tempo giusto

Please update your rss feeds, bookmarks, etc. This blog is located at http://www.bellascribe.com/blogs.

Or rather, not. The plan to merge this blog, along with the one preceding it, all into one is not working out. That is to say, has not worked out, as I’ve decided not to waste any more time on it. The new Wordpress software has been up and running on the new blog, so evermore go there, all you multitudes of readers.

I don’t want to talk about Frey anymore. But it seems like I have to… okay, like I said before, I don’t think the book was all that horribly written. Sure, I was snowed in at the airport and was looking for a diversion. Still, what I remember was Frey trying to stylize the prose, going against standard capitalization and punctuation, et cetera conventions to portray this jumbled-up, recovering addict brain, to give the immediacy thereof. I liked that he took that risk. Like Rick Moody and his italicizing and exclamation points and so on. Maybe this has to do with my propensity for the visual… typography, design, et al. Yes, I remember finding the book to be way way too long, thinking parts clearly needed cut, and that on the other hand, it was a pleasant thing to be doing, sitting in the airport reading as opposed to a billion other things I might have had to have been doing otherwise. Still, I’m not going to suddenly start proclaiming how terrible the book was as have been quite a lot of people since the scandal broke. It wasn’t a great book; it was a flawed book; but it wasn’t the worst thing ever written. As for memoir and truth? My feelings haven’t changed about that at all — the book should have published as Frey originally wanted and tried but failed get to get it published as, fiction.

Now Oprah, and the show, that’s something different altogether. I really hated the whole thing, could only imagine all that was said and done offstage. Out of the dreck, though, is Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Ed : Dysfunction Junction, What’s Your Function? A snippet that unfairly represents the article — you have to read it yourself:

The academic field of “Oprah studies” has a substantial literature, including four academic books and numerous journal articles. One journal article complained that scholars had not grasped Oprah’s postmodernity because they failed to draw on Bakhtin’s work on dialogism.

This is a semi-procrastination, psuedo-break; that is, I am between working writing projects — done with one for the time being and needing to delve into the other but not quite there yet. Since the month of January has sped away so quickly with few entries here, why not start off the new month with action to back the positive hope and optimism regarding this weblog? Why not share this wonderfully useful tool I’ve come across making my work so much easier?

The Buddymarks
bookmark manager is without a doubt the best I’ve come across. It imported gigantic bookmark files from my various laptops and PCs and files without a hitch. Working with it is simple and quick.
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January’s full moon, today, January 14, is called the Wolf Moon, or the Old Moon, or less poetically the Moon After Yule.

I can see why Boulder has compelled many. It would take me a longer time here to see why many have become cynical about it, about its exclusivity and jacked-up prices, but of course all the general evidence is available, if one cares to go with it. I don’t. I don’t care to pay attention to the same in Charleston where I still currently live. I have spent too much on that for now. Other things call.

In my mail, an invitation to a New York gallery, though the show that interests me more is according to the website, already past. From that show is this sample:

Upon learning that my flight into Denver was being put off for most of the day from a shop in the airport, I grabbed up — and gobbled up — a copy of Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. Sure, I had questions all along as I read the book, but nevertheless appreciated the stylistic devices Frey used, and was allowed to get away with, to tell his story — they lent a sort of authenticity to the tale. Never did I suspect that this completely debased addict, derelict since he entered the double-digit years of age as he told it, not only managed to graduate from the private liberal arts college he attended, but was a frat boy!

Evidentally — and this website has made a point of collecting the evidence — Frey’s memoir is a whole lot of “inauthenticities.” In fact, the evidence-collectors are calling their revealing story: “A Million Little Lies.”

Time to take a break from writing about Austria and the Viennese wine taverns (Heurigen) and the Schrammelmusik, violins, songs expressing maudlin themes …

From the alumni list today:

From the NY Times:

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Submitted to 20 publishers and agents, the typed manuscripts of the opening chapters of two books were assumed to be the work of aspiring novelists. Of 21 replies, all but one were rejections. Sent by The Sunday Times of London, the manuscripts were the opening chapters of novels that won Booker Prizes in the 1970’s. One was “Holiday,” by Stanley Middleton; the other was “In a Free State,” by Sir V. S. Naipaul, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Middleton said he wasn’t surprised. “People don’t seem to know what a good novel is nowadays,” he said. Mr. Naipaul said: “To see something is well written and appetizingly written takes a lot of talent, and there is not a great deal of that around. With all the other forms of entertainment today, there are very few people around who would understand what a good paragraph is.”

According to this E&P story, there’s been a new alt-weekly in Columbia (a place I called “home” for a few years) since summer’s end that has disturbed some — and at least one so much so as to force the unknown(s?) to break into the editor’s home and set his possessions on fire.

The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies website carries the story and a photo of the editor Hutchins’ burned stove. The Columbia City Paper website provides other sources, including a local news station video, and states:

The Association Of Alternative Newsweeklies has fueled response nationwide from alt-press industry professionals. Due to various media requests, media may download police report, statement and pictures. We are thankful for the community support and hope the exposure helps catch these people! Tips: call the Columbia Police Department 803-545-3010.

Columbia City Paper is offering a $10,000 award for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators for felony arson.

The publisher is also meeting with FBI officials on Wednesday to evaluate possibility of an outside investigation due to First Amendment issues. Columbia City Police department sent a CSI officer who lifted prints and have been in contact with Hutchins on the status of the investigation.

Though I’m still in Colorado, I’ll be following this not-so-surprising tale of South Carolinian intrique. (Intrique is not the correct word here … what is? … I’m rushing out the door and will have to let this one simmer. But you, dear reader, feel free to give me your word[s] for it.)