,000 of fiction books, 12,000 of non-fiction books, 507 reference books, 812 books drama, author biographies 875, 16 774 clippings, 517 papers, theses and dissertations as many as 630 titles, 732 cassette tape sound, 15 video cassette tapes, is also the author of 740 photos. This data is changing from day to day and the greater number of types of collection.

Last year I was invited Rizal Ramli, former Minister of Economy, along with Afung, his wife, while books of poetry petty king of my work and various other friends was launched in the room PDS HB Jassin. I catch concern and amazement Rizal Ramli as we crawl the PDS small alley to the building before climbing the steep stairs. Many Romel, there are hangers clothesline clothes, and towels at the bottom edge of the stairs. After entering the room was modest, he looked amazed. Sad indeed! But I do not forget, Rizal Ramli, admiring the wealth of this PDS HB Jassin full of crowded Indonesian Literary works are astonishing, even the work of China Malay Literature from the 1800s still kept there.

This country is indeed ironic. On the one hand juggle hundreds of billions building a swimming pool fitted in the roof far above and a comfortable spa feels easy. Meanwhile, set aside a pocket for a rarefaction mind, maintaining the Indonesian literary masterpiece full of amazing in a building that earthy, like a stone weighing many tons it feels to run it. I imagine the mothers who usually appear in the magazine socialite with colorful Hermes bag costs only Rp 180 million, while the PDS HB Jassin will sink out of life because it is only thrown by local government of Rp 50 million! I remembered the words of HB Jassin, who happens first is my undergraduate thesis adviser, "a waste of our work means to waste our lives, our history, past, present, and our future ... in fact Documentation is a tool to extend the memory, deepen, and expand it .... "

"Will Fauzi Bowo its service range in charge of this issue will review the decree of her? Or have felt" comfortable "because the moment will appear anyway kilograms of coins as a result of collecting donations from the community who are very concerned over this merananya PDS HB Jassin ? Let us look at joint development of the next story .... "

Now, the issue of PDS HB Jassin has become a movement "moral" to save the world literature in particular, literacy and the world generally. Some writers and literary lovers have even rolling the "Coins Literature."

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Trash and Serious Literature in America

The opinion has often been expressed that literary criticism has merely been marking time since Aristotle invented it in his POETICS. This may or may not be an exaggeration. But the venerable Greek provided a couple of insights that are useful in understanding certain trends in contemporary American fiction.

In the century that just fizzled out, Plot was generally the province of trash literature, while Character, Diction and Thought were reserved for the serious stuff. This rift did not exist in the nineteenth century, when the best novelists tended also to be the most popular. Dickens was the prime novelistic technician and psychologist of his day, as well as the greatest myth-maker.

However, by the time Hemingway decided to blow out his brains with a shotgun in Idaho, the discontinuity between art and escapism had become wide as the Grand Canyon, so that even the average citizen couldn't fail to notice. It required the diseased genius of Madison Avenue to bridge the gap, or at least to stick a Lady Liberty-sized band-aid over it.

And Saul Bellow was right there, with his HERZOG--a book about a man who does nothing but write letters to dead people--to claim the dubious distinction of being the first author whose "novels" were sold to millions but actually read by several thousand, at the most.

Such hype, when exerted upon the rudimentary awareness of a world mesmerized by television, can even go so far as to garner the highest accolades for its beneficiaries. But, unfortunately, it has far less auspicious effects on the development of the work itself. Nobel Prize and multi-million-dollar bank account notwithstanding, Bellow is a classic case of arrested development, in the Aristotelian sense.

Premature recognition, especially in America, where fame brings an infinitude of distractions and temptations, almost inevitably stunts the growth of novelists. It's the sad story of American fiction, from Mark Twain to Mark Helprin; and Saul Bellow is one of the saddest episodes in that story. At the tender age of twenty-nine, he had his first book published, to the critical coos of his crowd. He realized, while still a tyro, that he was into something profitable. It takes a greater genius than Bellow, or a greater fool, to tamper with the goose that lays the golden eggs--even if the fowl does show the potential of becoming a swan.

"Beginners," says Aristotle, "succeed earlier with Diction and Character than with construction of a story." Bellow was just such a beginner, and a very promising one at that. But, having already amassed most of the money and ego-gratification he could ever hope to absorb, he had no reason to develop beyond his exquisite Diction and Character, and into the Action that could set his works firmly in the collective awareness of the human race.

The result is the unhappy spectacle of a man pushing a hundred, who provides us, every year or so, with a compilation of profound insights, well expressed, but going nowhere--in short, yet another novice work, marketed as a full-fledged novel. He's not a novelist at all, but an essayist, as the late John Gardner observed.

At the extreme opposite end of the spectrum wallows Stephen King, who has hawked more words and banked more royalties than any writer in the history of this planet. And the only advertisement his books require is his name and likeness on the dust jacket. The people who buy his books actually read them, voraciously, from cover to cover.

Old reliable Aristotle preemptively blew the whistle on Stephen King as well: "Plot is the end and purpose of tragedy. One may string together a series of characteristic speeches of the utmost best...and yet fail to produce the true tragic effect; but one would have much better success with a tragedy which, however inferior in these respects, has a Plot.... There can be tragedy without Character, but not without Plot."

Presumably the permissible deficiencies extend to the areas of Thought and Diction as well. In his tales of talking cars and cannibalistic toddlers, King is utterly virginal of Thought. And, of course, he eschews the delicacies of Diction so as not to offend the ears of his lowbrow clientele.

But he can tell a story. Why can he do it, and not Bellow, who is his superior in every other respect? The answer is almost certainly genetic, or at least congenital. Various young boys wander through King's books, effortlessly spouting well-shaped impromptu anecdotes. If they can be construed as self-portraits, we might assume that their creator is a natural-born story teller, a former prodigy in that primeval art form.

Chatterton, Mozart and Picasso notwithstanding, child prodigies are usually the least promising members of any artistic generation. It's a giant's step from semi-conscious infantile knacks to considered adult craftsmanship. In the field of music we hear again and again of the actual handicap that childhood genius can be. Yehudi Menuhin had to lay his fiddle aside for a time in adolescence, to give his heart and brain a chance to catch up with his precocious fingers.

Advertising agencies are full of natural painters, musicians and poets, who never mustered the gumption to make that explicitly moral leap into imaginative adulthood. And the bestseller racks are peopled with similarly idiotic savants, the most conspicuous today being Stephen King.

Go to the video shop incognito and rent PET SEMATARY. Steel yourself and observe the close-up of the small boy's face contorting in agony as the six-inch hypodermic needle is slowly inserted into his jugular vein. And ask yourself: is it possible to accuse Mr. King of being anything but ethically a child--and a very naughty one at that?

And yet he is a novelist, in a truer sense than Bellow, the great "Dean," can ever be.

If one were named dictator of the world tomorrow and asked which author's work should be set on fire in an attempt to expunge it forever from human awareness, one would be obliged to choose King's. But the irony is that, once their topicality has vanished in the smog of time, Bellow's works will be utterly forgotten, while King's, even if put to the torch, will undoubtedly survive in the more debased nightmares of the working classes and the nasty little jokes hissed around the campfire by pubescents at Boy Scout jamborees.

His works, and the works of other trash writers like him, are symptoms of our civilization's regression and decline, rather than curative agents which may arrest it. As Joseph Campbell, the late hireling of George Lucas, once observed, the stories which define vigorous societies are created not by the masses, but by the elite: Saul Bellows with moral imaginations and the psychic virility to weld them into mythos.

Needless to say, such a Saul Bellow is not on the scene today--or at least Manhattan has so far scorned his works. That very neglect, that sin of omission, is a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. Campbell's mythopoeic elite are not embraced by nations in the petulant throes of decline. Jesus had a reason for weeping over Jerusalem: she killed all her prophets.

There was a time in the neighborhood of Canaan when Moloch and the wicked Baalim held sway over the people's imaginations. Then Abraham came out of Ur. And now who commands (at least nominally) the most regiments, Abraham's god or Jezebel's? We are aware of the Ammonite practices of temple prostitution and baby sacrifice, but most of us perform less racy rituals on Sunday mornings, our vicarious behavior over the VCR the night before notwithstanding.

The Moloch myth, as currently expressed in Stephen King's fiction, emerges in the darker moments of human history. It caters to the appetites of vicious merchant civilizations, such as doomed Carthage and the USA of today. The wholesome tales of Miriam and Moses, of Joseph and his brothers, of John the Baptist and his younger, brighter cousin, are not being retold now.

The time is ripe for Abraham Redivivus. He'll come looming out of the desert and chase away the cannibal pantheon with fresh monolithic insights into the individuated human psyche.

The new Abraham's spike will be raised over Isaac's jugular, blunt and gruesome enough to capture the jaded attention of the American people. But when he lowers it, unmoistened with blood, his gesture will be so mighty and beautiful that all who see it will be transformed. And no more forests will be flattened to produce deluxe editions of Stephen King's works, and Madison Avenue will drop Saul Bellow just as it did the Hula Hoop.

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Tom Bradley's short stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. One or two were translated into Japanese, or so he's been told...His essays appear in Salon.com, McSweeney's, Exquisite Corpse, Poets & Writers Magazine, and lots of other places.
email: tom@tombradley.org
website: http://tombradley.org
Identity Theory article: "The Bloodsucker of Nagasaki"

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Prof. Faruk: Multimedia Discloses sensibility of Literary Text

"Disclosure is not disclosure of which is spatial, static, and final, but the temporal, dynamic and processual. In this respect the finality of a work does not lie in 'kedisanaan'nya, the availability and the existence of an objective, but on his involvement in the processes of aesthetic , cultural, social, political, economic and even in space and time, "said Pro. Dr. Faruk, SU in the Senate Hall on Wednesday (9 / 3) when inaugurated as Professor of the Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM.

Ontologically the works of postmodern literature is a literary work that presents itself in such a way as an open discursive and historical process, not something that is final. By way of existence, according to Faruk, humanities challenged to try to find the methodological tools that can capture and understand the process, dynamics, change and variety, not something static, fixed, invariant. "Surely the answer to this challenge is easy to say, but difficult to implement," he said.

In view of the difficulty becomes greater Faruk considering the study of literature itself has been busy with the discussion and exploration of theoretical rather than methodological. Rarely there are books that discuss the issue in the research methods literature. "It is not surprising that Indonesia itself, precisely since the late 1970s until the 1980s when discussion of the theory is so warm there, scientists still can not be impressed literature distinguishes theoretical problems with methodological problems," said faculty FIB UGM.

The trend can be seen, for example in the dissertation-dissertation produced in that period, for example dissertations in the humanities who pertma at GMU, there is the Hikayat Hang Tuah: Analysis of Structure and Function (Sutrisno, 1983) and diertasi I. Kuntara Wiryamartana entitled Arjunawiwaha who maintained in 1982 and published in 1990.

"As such, literary scholars, especially in Indonesia needs to give more serious attention by performing more extensive explanation and intensive on methodological issues, particularly related to the phenomenon of literary works postmodernist sensibility born of multimedia," said the man born in Banjarmasin , February 10, 1957. [tranlated from the official website of Faculty of Cultural Science, Gadjah Mada University, http://fib.ugm.ac.id]

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Reading Habits In The Modern World

Reading has become a good habit of humankind. It proves our great desire for knowledge in many fields of life. Reading habits and the ways of reaching knowledge have changed significantly with the flow of time and generations.

In this IT era, many things can easily be solved with the help of technology; reading books is one of them. The online communities, so-called netizens, are definitely familiar with the words e-mail, e-commerce, e-learning and now the e-book. E-book stands for electronic book; it means readers download one from many websites then read it on a computer.

Many youngsters nowadays prefer this method of reading because it has lots of advantages; however, some others state that the e-book isn't always the best choice to read.

1. E-book now develops widely among online communities because of the following reasons.

First of all, readers can save a lot of time to find the books they want buy searching and using one. In the past, if a person wants to buy a book, he has to go to a bookstore and search for it. It can waste more time if the book he wants is not available, and then he has to search at other bookstores. On the contrary, an e-book reader just accesses internet and finds the books easily after some clicks of the fingers.

There are many useful websites that provide a wide variety of books in any field with very clear introductions. The readers will no longer waste their precious time standing in front of long lines of books and being confused of what books to choose.

Second of all, it is an economic way to read. The price of an e-book is much cheaper than that of a real book, let alone many e-books are free to online readers. By registering as a member of an e-book website, many readers can read freely their favorite books. There are also some books they have to pay but they do not cost as much as the books at shops or stores. This way of reading brings a great opportunity for students or poor readers who desire for reading materials.

Finally, it can help the reader get the latest version quickly. Many readers often look forward to the day their favorite books or stories are available at bookstores, but they can reach them first with e-books. Readers can subscribe via e-mails to be updated on the latest books available on websites instead of standing in front of the bookstores for many hours to have their books on hand.

2. Despite the advantages of e-books, there are some reasons that it cannot replace a real book.

First and foremost, a real book is portable so people can bring it to read anywhere, anytime. It does not depend on the internet and a computer. The way we read a real book is much simpler than an electronic one. Just take a book and read!

Many bookworms have the habit of putting their favorite book under their pillow and reading it before sleeping. With an e-book, it seems to be impossible. Many people confirm that they feel much more comfortable and satisfied to read a real book than an e-book because of the reading position. Readers can read while sunbathing or sitting in the middle of the garden or even in the car anywhere they feel relaxed suitable to read.

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James Brown writes about freestuff4baby.com key code and clubsauce.com key code

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Nudity in theatre: a case study

Like the stunt artist, the highly trained athlete and the erotic artist, the actor traces a thin line between art and life. The stunt artist risks real injury (even death) to create a spectacle for entertainment. The highly trained athlete performs real feats with real acts of courage discernable by an audience ... and nowadays she/he performs for the pleasure of the audience as much as for personal satisfaction. The erotic artist performs, sometimes with consummate skill, to awaken, stimulate and satisfy sexual desires of the audience. So it is for the actor. Just as the stunt artist, the athlete and the erotic artist are not pretending to do what they do, the actor also should NOT be pretending ... at least if the actor is serious about making a real connection with the audience ...

This is a a deceptive statement and needs clarifying. So let's consider art, life and how it is either representation or misrepresentation.

When a director asks an actor to be nude on stage it can't be assumed this is solely for some clinical aesthetic that suits the context of the play. It could simply be to exploit a superb body. It could be for promotional reasons. It could be because the script contains a requirement for nakedness. Or it could be for more subversive reasons.

Nudity, flesh and sexuality on stage can be like the fleeting images of animistic figures from the dream world of artists and individual audience members. Dreams undercut the norms of culture, society, religion and belief systems of all shapes and forms. In dreams the dreamer wanders naked through some vaguely recognized ordered society only to feel the shame of awakening. The dream is not the construct of social sanctioning, cultural orthodoxy or even the conscience of the dreamer. In this sense, dreaming is subversive activity which sometimes reveals hidden truths and disconcerting observations about the dreamer. So theatre which draws on dream imagery and forms has the potential to challenge and extend cultural, social and personal stereotypes of acceptance and vision. What we accept as truth and our vision of truth can be challenged and subverted through such a theatre.



The naked actor becomes the dream figure exposing the emperor's new clothes of our civil costume. Our social and cultural costume is more than the material with which we adorn or conceal our bodies. It is also the total of our sculptural mannerisms, our daily rituals, our very thought processes.

It follows that the naked act is both symbolic and actual. It is symbolic according to the context of the performance. But it is, more importantly, real because the actor him/herself has to cope with inner processes concerning exposure: ie. vanity, exhibitionism, aesthetics and sexual shyness and even shame (in the classic Adam and Eve sense). The actor has to portray a person that breathes and interacts. She/he needs to be able to find her/his psychological way into the character or role being performed. There is a huge range of thinking on this (see the article on David Mamet's True and False). But essentially, the actor copes with personal tensions that inform the portrayed role. And here we have the blurred line between art and life; between representation and misrepresentation.

Too often actors and directors bypass the real concerns and tensions surrounding the actor on stage in order to achieve a kind of enforced order or absence of chaos. The notorious "nude" scene gains a reputation for all the wrong reasons in mainstream commercial theatre while being under utilized in much alternative and experimental theatre. The result isn't a representation of the human spirit but rather a misrepresentation.

The dreamer, naked and vulnerable, is very similar to the actor. If we allow ourselves a moment to reflect, we will perhaps come to identify with such vulnerability. An audience may also experience ambiguous feelings ranging from lust to wonder to sheer violence. Whatever the case, we must acknowledge the nature of relationship between actor and audience: that same terrifying relationship.

No thought on this subject can be expressed without acknowledging the published works of Antonin Artaud. Some of his ideas and legacy were discussed in Theatre and Eros: Artaud's Legacy (Scream April 2001). In that article, I stated: "Artaud's shock treatment is needed to revitalize and refocus theatre into accepting the erotic nature of performance."

We need to follow Artaud's impulse and seek to bring an awareness of the erotic to the foreground of our practice. While nudity isn't necessarily erotic theatre, there must be consideration of the context where an actor steps out naked into the public arena. Perhaps the actor is comfortable enough. But there will always be a tension in the audience. A contemporary audience will probably not be shocked. However, it will be engaged and probably curious. The voyeurism of any audience will be heightened as the actors body becomes accessible for scrutiny. Will he or she reveal genitals? Is it in good taste or is it simply a vulgar exhibition or strip show bordering on the pornographic?

Unfortunately, religions step in and categorize the naked body into categories for moral consumption. Religious art, for instance, may use nudity (as in Leonardo de Vinci's work and other paintings in cathedrals). However, we must step carefully into hallowed ground when considering nudity with religion. Is the nudity likely to be sexually stimulating? In which case, it is considered morally wrong. Sex outside of heterosexual marriage is akin of sin! Should an image provide an occasion of sin, then the perpetrators should be dammed. Some feminist writing suggests the same (if it be heterosexual stimulation that is). A glance at Andrea Dworkin's home page will indicate a very dogmatic and politically rationalist view of sex, gender politics and gender based artistic expression.

In the realms of film censorship and what is appropriate viewing for the public, great pains are made to separate artistic nudity from sexual nudity ... and the eye of the beholder is winking in admiration of those who go to such pains to separate the two forms of nudity. Is there evidence of "exploitative" nudity? No doubt their skills would be useful in some department somewhere! The problem is that some people find naked feet sexually stimulating while others may find the image of the lips of man a turn on! So what do we ban in the interests of us human beasts without the capability for control of their sexual proclivities?



It's all a matter of controls. If you can socially control sexual behaviour and sexual thought, then you can control a whole population and make it conform to whatever you define as god's wishes. In some instances this results in covering a woman's face in public lest she be beaten to death. Historically, we have seen women being burnt to death for daring to defy the mind of some man's god! Whatever the case, so imbedded in the human psyche is the fear of sexuality that most who will draw exception to these statements will not understand their own subjugation to sexual fear and political control.

So thank god for our dreams! Even the most subservient amongst us is going to dream disturbing dreams that challenge the dominant moral sexual code. Such dreams might even challenge the mind set of a culture that can stone a woman to death for fucking outside of her marriage or even for simply displaying her face or neck in public while that same culture can willingly send children to certain death as they march gloriously across a mine field to martyrdom.

Theatre which dares to touch on such touchy subjects is open to persecution by those practicing cultural denials of the most basic kind. One doesn't have to be a Salmon Rushdie to feel the resultant sledging and persecution that theatre has traditionally suffered. Theatre can be anti-cultural as it attacks cultural complacency and dogmas of all persuasions. Only when theatre challenges cultural orthodoxy can it offer hope and assurance for humanity beyond political expediency .

And so back to eroticism, dreams and representation of the human condition. Theatre that is too respectful of cultural masters risks misrepresentation of human behaviour, instincts and thinking. Ironically, Peter Brook (the greatest of Western European theatre directors in the past fifty years) discovered that only by practicing a multi-culturalism approach to theatre could it seek to be truly universal; offering truthful insights into the human condition that defy cultural tunnel vision and chauvinism. Isn't theatre supposed to be paradoxical and ironic?

In dreams and theatre that is close to dreams, there is the best chance of achieving such an aim. Nudity on stage is a tool that may provide a direct link to the dream reality giving substance to a theatre of challenge and cultural subversion. It is no more or less useful. However, it should not be underestimated as a weapon subverting cultural hegemony. It can be more than a marketing tool for big business involvement in the arts.

Because live theatre is essentially one human being interacting with other human beings, the exposure of one leads to the exposure of the other's vulnerabilities and cultural lock-in. But this requires an amazing energy and commitment to an art form that is itself vulnerable and open to malicious attack. The nude actor is thus a very powerful artistic tool and provides the mechanism for artistic and cultural challenge.

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http://www.shadowhousepits.com.au/eroticism%20and%20dreams.htm

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Serious literature marginalized in China

Should literature address more social issues, or should it get closer to the writer's own heart and focus on one's own experiences?

People visiting book stores are more interested in popular writings while serious literature has been marginalized. (Photo: China Daily/Jing Wei)

This was a question debated by several literary authors and critics last weekend at the 6th Chinese Literature Media Awards in Guangzhou. The event, together with a week of speeches, forums and tours, was organized by Southern Metropolis Daily.

There was a consensus among the literati that serious literature has been marginalized in China. People reminisced of the 1980s - the golden age of literary writing - when poems and novels were devoured by tens of millions and a single piece of work could spark a nationwide fire of passion and frenzy.

The emergence of sociology, economics and law effectively pushed literature to the sideline as these subjects can better tackle difficult issues of our society, especially when it has been going through such dramatic changes.

The disappearance of investigative literature, or baogao wenxue in Chinese, is a case in point. Writers used to delve into "big issues" and come up with in-depth reporting. But that was during a time when a newspaper in China typically had four pages and could not possibly accommodate features of this length. Nowadays, a metropolitan paper may have 100 pages or more, and stories like the Chongqing "nail-house" played out in the press like a drama series. Serious literature cannot compete in this area.

"The best story-telling is printed in The Southern Weekend," jokes Xie Youshun, "as it has all the great details and creates endless waves of repercussions." The influential weekly he mentions offers news stories - often controversial ones - in fascinating minutia.

Xu Chunping, editor of Literature Journal, maintains that Chinese culture as a whole is moving in the direction of entertainment. There are new genres like "cellphone literature, online literature and movie fiction" that did not exist before. "Literature as we know it gets purer and contends with only the ultimate issues, and new literature tends to provide solace rather than soul-searching capabilities." She faults the mainstream media for the decline. "Belles-lettres are shriveling to an elitist enclave," she laments.

As literature recedes from the public limelight towards inner self, writers mount a feeble but heroic attempt to rationalize the withdrawal. Li Jingze, a critic, points out that fiction of the old days was devoid of individuality. "The characters did not open their mouths except to pontificate. Everyone of them talked like that," says the editor of People's Literature, who interprets the "withdrawal" more as "a great achievement in opening up and creating personal space in the arena".

Nan Fan, a Fujian-based essayist, sees the phenomenon as "the private inserting itself into the public and changing the latter's core values". Literature of old times dealt in sweeping generalities. The epics told of exploits by giants and mythological characters. Morality plays did not even give unique names to their characters. "The richness of the private space has made literature more diverse and added to its value," he contends.

Xu Xiao, a Beijing-based essayist, believes that writing is ultimately a personal experience and should be loyal to one's inner feelings. "Only when you are true to yourself can you strike a chord with a wider readership."

The writers did not object to exploring the outside world. They mentioned those with rural backgrounds writing about land reform, and those brought up in towns and cities reflecting on the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). But some disapproved of works that talked down to readers. Yu Qiuyu, a towering figure in literary essays, again became the center of attention even though he was absent. He was criticized for ramming foregone conclusions down readers' throats. But an audience member defended Yu's writing for "creating a panorama of Chinese history and culture".

Peking University professor Chen Xiaoming argues that literature has been edging back towards "public space" since the 1990s. "It's possible to get into public discourses," he says, adding that he hopes writers act as "public intellectuals". However, one should not only pay attention to the lower classes. His definition of "realism-based aesthetic exploration" is much wider. "I see a new beginning for Chinese literature," he enthuses, encouraging a hall of students to take up writing literature as a career.

Many writers see the press as the main rival. "We are brothers; we learn from each other, fight with each other and compete for readers' attention," says Dong Xi, a professor of Guangxi University of Nationalities. He lambasts some media for "resorting to fiction when truth is hard to obtain". Others carped that media critics tend to have inconsistent values when it comes to literary criticism. However, Han Shaogong, a Hainan-based novelist, says he values media reviews more than academic evaluation.

"Is the true voice relevant when you cannot even have it heard?" asks Ge Fei, an avant-garde novelist who is also a professor of Tsinghua University. He argues that the media has been under increasing pressure from market forces, which will only "cover up true thinking".

Most of these writers have day jobs as professors, editors or with organizations such as writers' associations and cultural unions. However, most writers support new genres such as blog writing, agreeing that there is good writing floating in cyberspace.

In the end, many advocate pluralism for literature. While literature, they believe, should refrain from striving to be topical, it should not retreat from hot issues of the day. The key is to raise questions, but not to attempt to solve them; to provoke thinking rather than to hand out clear-cut nuggets of wisdom.

"It's always about how, not if," elaborates Li Jingze, the critic, who was reading Raymond Chandler on the flight to Guangzhou. "Finding truth for literature is like finding the criminal in a detective story. The vociferous ones are on the surface. We should look for the vastness between public and personal spaces. It's like the silent majority within ourselves. If you look at it this way, our best writing is yet to come."

(Source: China Daily, April 2009)

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Urban Fantasy: Fantasy or Paranormal?

And yet another mystery about publishing for me.

My system is to enter all the books I receive into a database and let my readers pick the ones they want to read and write about. I give the author’s name, title of book and type of book (usually using the spine definition as a guide to help them decide if it’s a book they are interested in). As I was going through the 4 boxes of books that came in while I was traveling, I noticed several that were now being classified as fantasy that were considered paranormal at one time. Among them were the reissued Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books.

Now, Dictionary.com describes fantasy as imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained, while paranormal’s definition is beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.

I thought I understood it before when I considered Neil Gaiman’s Stardust as fantasy and anything vampire or were-animal paranormal. Now I’m just confused. (And I thought figuring out the difference between paranormal and urban fantasy was difficult)


Then there’s the use of the words "novel" or just plain "fiction." What does that say about the book? Back to Dictionary.com. Fiction is the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, especially in prose form and novel’s definition is a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity, portraying characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes. The vast majority of what I receive are fiction. No help there. And novels are iffy. I think of Gone With the Wind when I think of a novel, not a book with only 200 pages.

Of course, lately there’s been quite a few that don’t say anything on the spine. What the heck does that mean? The publisher isn’t sure what the book’s about?

I realize that it’s not always easy to classify a book and we’ve had whole discussions on where they should be placed in book stores and libraries, but help me out here folks. What do these words mean to you? And does it matter? Help or hinderance when the story doesn’t really hold up to the word describing it?[http://blogs.publishersweekly.com]

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Apple's tablet and the future of literature

Technology is not the sworn enemy of literature. Still, the collision of technology and literature in this case may well prove explosive.

Literature has always relied on technology. We wouldn't have the Dead Sea Scrolls had the ancients failed to invent papyrus, just as we wouldn't have "The Da Vinci Code" if Gutenberg hadn't come out with movable type.

Technology has also abetted literature by enabling the wealth and leisure that fueled the rise of the popular press -- and allowed for such luxuries as a class of professional writers and a large campus establishment devoted to the literary arts.

It is important to bear in mind that technology is not the sworn enemy of literature as Apple prepares (according to frantic rumor) to unveil its much-anticipated new tablet computer on Jan. 27. Still, the collision of technology and literature in this case may well prove explosive.

A well-designed Apple tablet, embedded in the right business model, has the potential to blow up the book business as we know it, ultimately upending the whole rickety edifice of publishers, booksellers and agents, much as the digital revolution (and Apple) have done to the music business.

It's been clear for a while, of course, that the future of text is digital. And an Apple tablet wouldn't be the first of its kind. Amazon's Kindle is almost synonymous with dedicated electronic readers, and others have appeared recently as well.

But these devices are relatively primitive. By comparison, the iPhone and its iPod Touch sibling are already remarkably good reading machines while doing so much more as well. Equipped with a 10-inch screen and sold for the right price, the formidable tablet will force competitors to ramp up their game.

These new tablets will give ink on paper a powerful nudge into history's wastebasket, helping to remake not just books but newspapers, magazines and other material we've traditionally consumed in print.

The result will be a seismic change in the literary culture. Ubiquitous tablets will make books cheaper and more readily available, even as physical bookstores follow Tower Records into oblivion. Lending libraries will have to figure out a new mission; the time is not far off when the typical 10-year-old will have the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in her backpack.

Tablets will also change the nature of books. The reliably fixed quality of ink on paper is being replaced by the protean nature of bytes, introducing an element of impermanence into the written record of civilization, as some scholars have already complained. [source]

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The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Internet has given us so much convenience for us in accessing information. Anything could be found by entering keywords through search engine services, Google, for example. A variety of information we need with a flash presented in the monitor screen

Nicholas G. Carr, the author of The Shallows, What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, criticizing the Internet as a "tool" which on the one hand help people gather information, but on the other hand give such impact on users. Rather than information that is very abundant it makes knowledge more and more people will be a deep problem, which occurs humans as the user (users) lose the space for contemplation.

Users will be encouraged to jump around from one hyperlink to another hyperlink from an email inbox, to which is trending on facebook and twitter. In turn the internet, as well as the other gadgets, disrupts the user's concentration.

Conceptually, human thinking is slowly being recognized or not to follow the workings of the appliance. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts," said Nietzsche to Heinrich Köselitz, who asked his writing style changes. Since Nietzsche used a typewriter, Köselitz found Nietzsche's writing style becomes increasingly stringent and concise.

After the show the impact of the Internet that harm, Carr did not dismiss the contribution of the Internet is as large as the supplier of information. Seduction of Internet technology as a provider of information quickly and efficiently dammed heavy.

"But I continue to hold out Hope that we will not Go Gently Into the future our computer engineers and software programmers are scripting for us. Even if We Do not Heed Weizenbaum's words, We Owe it to ourselves to Consider Them, to be attentive to what We stand to lose. How sad it would be, particularly Pls it comes to the nurturing of our children's minds, if We Were to accept without question the idea that 'human elements' are outmoded and dispensable. "


What the interesting?

This book was developed from a provocative article entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" published at The Atlantic edition of the July-August 2008 widely discussed in various Internet communities. This book opens with the ambiguity of the Internet as a keeper of "The Watchdog" and "The Thief". Then the author illustrates how the brain of a contemplative journey into mechanical interference due to the machine (tool) in human life, how the device has helped change the way people think and how to behave. For example the shift from printed to digital-book-book (e-book) has changed the way people read books. Even so, the author denies that the "conventional" it will be lost. No, the old-fashioned fixed-book that there will be, even he would still be required because the book (print) can be read while sleeping without any misgivings we may be damaged if fallen-dawn, read while relaxing on the beach without fear of dying because the water soaked.

This book is indeed playing at the level of discourse, and contributes what is given may be sounds cliche: that we should be wise in using the Internet.

After reading this book, it must be said that the answer was a simplification of something that is really complex delivered by the author. The author is not a health expert, so his explanation would be due to the internet for the brain is not supported by medical data; writer as observer the media especially the Internet, invites us as Internet users to look back at where we stand position that what appeared on the internet that have been through long intervention, and at other times we need to keep their distance, leaving a moment, or even for a long time for our concentration.

The author’s description of the human mind from that trip contemplative into mechanical is very interesting. Machine, in this case the Internet, it has been so far to control our brains and we realize it might not, and this book is more than just a wise suggestion that we use the Internet wisely invites us to stop our adventure in a virtual world for a while, and after that, passed away on our own decision.

And so, we do not necessarily accept that the human mind is not up to date and obsolete, it will happen to the information available on the internet if people as true information supplier personality eroded by the Internet.


About the Author
Nicholas G. Carr has written numerous articles and books dealing with technologies surrounding the Internet. His first book Does IT Matter? (2004), and The Big Switch: rewiring the World, From Edison to Google (2008) and the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (June 2010) was developed from the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains "(The Atlantic, July-August edition, 2008). The writings of Carr who pitched discordant on Internet technology much criticism, both from the practitioners and those who have business interests that involve Internet technology. Healthy internet movement lately often leveled, and this movement is impossible without a consciousness of its users. What is done by Carr did not light work, namely to make people aware of something that has been taken for granted, everything is accepted without question-just taken for granted.

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