Tell them I said helloTell them I said hello
“Men of genius work from the centre outwards.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
Author: Tetman Callis
It was a beautiful dreamIt was a beautiful dream
“At this time, interest in natural philosophy was widely disseminated, and, in science, as in politics and literature, new ideas were readily welcomed.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
Learning to drawLearning to draw
The Weekly Alibi is an alternative paper in Albuquerque, going on twenty years old. I don’t often read it these days, as I am getting older and and am feeling the pressing need to slough off the unnecessary. But back in the 1990s and on up until the middle of the last decade, hardly a week would go by that I didn’t snag the latest Alibi to find out what movies and shows were current and tantalizing.
Besides its movie and art listings, its reviews and commentaries and other features, its personals–I looked at the “I Saw You” listings week after week, hoping to have been seen–The Alibi also ran writing contests. They ran a Valentine’s Day poetry contest I won so many times, I finally stopped entering. They also ran a short story contest every year. When they first started out, they were called NuCity, but some other publication with a similar name and more money threatened to sue them, so they changed their name. Right before the name change, one of my stories won an honorable mention in the annual contest, and was published. I was thirty-seven years old, had been a creative writer since early adolescence, but had not had a short story published until that time (because I was not naturally very good at it, and it took me a long time to get any good at it at all).
That story isn’t the one I posted this week. In 2000, I won The Alibi‘s short fiction contest with a piece called “Linear Perspective”. I was very happy. The prize was admission to the Southwest Writers something something that fall, where I got to hang around with real writers who wrote mysteries and romances and true crime and all that kind of stuff that actually sells. I got to meet editors and agents, and buy things, and watch a fellow writer get shit-faced drunk at the big banquet.
“Linear Perspective” got more hits on my old website than anything besides “The Gordon Lish Notes”. I expect that people would Google “linear perspective”, hoping to get some practical information about visual art, and end up touching upon my site by accident.
Table mannersTable manners
“We always tear our Gods to bits, and eat the bits we like.” — Adam Gopnik, “What Did Jesus Do?”
Broke and losing the warBroke and losing the war
“If any ventured to rise in opposition, he was presently put to death in some convenient way, and there was neither search for the murderers nor justice to be had against them if suspected; but the people remained motionless, being so thoroughly cowed that men thought themselves lucky to escape violence, even when they held their tongues…. it was impossible for any one to open his grief to a neighbour and to concert measures to defend himself, as he would have had to speak either to one whom he did not know, or whom he knew but did not trust.” — Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Ch. XXVI (trans. Crawley), regarding the overthrow of Athenian democracy
Stiff upper lips and all thatStiff upper lips and all that
“Though prudence, intrepidity and perseverance united are not exempted from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving successful.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VII
We call them our elected representativesWe call them our elected representatives
“Sir Thomas Gresham, writing on the coinage, lays it down as a principle that, if you have in a country good coins and deteriorated coins of the same metal current side by side, the bad will drive out the good, and Gresham’s law may often be applied to literature, to art and, especially, to journalism. The largest circulations have often been attained by newspapers not exhibiting the highest characteristics; indeed, newspapers have been known suddenly to reach enormous sales by publishing articles describing the careers of notorious criminals.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. IV
Short and sweetShort and sweet
“Among English-speaking people, it is difficult to make a great reputation out of short stories.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. III
Welcome to the new world orderWelcome to the new world order
“While life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, regarding the work of Ruskin
Ka-chingKa-ching
“We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.” — Tony Judt, “Ill Fares the Land”
Plan BPlan B
“The virtue of men in office is briefly this, to do their country as much good as they can, or in any case no harm that they can avoid.” — Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Ch. XVIII (trans. Crawley)
How to be rightHow to be right
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” — Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Ch. XVII (trans. Crawley)
But we all do, if we live long enoughBut we all do, if we live long enough
“God forbid you should have to live with the consequences of decisions, permanent, eternal, that will chase you in your head, turning from this side to that, tossing between wrong and right.” — Nathan Englander, “Free Fruit for Young Widows”
Fan mailFan mail
There was a different story I was going to post this week, but I got a piece of fan mail drawing my attention to “The Year Our Children Left”, so I’m posting that story instead. It was published last year in Neon, a sharp online litmag out of the UK.
A soldier’s recommendationA soldier’s recommendation
“Publish and be damned.” — Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, 1824
Two ways of thinkingTwo ways of thinking
“It is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.” — Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Ch. XIV (trans. Crawley)
A neo-Socratic methodA neo-Socratic method
“The best life is suspected, not examined.” — Kay Ryan, “Witness”
There’s building and there’s growingThere’s building and there’s growing
“Whereas aestheticians from Aristotle on have insisted that figurative language should redouble and underline the thrust of the anecdote, it turns out that exactly the opposite is what often appeals to us in great works of art, a strange and even mystical discrepancy between the natural drift of the story and the contradictory impulses of the metaphors and similes and descriptions.” — Edmund White, “The Strange Charms of John Cheever”
Self-reflective opacitySelf-reflective opacity
“Insofar as we can treat a text as not referring to what is outside or beyond it, we more easily understand that it has internal relationships independent of the coding procedures by which we may find it transparent upon a known world.” — Kermode, “What Precisely Are the Facts?”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Regarding Words of Manipulative DissimulationRegarding Words of Manipulative Dissimulation
“We should never underestimate our predisposition to believe whatever is presented under the guise of an authoritative report and is also consistent with the mythological structure of a society from which we derive comfort, and which it may be uncomfortable to dispute.” — Kermode, “What Precisely Are the Facts?”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Holiday resortingHoliday resorting
This morning I posted another of my published stories, “Tahoe”, to this site. “Tahoe” is a story that was a bit of a mess when I first wrote it, about ten or fifteen years ago. I sent it around a bit and it got rejected a bit, until Christopher Chambers, the editor at New Orleans Review, contacted me about it. A computer crash has since lost me the e-mails we exchanged, but the way I remember it, Christopher told me the rest of the staff thought the story should be rejected, but he thought it contained the seed of something useful, if I was willing to work with him on it. I was and we did. His input was so crucial to the fashioning of the finished tale, I thought he and I should get credit as co-authors, though I’ve never publicly said that before now.
Just the facts, ma’amJust the facts, ma’am
“If so many causes act in concert to ensure that texts are from the beginning and sometimes indeterminately studded with interpretations; and if these texts in their very nature demand further interpretation and yet resist it, what should we expect when the document in question denies its own opacity by claiming to be a transparent account of the recognizable world? In practice we may feel that we have no particular difficulty in distinguishing between narratives which claim to be reliable records of fact, and narratives which simply go through the motions of being such a record. But when we think about it, as on occasion we may compel ourselves to do, the distinction may grow troublesome.” — Kermode, “What Precisely Are the Facts?”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Earthquake and tsunami (Humean constant conjunction)Earthquake and tsunami (Humean constant conjunction)
“The next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies set out to invade Attica under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, and went as far as the Isthmus, but numerous earthquakes occurring, turned back again without the invasion taking place. About the same time that these earthquakes were so common, the sea at Orobiae, in Euboea, retiring from the then line of coast, returned in a huge wave and invaded a great part of the town, and retreated leaving some of it still under water; so that what was once land is now sea; such of the inhabitants perishing as could not run up to the higher ground in time. A similar inundation also occurred at Atalanta, the island off the Opuntian Locrian coast, carrying away part of the Athenian fort and wrecking one of two ships which were drawn up on the beach. At Peparethus also the sea retreated a little, without however any inundation following; and an earthquake threw down part of the wall, the town hall, and a few other buildings. The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent, the sea is driven back and, suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.” — Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Ch. XI (trans. Crawley)
Saying it rightSaying it right
“It don’t sound right if it ain’t said right.” — Bill Withers, Still Bill
What it takesWhat it takes
“It takes very little to make a character: a few indications of idiosyncracy, of deviation from type, are enough, for our practiced eyes will make up the larger patterns of which such indications can be read as parts.” — Kermode, “Necessities of Upspringing”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Why lawyers sometimes talk so muchWhy lawyers sometimes talk so much
“Good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.” — Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Ch. X (trans. Crawley)
Hotly off the blockHotly off the block
“Two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.” — Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Ch. IX (trans. Crawley)
Historical appearancesHistorical appearances
“Sometimes it appears that the history of interpretation may be thought of as a history of exclusions, which enable us to seize upon [one] issue rather than on some other as central, and choose from the remaining mass only what seems most compliant.” — Kermode, “Carnal and Spiritual Senses”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Removing the solidsRemoving the solids
“We are always having to explain not the story, but why it counts.” — Kermode, “Instances of Interpretation”, The Art of Telling
Forward, into the pastForward, into the past
“The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.” — Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”