Literary Suspects

What would happen if you took descriptions of literary characters and ran them through law-enforcement composite sketch software? Hop on over to the Composites to find out. A few samples of their work below:

Edward Rochester, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Mr. Rochester, his foot supported by the cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire shone full on his face.  I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair.  I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake.  His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy…My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth.

All the Pretty Businesses

With three kids 6 and under, Mrs. DeMarest and I don’t get out much. As a result, I have little to no use for review sites such as Yelp.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the humor in imagining how Cormack McCarthy might grade various local businesses. Courtesy of Yelping with Cormack, here’s one such review for Design Within Reach, in Pacific Heights - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Three stars.

They emerged from the crucible of adolescence rosyfaced and long of bone, inheritors of the hurtling world of their progenitors. Cocksure but for the onerous legacy of war and rapacious greed and around them the soaring monuments and dolmens of their race fissured irreversibly. And like spawning salmon in their scaled finery they coursed heedless to universities and to the walled cities of Europe and the jungled ruins of Asia and they did so listlessly and yet with some driving hunger undeniable. For before them lay the promise and the yoke of some vague everything. And despondent they turned to those glowing gadgets and the vast and false electric nation and they soured like stable ponies for in everything they found nothing. And drowning now their horizons sinking and obliterated they lashed out. Fingers clawing that Eames chair. Eyes blazing and lustful before that Sussex credenza. Fornicating with that Brix modular drawer set.

Here’s another for Red Lobster in Wichita, KS

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Two stars.

The manager sat tied to the chair in the corral, firelit on all sides by the torches of the townfolk. Dean stood next to him with a Colt army revolver pointed to the hardpacked earth. Who else will speak, he said.

A chorus of voices rose at once. From the din a miner hollered: The shrimp was rubberlike.

I believe Pastor Macabee already done spoke to that, said Dean. He looked around him. Ghastly amber faces staring back like funeral masks. Are there any other charges, he said.

A prostitute in dusty finery stepped forward. She spoke haltingly. I made a reservation for six persons. And we still had to wait 45 minutes to set down. Her face fell into her hands and she began weeping softly. We was on time, she said.

A drunk cowboy carrying a rusting hatchet lurched toward the manager. I’ll tickle his neck with my axe so help me, he said.

Dean leveled the big revolver at the cowboy. The man regarded him wetly and melted back into the crowd. Dean spoke loudly so that all could hear. We will do this orderly or by God I’ll send him to the capitol and to hell with the lot of you.

A little girl strode forward into the light and looked up at Dean and the manager with eyes shining and obsidian. Hang them, she said. Hang them both.

Check out more at Yelping with Cormack.

First Line Friday!

Lately, I've been more intrigued by short first lines than their long counterparts. Short first lines seem to pack a swifter kick to the crotch then a more wordy first line. So have a look at this one:

Now I believe they will leave me alone.

What? Who will leave you alone? And Booooom, you're into the novel. This first line comes from one of my all time favorites: The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. The rest of the novel is perhaps one of the more artfully configured works of literature that I have ever laid eyes upon . . . and it has a good first line to boot!

Poet's Corner

-Walker Evans, 1936, Vicksburg Mississippi.

Here’s another helping of poetry for the poetically-impaired. I came across this one on the Writer’s Almanac podcast. As it says in the one line intro of the poem, it’s based on a Walker Evans photograph, which we’ve dug up and displayed above. Pretty cool to see the poet’s inspiration and final product side by side. What do you think?

Hitchhikers

By Charles Simic

After the Walker Evans photograph from the thirties

Hard times brought them out early
On this dreary stretch of road
Carrying a suitcase and a bedroll
With a frying pan tied to it,
The kind you use over a campfire
When a moss-covered log is your pillow.

He's hopeful and she's ashamed
To be asking a stranger to take them
Away from here in a cloud of flying
Gravel and dust, past leafless trees
With their snarled and pointy little twigs.
A man and a woman catching a ride
To where water tastes like cherry wine.

She'll work as a maid or a waitress,
He'll pump gas or rob banks.
They'll buy a car as big as a hearse
To make their fast getaway,
Not forgetting to stop for you, mister,
If you are down on your luck yourself.

This is from Simic’s 2005 collection. Take a look:

Review: Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta

When I made a resolution to read more women this year, there was a fear lurking in the back of my mind that by the time summer rolled around I’d have 19^th century English authoresses coming out of my ears. Now, I do have Emily Bronte on my bedside table as we speak, but I’ve also tried to ease myself into this goal by reading more contemporary fiction (See Munro, Alice here) and branching out into genres I wouldn’t normally read (See Christie, Agatha which is sitting in my queue.)

Dana Spiotta in another female author I’d never read before I picked up her book Stone Arabia. I checked it out on the recommendation of a commenter here on this site. (Thanks Fi.) And after letting the experience marinate for a few days. I’m glad I did.

It’s a novel that’s had praise heaped on it from all directions, and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. But I couldn’t help but wonder as I read it, whether this was really a book that will stand the test of time. I still can’t say I’m sure.

First of all, I genuinely liked the premise. The narrator’s brother is a failed musician who not only forges ahead with his obsession year after year- and does so despite being ignored by all but a handful of very close friends and family members. But he also compiles a comprehensive pseudo-history of his imagined rock-star past and all of his various bands- complete with fake reviews, album covers, news articles, obituaries and the like. When her brother goes missing, the main character tries to make sense of her own life by examining her eccentric brother’s “chronicles”, and by penning some competing chronicles of her own.

I will say that the book does a great job of evoking a place in time, whether it’s the narrator’s childhood memories of the late sixties, the LA club scene of the 70s and 80s, or the “present action” that takes place in 2004. In some ways it’s a time capsule of the modern era. And I’ll admit it’s somewhat refreshing to see lit-fic references to our 24-hour news cycle, and modern news events such as Abu Ghraib and the Beslan Hostage Crisis. Not to mention the repeated, gentle ribbing of Thomas Kinkaid Painter of Light ™. But I wonder if someone who picks the book up fifty years from now will care about these themes or identify with the book's characters. Not saying they won’t, just wondering if they will.

In the end, I wouldn’t classify it as an important book, but my guess is that it will exert a certain staying power. Spiotta writes compellingly about the sibling relationship, the plight of aging, the ways we choose to remember our past, and maybe most importantly about the pure creative impulse and where it comes from. It’s not the kind of book I’d hand to someone with an emphatic “You’ve got to read this” endorsement, but it is the kind of title I’d toss out there with an “I’d be interested to hear what you think about this one” curiosity. Anybody read it? If not, take a look:

Happy Valentine's Day

It’s Valentine’s Day, and that can only mean one thing around here: it’s time for some love-themed holiday fiction. What better story to share than Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love?” And who better to read it than that ultimate paragon of perfect love, Leonard Nemoy.

Commentary begins at 2:00 in, Mr. Nemoy’s gravel-mouthed narration starts at 3:40. Story’s over at 37:25. Enjoy!

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting. Download mp3 - Free File Hosting.

-This recording is from a recent Selected Shorts Podcast

Forget flouridation, Let's look at literary additives

We're all familiar with the monumental genius of Harper Lee's classic book To Kill a Mockingbird. It turns out that the character of Dill just happens to be based on a very good childhood friend of Lee's.

Apparently, the real Dill was a kid named Truman Streckfus Persons and, as the years passed, Persons became a rather accomplished novelist in his own right. After his mother remarried, he took on a name that’s probably more familiar to you: Truman Garcia Capote.

This leads us to ask the obvious question: What was in the water in Depression-era Monroeville, Alabama? (And whatever the answer is, can I please get some?)

    

May the best man win

It's that time again. Voting for Haiku-ption Contest #4 is now open to the reading public. Have at it!

An atomic explosion of awesome

Today’s post shares the dual distinction of officially putting our third month in the books, and being our 100^th post since kicking things off here in November.

Now, we don’t want to pat ourselves on the back, but since there’s no one else to do it we’ll just go ahead and say that it’s pretty amazing that in the past 30 days alone we have thrown the spotlight on 26 different authors. We may not be bottomless fonts of knowledge and insight, but you can’t say we lack range in our literary interests. Just take a look at this past month’s line up:

John Cheever

Roberto Bolano

John Steinbeck

Billy Collins

Wallace Stegner

E.L. Doctorow

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alice Munro

James Joyce

Aldous Huxley

George Orwell

Thomas Mann

Italo Calvino

Joseph Conrad

Edith Wharton

H. Rider Haggard

Toni Morrison

Sue Monk Kidd

David Grann

John Hersey

J.D. Salinger

Annie Proulx

Eudora Welty

Douglas Thayer

Henry James

Daniel Orozco

Philip Roth

That's a decent list by anyone's standards. And there's lots more where that came from. You just need to strap in and feel the 'Gs.' As always, here are the 5 most popular posts from this past month:

Literary Death Match: 1984 vs. Brave New World 

Review: “Wasatch” 

Haiku-ption Contest #4 

Short Story Club: “Walter John Harmon” 

Poet’s Corner

We’re glad to have each and every one of you as readers, and we hope you’ll continue to spread the word about the atomic explosion of awesome happening over here at ShelfActualization.com.

First Line Friday!

It's "First Line Friday" again. Today's first line is a great one for memorizing, if you are in the business of memorizing first lines:

"I knew her eight years ago."

Now, I like this line. I don't love it, but I do think it's a good first line. I like that it's concise (very concise . . . 6 words), but completely introduces the reader to the subject, which is obviously a girl. But, I also wonder about its efficacy? Does it work? Is too basic?

The writer, of course, is Phillip Roth. The novel is The Dying Animal.