Eureka!
I do not know how Parisiennes or Quebecoises pronounce this word -- Americans pronounce it "you REEK ah" -- but I met some Greek professors, and they said Archimedes probably jumped naked from the public bath and ran through Syracuse yelling: "ev-REH-kuh!"
(It's a little more complicated than that, nobody today knows how Ancient Greek was pronounced. And to Athenians, Archimedes' Doric accent would have sounded like Quebecois sounds to Parisians, or like the Australian accent sounds to BBC Londoners -- comment d'it on "hick"? Well, Archimedes was a Very Smart Hick.)
***********
How is your writing going ? Mine is not easy, and I am full of doubts !
***********
You spend five weeks trying not to fall into le moulin of the glacier so your frozen corpse will not be seen again for 3000 years. You spend five weeks among the Inuit of Ultima Thule. You spend five weeks trying not to become le dejeuner of l'ours blanc. You spend five weeks under l'aurore ...
I think your roman will be very good, remarkable, rich, delicious. (Maybe Inuit will be bored, but everybody else will be fascinated.)
Merci (ou merci pas) for the Hard Question.
For me and mon roman, this is a Very Unpleasant Moment.
The story is good, and in my private dream, gets better and better.
The characters are good, the characters are real, they are solid now, I can touch them and I can smell them.
They have risen from my rough sketch, and they have become alive and awake. Now they choose their own words, and make their own decisions, which regularly surprise me.
They do not need le romancier anymore -- now all they need is Bob the Fast Typist.
So this is a very uncomfortable, unpleasant moment for me.
For my wife, I want to be a good husband.
For my friends and my neighbors, I want to be a good friend and a good neighbor.
But now my characters want to kidnap me into their world for six months or for a year, and make me live with them (they need a fast typist). They want to take me away from wife, friends and neighbors.
When this happened before, I did not like it.
Well -- I liked it the way the addict likes opium.
The Dream World of the roman becomes so much more wonderful than the World of the Supermarket. Tierra de los Sueños becomes so much more beautiful and interesting than The Land of The Broken Toilet or The Land of the Diabetes Doctor. Real people become annoying, a distraction, a bother, an interruption.
Well -- you asked, and this has been very much on my mind this month. So the news is Very Good. And the news is Very Bad.
My wife was le professeur of literature. She thinks romanciers and poets are crazy people, perverts, sickos, Rimbauds, Baudelaires, Célines, Lord Byrons. She thinks the women are all Pauline Réages.
But she also knows that without these perverts, she would be unemployed. She would have nothing to force her students to read.
So she grudgingly permits Bob to be Céline de temps en temps. She regards it as a Professional Duty, like serving on a jury, or military conscription. Temporary, unpleasant, but necessary.
Now I must return to my horrible Dream Family, their filthy, perverted speeches, their irresponsible, shameful acts. à demain,
Bob the Fast Typist
8 comments:
Whatsname of that movie where the fictional character in a book finds out that the author intends to kill him of and kidnaps him into the world of books ? I forgot the title but I remember that movie got good reviews. Plus, you must read Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. Fforde is having fun with the world of literature and references, very bright, funny and intelligent and too complex to explain (i.e. there is a Wall of Lost Plots full of lost and unfinished novels in his fantasy world where you can hide). Will we see you in the NYT Bestseller List kicking A ? No doubt ! Will readers of VleeptronZ get discounts ? Also no doubt whatsoever. Keep it up and let us know how the typing is going.
Who is this? Who is this? Is this PatfromCH? I know your style by now, this is PatfromCH, right?
Wear a SUisee hat with a feather next time so I will know who you are.
I have been busy -- a fast train trip to Philadelphia -- and have fallen behind on my e-mail, but I want to reply to your news about the possible restoration of the death penalty in CH. You're not happy, I'm not happy.
If this is not PatfromCH, but maybe Klaas in Rotterdam -- Hi Klaas!
oh btw this post was a reply to the French fellow who asked f_minor if they could help him find a written transcript of GG's "The Idea of North." After a month of searching, he wrote that he'd found it!!! In fact he found the transcript, AND a French translated transcript! ("l'Idee du Nord" ?)
So I replied: EUREKA! = "I have found it!"
It's best to scream that when you're wet and naked and running through the streets of your town.
Look at those photos? Everybody looks sick and pale and unhappy and grumpy! Celine was a pediatrician -- the neighborhood children's doctor. Would you send your little kids to let HIM put his hands all over them?
But Pauline Reage -- she looke like a really nice, bright, happy, clean, educated woman I'd like to have over for coffee and pastries. The French cops spent years trying to figure out her secret identity. Finally, when she was about 95, a young reporter went to interview her about all the great French authors of the 30s and 40s and 50s she had worked with at (I think) Gallimard. When he sat down and opened his notebook, the alte Dame smiled and said:
"I wrote l'Histoire d'O."
Okay, Celine had a reason to be grumpy. In World War I, he was shot in the head, and the surgeons put a steel plate in his skull. For the rest of his life he had the sensation that a subway train was racing between his ears.
In a recent movie, either Verlaine or Rimbaud was played by Leonardo diCapprio. Those boys were a mess, a real living train wreck. Their tragedy is that they lived 100 years before MTV was invented.
Ah okay here it is -- Eureka!
"Total Eclipse" (1995), Leo is Rimbaud, and David Thewlis is Verlaine.
The Golden Age of Absinthe!
Oh bugger I forgot my alias ! Yup, t'was me.
Well, as for the CP thing, they abandoned it today. A mere publicity stunt. Thou Shalt Not Abuse Direct Democracy For Your Own Causes You Flaming Bastards !
Oh good on that bloke that he found his manuscripts. Shame he didn't inform me/us, but at least he got what he wanted so good on him.
As for Verlaine, same with Oscar Wilde. He'd be the talk of the tabloids these days, Byron and Shelley too I reckon.
(and thank you for recognizing my style. I not just write like that, I also talk like this)
Lord Byron certainly was King of the Tabloids in his day.
Up in the quaint rural north of England -- Yorkshire and the Moors -- three little girls read all about him
"Mad, bad, and dangerous to know"
in their parents' London magazines.
Later they grew up a little, and started writing novels -- "Wuthering Heights," "Jane Eyre" -- all of them starring a volcanic, violent, angry, dark, brooding, strong, explosive, unpredictable, bitter man.
All those Bronte heroes -- Rochester, Heathcliffe -- are the little Bronte girls' excited memories of the tabloid accounts of Lord Byron. If they had bosoms, their bosoms heaved to read about his shocking exploits.
I mentioned Jasper Fforde before. His first novel is called The Eyre Affair (basically about a fake Bronte manuscript), in another one Heathcliffe...well every good book store should have some Fforde to check out I reckon.
btw there is a funny british radio show called Old Harry's Game, a comedy set in Hell. Very intelligent and very funny (some parts are on youtube). Satan is torturing Mozart by having Cosi fan Tutte played on an organ. By a tapeworm. Freud & Jung have a squabble, Popes are tortured by being in overdue labour.Satan has a discussion with WB Yates about his poetry. And good old Jane Austen is a mean, violent dangerous loudmouth with a cockney accent...
Post a Comment