26

Theroux's Jungle Lovers

The early Theroux had style, but it is possible to see that his structure needed some work back then. Even in small chapters, he sometimes injects flashbacks and the three stars, as in ...
* * *

Billy Collins' Poetry 180
What a wonderful book. Of course, not all the poems are my favorites, but many of them are...plenty of them!

25. SOME WRITERS RESOURCES THAT MIGHT BE OF INTEREST
This came over via email. Very good links, so I am passing it on.


Reference Library: Bartleby.com (www.bartleby.com) - one of the most
complete reference sources on the Internet

Words That Are Often Confused (lbarker.orcon.net.nz/words.html) – Nice
directory, alphabetically organized, of pairs of words that are often
confused (e.g., accept/except) and that writers sometimes substitute for
one another. Also provides examples of usage.

In Quest of An Elegant Writing Style
(lbarker.orcon.net.nz/elegant.html) – Lots of common sense tips here, such as, "Avoid too many
consecutive paragraphs starting with the same word." Includes explanations and
examples.

(Note: the writer of the two pieces above is from New Zealand, but I
didn't find any examples of entries that would be different in American
English)

Critiques: Ethics
(www.paintedrock.com/library/hinze/hinze/critique.txt) - This is a great piece by Victoria Hinze Barrett, copyright 1995,
about the ethics associated with critiquing. It covers the issues of
trust, confidentiality, and sensitivity, among others.

Critique Guidelines
(www.paintedrock.com/library/hinze/hinz/critiqu2.txt) - This is another piece by Victoria Hinze Barrett, copyright 1995,
discussing some basic techniques for analyzing another writer's work.

Aids4Writers list – Run by Victoria Hinze Barrett, it offers in-depth
newsletters of various topics of interest to writers. A recent series
discussed "Why Editors/Agents Reject Manuscripts." To subscribe, send
a blank e-mail message to Aids4Writers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

24.

Chess:: Tactics
I am trying the lessons in the Training Mode of the tactic2 section. With Discovered Attacks. I am getting around 50% of them correct. Ways to go, a long ways to go.

Musica:: Band of Gypsies
Am listening to a CD called Band of Gypsies, as I type this. Either the group or the lead artist is called Taraf de Haidouks. Wonderfully haunting numbers, evocative of the Danube and in general lamenting the losses that is every Gypsy’s immutable fate in life. This particular CD was reconded in Bucharest. As I listen, these rascals manage to tug my heartstrings and make me lament not being at the Danube. And that’s when I realize that they have succeeded. Nostalgia, carefully nurtured and bottled to beguile susceptible listeners like me.

Fractures and Fissures
In movies and novels, there is always a seminal moment, a cataclysmic event, a momentous fork in the road. But real life isn’t always that dramatic. There is only a slow divergence, a peeling away. Life isn’t one big fracture, it is the accretion of little fissures. The result is the same.

Why Long-term Relationships are like the Dow Jones Index
You know, the feelings for a loved one, it doesn’t change all that much. Also, there are a few days with big ups and downs, but not usually. Of course, there will be daily ups and downs, but the more important thing is the trend.


Notes:…He stirred his tea with a ball-point pen.

Chess Links for my use

Games sorted by ECO and in PGN for download from ChessWarrior

23. Song Lyrics stuck in my head

What an embarrassment. Why can't something more highbrow be churning in my head? Unfortunately, vairamuthu's
line 50 kg taj mahal enakkey enakka from a song whose beginning I don't even know is stuck. So I googled and found:


haira haira hairaba haira haira hairaba
50 kg taj mahal enakkey enakka
flightil vandha nandhavanam enakkey enakka
haira haira hairaba haira haira hairaba
packet saisil vennilave enakkey enakka
faxil vandha pen kavidhai enakkey enakkaJeez, what can I say?

22. Short Film
Saw the Mexican short film, You owe me one! yesterday, since it came along with the Y Tu MT DVD. Hilarious, and I watched it a second time with R. All the loose ends are so neatly tied. Made me wonder why anyone ever made feature length movies in the first place.

21. Misc

Chess
Here's the link to chess tactics in chessbase. They have tactics problems in training mode.

20. Tamil
Was listening to the Internet Radio and I heard the song Annan oru Kovilendral after, God knows?, fifteen or more years. This made me scour the web to see if I could lay my hands on a MP3 of the song.
that search lead to TamiSongs.net. This site seems to have a very good collection, and they seem to mail(!) it to you. Well, whatever works.

19. And Also Your Mother

Saw Y Tu Mama Tambien today. The movie starts off with an outrageous scene, and then goes on to become the road movie that it is. I liked the movie, though R didn't seem to care for it all that much.

Road movies are lucky in that they have a ready-made linear structure in-built. All the screenwriter has to go is to hang a few interesting scenes off the straight line. Did have a plot that is more than what I am making this out to be. I especially liked all the subtle unspoken things that were going on in the background. The director alludes to, but never mentions outright, the dirty wargoing on in Mexico and elsewhere.

The dialog was fastpaced, and had to pause and step back in the DVD several times to catch the full impact of what was being said. The director resorted to the repeated voice-over as a stylistic decision. It works in most of the places, not so well in others.

As I said to R later, Hollywood movies and movies from other countries are similar only in as much as the format. Everything else seems to be different.

Musing:
Does all art that attempts to make an impact also have to outrage or shock?

Jungle Lovers
Am reading around one chapter a day. I am happy that I can see a little rougher Theroux than say the polished writer who wrote Fresh Air Fiend. There are lots of annoying parenthetical comments, which could just as well have been mixed into the narrative. The sharp observation is there, the scaffolding that helped create the plot is visible at places. A great writer who is creating himself, book by book.

18. Catch Me If you Can

Watched CMIYC Saturday. A long movie, deliberately made a little fluffy and light by Spielberg. I didn't think much of the movie. Then, on Sunday, I remembered that there was a second DVD, and so I popped that in and sat watching. It is amazing how my esteem for a movie grows once I learn more about it. The behind-the-scenes clips were very well done. Frank Abignale Jr. was charismatic, and now this is a movie that I won't forget too soon. In my private rate-o-meter, I think I gave this movie a 7.8.

Jungle Lovers by Theroux
Have started Theroux's African novel -- JL -- on Saturday, June 21st.

Summer Solstice
R wanted to know why summer starts on the longest day. Shouldn't the Solstice be the half-way point of summer?

17. Found a site with a good javascript code
Stephen's Web

Found a link with Indian Travelogues

16
Book: The Girl in Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
Last night, I read the last few stories and completed the book. Very inventive write. Not all stories blew me away, but they were all excellent. There were certainly parts of every story that was good. There, another fiction book completed for the year. Not bad.

That motivated e to read an Interview with Aimee Bender.

15.

My first ever blog-link:
They have a cool link to the inane things that people do with PCs.
http://superfastcomputer.com/


Overheard:

There is a runway that goes over our house.

[If I win the powerball] I won't even come to my office. In fact, I will leave a 100 bucks for whoever cleans out my desk!

Sentiments
There is so much free information on the Web that you can do a Ph.D on any subject purely with what's available.

Dilemma
Q: If a man has to choose between your closest friend who's a girl and your wife, what should a man do?
A: Visit Taco Bell?

14.

You read some good blogs, almost literary, and then it puts the choke on you. The trick must be to keep writing junk, so that you are not daunted by unrealistic ideals about how good a blog must be.

IT Job Fair
Went to the IT job fair on Saturday. What a zoo! Thank heavens that I am on this side of the table. If I was on the other side, I couldn't possibly survive. Boy, it is a brutal world. The Open House shook me up for the whole weekend.

Cable Modem
For 45 days, we dilly-dallied and went without returning the modem. Then, on Sunday night, we found that they had billed us $150 for the unreturned modem. On Monday morning at 9, we turned it in. What an effective punishment threat.

Books
Finished July, July as well as Green Hills of Africa. Now I am concentrating on Bender's The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Talk of creative writing, it doesn't get any more non-formulaic than this.

Music
Still on a gypsy music trip. The fact that Gypsy music originated in Rajasthan fascinates me. Isn't being a gypsy one of those eternal fantasies? No one thinks of the cold when you are thinking of being one. Just the romance of being one.

Enough.

13. The Weekend Cometh

Two days in SFO this week, so haven't kept up.

Chess: All the easy games are over. I have a record of 16 straight wins, but now comes the hard part. Here are the tough games. Jp and aaraymond and others.

Work I gotto show up for work tomorrow, a Saturday. No fun, but we are hiring and I didn't want to not show up.

Grandmother She's been released from GH. If there is sweeter news, I don't want to hear it. Love live, paati.

That's it for now. When the literary juices aren't flowing, it is best to quit. No point in making a fool of oneself.

12. Papa and Chink

Where a man feels at home, outside of where he’s born, is where he’s meant to go.
Hemingway in GH of Africa.

From the Hemingway school of personal accountability
Every damn thing is your own fault if you are any good.
[GH of Africa.]

I was thinking about beer and in my mind was back to that year in the spring when we walked on the mountain road to the Bains de Alliez and the beer-drinking contest where we failed to win the calf and came home that night around the mountain with the moonlight on the fields of narcissus that grew on the meadows and how we were drunk and talked about how you would describe that light on that paleness, and the brown beer sitting at the wood tables under the wisteria vine at Aigle when we came in across the Rhone Valley from fishing the Stockalper with the horse chestnut trees in bloom and Chink and I again discussing writing and whether you could call them waxen candelabras. God, what bloody literary discussions we had…

…I hung my booted legs over the side and let the my feet cool and drank the beer and wished old Chink was along.

…Chink and I had discovered a big part of the world together and then our ways had gone a long way apart.

Quoted verbatim from Green Hills of Africa

Office

Bill was chatting with me and he was kicked because he coined a slogan.
If you don't produce, we will cut you loose
He called several of his employees and shared his slogan with them. They weren't nearly as thrilled as he was.

Notes from Writers on Writing: Volume II

Quote: Ackerman
So much of life falls between the seams of the sayable

Great Personal Essayists
Montaigne, Hazlitt, Orwell, Didion

"There's a great joy in the absurdity of one's enterprise." Mary Karr

Secret for tighter prose
Superfluous adverbs swallowed into stronger verbs, adjectives disappear, nouns become more particular, more precise.
Rearrange the syntax of sentences, transforming passive into active constructions. Everything tighter and stronger.
-- Jay Parini

Technique
Clarifying with strength:
"What I was searching for, what I'm always after is understanding character..."
Susan Richards Shreve

Time to Re-Focus

Ok, I have broadband access to the 'net now. That is one thing out of the way. Need to redesign my Blog a little. Still too much like the cookie cutter template.

Chess
Reading Chernev's Logical Chess. Very good, and there's so much I still don't know. These games are good.

Buhs
Papa Hemingway is not the easiest guy to read. But I am determined and the Green Hills shall be climbed.

Enough, time to redesign the template now!

Weekend Update

Another month rolls in. Man, they go fast. Connecting to the 'net from Kyo was the achievement of the weekend. (RA did that, I just enjoyed the benefits.)
Chess: Both Islanderfan and Aknightout made stronger moves than what I anticipated. Watched an Ivanchuk game on ICC (Euro championships.) He attacked like crazy but the other young GM (...nashvilly) defended exceptionally well. It was a draw.
Reading: Plodding through EHem's Green Hills of Africa. Funny at places, very dry elsewhere.
Food: Went to Devon yesterday. Sucked up a major part of our Sunday. Share of wallet too. Groceries for $90.