Ray Bradbury goes home

A video from an earlier post, reposted here in memory of the magnificent Ray Bradbury:

Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.

Yes.

(I find it a little ironic to be writing this in a medium that Bradbury hated: he considered the Internet “a big distraction,” “meaningless,” and “not real. It’s in the air somewhere.” A surprisingly narrow-minded view of an entire medium of informational exchange, with enormous potential as well as pitfalls. Judging from all the online encomiums, however, it seems the Internet has no hard feelings.)

More quotes from Bradbury over at Brain Pickings, here and here. After losing this tremendously wise storyteller so soon after Maurice Sendak, all I can think is this: Ursula K. Le Guin, please stick around for a good while longer. We continue to need your voice, and the wings you lend your readers.

Do. The. Work.

Writerly inspiration from Ira Glass:

(via Brain Pickings)

Miscellany: Blume, Hitchens, Lamarr, Tyson; The West Wing as science fiction; groupthink and solitude; what e-books can’t do; and the end of SOPA (for now)

Time for another grab-bag of links that caught my eye:

1) An NPR interview with the incomparable Judy Blume, who talks about censorship, how to inspire kids to read (and how not to), the folly of labeling authors and books according to “audience age,” and how perseverance determines a writer’s success more than talent. (Note to self: time to get to work. Again.)

2) An interview with Richard Rhodes on the scientific career of actress Hedy Lamarr, “the most beautiful woman in the world.” Fascinating stuff, and one I’ve touched on before, in a post on stereotypes and women scientists.

3) A compilation of articles written for The Nation by the late, great Christopher Hitchens, spanning 28 years (1978-2006).

4) Over the past few months my wife and I have avidly watched all seven seasons of The West Wing. Graham Sleight explains why the show is, at its heart, science fiction in spirit and impulse: “I want to argue [...] that it’s SF in a more profound sense [...] It makes an argument, as SF does, about possibility, about what can be done, and it does so by presenting us with a world already showing a change from our own.” Highly worth reading if you’re a West Wing fan.

5) A provocative New York Times essay by Susan Cain on “The Rise of the New Groupthink,” about the folly of insisting on constant collaboration and “teamwork” at the expense of creative solitude. This is happening in schools as well, as Cain points out, a fact that I personally find a bit worrying. Learning to work with others is great, but are we failing to appreciate the virtues of aloneness, of introspection?

6) Why books are made of win: the Abe Books blog, via Matador, offers a list of things you can’t do with an e-book. Including leaving it on a beach towel, throwing it across the room, and using it to press flowers and fallen leaves.

7) Carl Zimmer’s excellent profile of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

8) And finally — victory! Talking Points Memo analyzes how Netizens killed SOPA and PIPA. No doubt the advocates of censorship will try again; but those who stand for freedom of speech will be ready and waiting.

Beautiful words

Word maven Patricia T. O’Conner quotes this passage from Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings and asks us simply to savor the language:

At around age six, perhaps, I was standing by myself in our front yard waiting for supper, just at that hour in a late summer day when the sun is already below the horizon and the risen full moon in the visible sky stops being chalky and begins to take on light. There comes the moment, and I saw it then, when the moon goes from flat to round. For the first time it met my eyes as a globe. The word “moon” came into my mouth as though fed to me out of a silver spoon. Held in my mouth the moon became a word. It had the roundness of a Concord grape Grandpa took off his vine and gave me to suck out of its skin and swallow whole, in Ohio.

Mmmm, yes.

The rest of O’Conner’s interview, with Leonard Lopate, here — a great discussion about beautiful words: the beautiful sounds of words, apart from their meaning. Seersucker. Jejune. Waxwing. Chevrolet. Azerbaijan. And Henry James’ favorite phrase, summer afternoon.

Yum.

Christopher Hitchens’ candidate for the most beautiful English word here.

My own favorite: susurrus, and all its variants. Loved it ever since I encountered it as a child, in Jack Prelutsky’s “The Dance of the Thirteen Skeletons.” Not the place I’d have expected to find an exquisitely lovely word, but serendipity (a lovely word itself) is a beautiful thing.

(Image by Dan Bush)

Farewell to Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens has died.

It seems appropriate to quote here, as I’ve done earlier, something he said in one of his many debates against religion and unreason:

I don’t know if you really think that when you die you can be corporeally reassembled, and have conversations with authors from previous epochs. It’s not necessary that you believe that in Christian theology, and I have to say that it sounds like a complete fairy tale to me. The only reason I’d want to meet Shakespeare, or might even want to, is because I can meet him, any time, because he is immortal in the works he’s left behind. If you’ve read those, meeting the author would almost certainly be a disappointment.

And as I wrote then:

What a tower of courageous, unsentimental intellect. Perhaps our consolation after his death — which will happen sooner or later, after all, to him and to all of us — will be the same consolation he finds in communing with Shakespeare through his works: that Hitchens’ own spoken and written words will remain with us, engaging us in the endless conversation about what is good, beautiful, noble, pure, and true, “the only conversation worth having.”

The words indeed remain. And through them his wit and conviction and ferocious intellect live on.

Here, for instance, is a passage from his Letters to a Young Contrarian; it’s as good a passage as any with which to honor Hitchens’ memory on this day.

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the “transcendent” and all who invite you to subordinate and annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

I shall leave you with a few words from George Konrad, the Hungarian dissident [...]:

Have a lived life instead of a career. Put yourself in the safekeeping of good taste. Lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses. . . . If you don’t like the style of others, cultivate your own. Get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self-publisher even in conversation, and then the joy of working can fill your days.

May it be so with you, and may you keep your powder dry for the battles ahead, and know when and how to recognise them.

Previous posts on Hitchens here, here, here, here, and here.

(Image via Thiago Lins)

“Beating the little hater” (or, Jay Smooth kicks my lazy ass)

Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine speaks truth about self-censorship, self-doubt, perfectionism, procrastination, and creativity:

(Check out his YouTube channel and click around for more of his wit, honesty, compassionate politics — and his adorable cat.)

I particularly like the last bit of the second video — “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources” — which reminds me of the conclusion to Tom Piazza’s essay “Trust the Song” (from Devil Sent the Rain):

A few years ago, while I was attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Saul Bellow came to talk to us for a few days. In addition to a reading, he conducted a workshop and a question-and-answer session. During the Q&A one student asked him about “stealing” from other writers — borrowing techniques, structural ideas, entering other cultural milieus. Bellow smiled wanly and said, “You are entitled to steal anything you are strong enough to carry out.”

Exactly right.

All of this, of course, is to psyche yours truly up enough to tell myself: Enough guilt, enough doubt.

The stories in your head are waiting.

Time to get to work.

Miscellany: Waiting for Irene; Neil Gaiman kicks my lazy ass; girl scientists rock (and so does Kirsten Gillibrand); Harry Potter ends; more atheist fun

Well, I’m back (and wishing I could have brought Idaho’s clear night sky back with me). And now we’re hunkering down in our apartment, bracing for the flooding from Hurricane Irene, which is due to hit New York later tonight: we’ve got all our supplies, we’re a storey above ground level, and we’re not in a mandatory evacuation zone (though we’re pretty close to one). We’ll make it through just fine. Bring it on.

Some old links to share before I start with fresh posts:

In an inspiring interview, Neil Gaiman links writing to punk rock and tells aspiring writers to get off their lazy asses and Just Do It. M. Molly Backes says the same thing, in a post with some wise advice to parents of would-be writers.

Take that, Larry Summers: Girls are excelling in science.

Roger Ebert has a very insightful take on what’s wrong with the Republican party today, why they don’t speak for most Americans, and why, despite any short-term victories, the tide of history is against them. On the other side of the aisle, my awesome hometown senator Kirsten Gillibrand talks feminism, politics, and the next generation.

As the Harry Potter saga comes to an end: Chloe Angyal at Feministing.com talks about Potter and feminism. Michelle Dean at The Millions considers the powerful and sincere appeal of J.K. Rowling’s story to the unjaded reader or viewer in us, despite the literary flaws and the calculations of commercial forces that the series’ critics are happy to point out. Bringing Potter into the messy world of terror and counter-terror, Dan Nexon at The Duck of Minerva speculates on why Harry won; and in the aftermath of his victory, a Foreign Policy article on “Post-Conflict Potter” gives serious consideration to what happens next.

Paul Boghossian’s essay on morality in the Times sparks a fascinating discussion on moral relativism. I don’t think I have (at the moment) a firm opinion on the subject, but I like reading up on both sides of the issue. Sometimes Sam Harris makes a lot of sense, and sometimes he doesn’t…

Which brings us to God and Godlessness territory. The New Statesman compiles statements from many prominent atheists and agnostics explaining why they don’t believe in God. Paula Kirby, pushing back against Governor Rick Perry’s stupidity, sets the record straight on evolution and why it’s a threat to Christianity; Richard Dawkins chimes in. Hemant Mehta links to some great hard-hitting atheist billboards. And, playfully sticking it to Intelligent Design, Paul Simms publishes God’s blog (be sure to read through to the “comments”).

And that’s it for now. More writing soon, after the storm.

(Photo by Kateri Jochum for WNYC)

Parchment, pens, and pigments: videos from the NYPL’s “Three Faiths” exhibition

If, like me, you geek out over calligraphy, manuscript illumination, parchment-making, and other aspects of the scribe’s craft, these videos — from the New York Public Library’s new exhibition, “Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam” — are a must-see:

More videos on specific manuscripts — the Scroll of Esther, the Tales of the Prophets, the Harkness Gospels, and others — can be viewed here.

From the exhibition’s website:

Three Faiths includes 200 rare and precious works created over the past 1,500 years. Among them, great works of the miniaturist’s art and of calligraphy, drawn from all three faiths, delight the eye, as they have done since their creation centuries ago. Manuscript materials are accompanied by some of the most significant printed works of the past 550 years. The scrolls, codices, illuminated manuscripts, and printed volumes are complemented selectively by important bindings, early photographs, prints, maps, and liturgical or ritual objects dating from the fifth century of the Common Era (CE) to the present.

I’m so there. Being an atheist in no way diminishes my appreciation for the craftsmanship, the artistry, the painstaking attention to detail, and the sheer devotion that went into the making of these astonishing works — and that continue to inform the work of modern scribes today.

“Three Faiths” is on view through February 2011. I may post some further thoughts once I’ve seen it; stay tuned.