Billy Collins in the most recent Walrus Magazine. Dig it.
Or if you'd rather be musical, drink to me, babe, then, A.C. Newman of matadorrecords.com.
Over the weekend I read Jasper Fforde's so-far-Trilogy (a IVth is due out late in July) of Thursday Next. Fforde says that his name is really Fforde. How 'bout that.
The title of this entry comes from the bookworld of those books: poets are prohibited by the fey literary powers-that-be from using the word "majestic" because it's cheesy; it is, of course, but perhaps we should all read Collins' latest again (see top of entry). This adventurous heroine chick (heroine chic? heroine chick-lit?) dives into books to rescue them from evildoers, besides living a real world where mammoths, dodos, and socialism thrive. There was no 1917 Russian revolution, and the world has been in something of a cold/hot war between Imperial Russia and Great Britain for 150 years. The latest hottening of the war apparently took place in the Crimea, with the Charge of the Light Armored Brigade (that's just the backdrop, barely touched, wierdly self-disciplined writing it must take to keep from diving into that.) The implications of this history are (only implicitly) either that our world, never mentioned or alluded to, is in a parallel dimension, or that it is in a book. Time-travel, book-diving, ghost-hunting, simply an amazing ride: I joyed in being taken through a reenactment of the barroom scene on Tatooine when Thursday Next visits a den or literary low-lifes from the Crime or Sci-Fi genres. The first title is The Eyre Affair.
Smart, smart, smart stuff, but oh so pop. Yow! Give it a read.
Or if you'd rather be musical, drink to me, babe, then, A.C. Newman of matadorrecords.com.
Over the weekend I read Jasper Fforde's so-far-Trilogy (a IVth is due out late in July) of Thursday Next. Fforde says that his name is really Fforde. How 'bout that.
The title of this entry comes from the bookworld of those books: poets are prohibited by the fey literary powers-that-be from using the word "majestic" because it's cheesy; it is, of course, but perhaps we should all read Collins' latest again (see top of entry). This adventurous heroine chick (heroine chic? heroine chick-lit?) dives into books to rescue them from evildoers, besides living a real world where mammoths, dodos, and socialism thrive. There was no 1917 Russian revolution, and the world has been in something of a cold/hot war between Imperial Russia and Great Britain for 150 years. The latest hottening of the war apparently took place in the Crimea, with the Charge of the Light Armored Brigade (that's just the backdrop, barely touched, wierdly self-disciplined writing it must take to keep from diving into that.) The implications of this history are (only implicitly) either that our world, never mentioned or alluded to, is in a parallel dimension, or that it is in a book. Time-travel, book-diving, ghost-hunting, simply an amazing ride: I joyed in being taken through a reenactment of the barroom scene on Tatooine when Thursday Next visits a den or literary low-lifes from the Crime or Sci-Fi genres. The first title is The Eyre Affair.
Smart, smart, smart stuff, but oh so pop. Yow! Give it a read.
Comments
Post a Comment