A wonderful interview with him over on Huffington Post:

"In my view, all these ideologies have destroyed literary study in the graduate schools and in the academies...All these "isms" are preposterous of course; they have nothing to do with the study of literature or with its originality. As I've said before, the esthetic is an individual and not a social concern..." Read the rest ==>

He says the influence of Derrida and Foucault has been "pernicious," heh heh. Such a great word. But what do you suppose grad students would be talking about today if those two hadn't come along? Bloom also recommends reading aloud as a way to "get inside" a writer, which I totally agree with. I've always loved reading aloud; my mom read to me and my brother until I was twelve or thirteen. When the final Harry Potter book came out, neither Mr Psmith nor I could wait for the other person to read it first, so we read it aloud in turns -- I think it took us three days but it was wonderful. There's something really special and different about reading aloud: you can taste the words, roll them around in your mouth, listen as they fall onto your ears. It adds a delightfully physical component to what is otherwise a purely mental activity.

I am insanely jealous of those lucky few who get to attend the small seminars Bloom says he teaches at his home. Oh, what I wouldn't give!!

I just learned that Tanith Lee died late last month. She has always been one of my favorite authors, and I'm so sorry she's gone. I bought her Red as Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer from the Science Fiction Book Club (remember that?) decades ago; it was my first encounter with fairy tale reimaginings and engendered a lifelong love of that genre. I also loved her Birthgrave series -- dark, weird, sword-and-sorcery + psychological myth-making -- and The Silver Metal Lover.

Her official website displays a single quote, red lettering on black:

Though we come and go, and pass into the shadows, where we leave
behind us stories told – on paper, on the wings of butterflies, on the
wind, on the hearts of others – there we are remembered, there we work
magic and great change, passing on the fire like a torch, forever
and forever. Till the sky falls, and all things are flawless and need
no words at all.

RIP, Tanith.

Apparently the 60th anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which I don't own but clearly need to possess, includes a new coda by the author. It is a masterpiece of literate laceration, in which he excoriates the obsession with political correctness which, taken to its extreme, leads to everything sounding just like everything else.

For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conservationist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons like not my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall...

Read the full text here, and tell me what you think.

Prompt posting begins June 1 :)

Minerva_Fest!

(banner by featherxquill; art by Makani)

...because a Certain Someone (::waves at teddyradiator::) likes keys and I found these on Etsy and had to share:

Keys of Azhar
Keys to Atlantis

I devoutly hope to be back on LJ more regularly in another week or so. I have been so busy with freelance work, regular work, co-mod duties for my writing group, prepping for teaching a workshop in a couple of weeks, and getting everything settled for my upcoming two weeks of vacation that I have had zero time for anything else. Not only have I not posted here, I have not even had time to read and so have no idea what's going on with y'all (though I did catch shiv5468's post about the hoo-ha fairy which made me laugh immoderately). I hope everyone is well and happy.

In other news, it's actually really truly finally spring here!!!!!!

The prompt review post is up over at sshg_promptfest, and there are some excellent ones. As a tribute to Sir Terry Pratchett, the fest particularly invited Discworld crossover prompts and I think we have outdone ourselves. Go ye and marvel!

Day 1 - Ten random facts about yourself
Day 2 - Nine things you do everyday
Day 3 - Eight things that annoy you
Day 4 - Seven fears/phobias
Day 5 - Six songs that you’re addicted to
Day 6 - Five things you can’t live without
Day 7 - Four memories you won’t forget
Day 8 - Three words you can’t go a day without
Day 9 - Two things you wish you could do
Day 10 - One person you can trust

First, last, and always: The night I met Mr Psmith. It was at an Irish pub; he knew all the words to the songs, he made me laugh (he was wearing this Renaissance-y shirt with big sleeves and greeted me with, "Ola! Mi llamo Fernando!"), he quoted both Monty Python and Amadeus at me, and that was pretty much all she wrote :) It was in February and our first date a week later for sushi came in the middle of a colossal blizzard, but he drove forty miles through it to meet me... I think everyone has vivid memories of the night they met their Significant Other, the person who changed your life for the better and became your best friend and companion. How could you not?

So I'll do four besides that one. These are the first four that come to mind, in chronological order:

1) When I was in first grade, a little boy in my class -- Todd -- lost his entire family in a house fire: mother, father, four brothers and sisters. Only he and his little brother survived, because the parents put them out the master bedroom window onto the garage roof just before the floor of the room gave way. I remember the headline in the paper the next day was, "I heard my toys falling." But of course it wasn't toys... They lived just down the block from my best friend Erica and the fire happened right around Halloween. A few days later we went to Erica's house -- I don't remember if we were picking her up or dropping me off -- and drove right past Todd's house. The house was a blackened ruin, the roof collapsed, the big bay window in the living room blown out, and sitting on the sill was a half-burned jack-o-lantern. Real horror movie stuff, eh? Todd never came back to school; he and his little brother went to live with relatives, I suppose. To this day I wonder about them, where they went and where they are today.

2) My first day of Catholic school, in third grade. We're not remotely Catholic, but my mom decided to send me to a Catholic school that year, I guess because it was a really good school. My first day, in Sister Marie Helen's homeroom, we started off with the pledge of allegiance which I knew very well. Then we did the Lord's Prayer, which I sort of knew from occasional forays to church on Christmas and Easter. Then they all launched into "Hail, Mary, full of grace" which for all I knew might have been the school fight song. Sister Marie Helen, a chubby little woman (and if she looked little to ME, who was three feet tall for about three years straight, you know she was tiny), came bustling over to me with this very worried look. "What's wrong, dear? Don't you want to say the hail Mary with us?" she said. I looked around at all the staring little faces, then down at my shoes and mumbled, "I don't know it." I looked up to see a look of appalled horror on her face, like "Oh, the poor little heathen thing!" and she told off one of the other students to take me into a corner and teach it to me. I spent two years at St. John's but I'll never forget that feeling of being an utter alien, where everyone else knew something I didn't. (Sister Benedicta's penmanship class was a whole 'nother kind of unforgettable...)

3) The night I suddenly realized that grown-ups weren't some alien species but just varying degrees further along the continuum than me. I was twelve and had been babysitting for a young couple -- they couldn't have been more than 22 or 23, but of course they were GROWN-UPS so they seemed old and serious -- and afterwards the husband drove me home. I was pretty shy and didn't say much, but about halfway home he said, "Oh hey, do you mind if I turn this up? I really like this song." Of course I said no, I didn't mind. I had just discovered popular music and the song was "My Sharona", which I LOVED, and as the radio thumped out the beat and he sang along with it and kept time on the steering wheel, it was like this window opened up and I realized that grown-ups were actual people that might like some of the same things I liked. It was a real paradigm shift.

4) The night I met my first boyfriend. I was fourteen and we met at a German Club party in high school (yes, German Club -- as John Bender would say, "Demented and sad, but social" lol). He was a year ahead of me in school, and since I skipped a year when I was young that made him two years older, which seemed so grown up to me at the time. I thought he was so handsome, big blue eyes and shaggy tousled brown hair. When he dared me to guess his last name, I got it on the first try (Alexander). He drove me home in his forest-green Plymouth Satellite, blasting AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" at ear-shattering decibels the entire way, and I think I was in love before we got to my house :) We ended up dating for two years. He was sweet and warm and funny and smart and loving and kind, and although we ended up going our separate ways, I will always be grateful to him that my first love was a good one.

Day 1 - Ten random facts about yourself
Day 2 - Nine things you do everyday
Day 3 - Eight things that annoy you
Day 4 - Seven fears/phobias
Day 5 - Six songs that you’re addicted to
Day 6 - Five things you can’t live without
Day 7 - Four memories you won’t forget
Day 8 - Three words you can’t go a day without
Day 9 - Two things you wish you could do
Day 10 - One person you can trust

"Can't live without" is pretty strong. I'm not sure there's anything I truly couldn't manage to live without, other than Maslow's basics: air, water, food, clothing and shelter. So assuming this actually means "Things without which my life would be unbearably dreary, featureless and grim," I shall go with these:

1) Family
2) Reading and writing (sorry, can't separate these two)
3) Music (if I haven't got any, I'll make some)
4) Cats (for companionship, they cannot be beat)
5) Wine or tea (I'm torn on this one, they're so mood-dependent)

Is book reviewing a public service or an art?

Well duh. It's BOTH. Who didn't know that??

This part made me laugh immoderately, because OH SO TRUE!!!

As inert as it might look on the page, the book review is a weirdly pressurized and verbally jeopardized space, crisscrossed with potential errors. There’s a huge pull toward pomposity, for one thing. Drop your guard, mid-review, and you’ll find yourself holding forth like a drunken bishop. “Insofar as our author blah blah blah. . . . ” Book review bombast comes in three flavors: highbrow (“Every page witnesses the overflow of his vast erudition”), middlebrow (“magisterial . . . that rare thing”) or lowbrow (“Wade through burning gasoline to get this book”). And everybody does it, automatically as it were. It’s why blurbs all sound like blurbs.

Day 1 - Ten random facts about yourself
Day 2 - Nine things you do everyday
Day 3 - Eight things that annoy you
Day 4 - Seven fears/phobias
Day 5 - Six songs that you’re addicted to
Day 6 - Five things you can’t live without
Day 7 - Four memories you won’t forget
Day 8 - Three words you can’t go a day without
Day 9 - Two things you wish you could do
Day 10 - One person you can trust


Only eight???

1) People who don't keep their word/do what they say they will do.
2) Printers. They seem to have some evil intelligence that springs to life whenever I interact with them: they print stuff landscape or backwards, create paper jams, and just generally become disobedient and contrary.
3) Tuvan throat singing. Mr Psmith has started practicing it and it's driving me maaaaaaaaad.
4) People who are unkind to animals. There is simply no excuse for that. You should be beaten with a rubber hose.
5) People who are anti-science. You have a brain for a REASON, people. It's not just filler to keep your head from imploding.
6) The rampant mindless idiocy that has allowed people like the Kardashians, the cast of Duck Dynasty, and every single person on Jersey Shore to become famous and rich.
7) Words like "irrespective" and "orientate." Also corporate buzzwords like "facilitate" and "synergy" and "leverage".
8) George W. Bush. I can't help it, his fact just makes me want to smack him. Plus he invaded a country that didn't bomb us.

And here's a bonus one: The bottomless gulf between library funding and football/basketball coach salaries.