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English comedian Stephen Fry served as the narrator for the United Kingdom edition of the You Have to F***ing Eat audiobook. The animated video embedded above features Fry’s recitation.
Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston read the story for the American edition of this audiobook. According to an announcement on Canongate TV website, “Fyy and Cranston follow in the footsteps of celebrities including Samuel L. Jackson, Noel Fielding, Thandie Newton, and Werner Herzog, all of whom saw their recordings of Mansbach’s earlier bestseller, Go the F*ck to Sleep, rack up millions of hits.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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By Kate Farquhar-Thomson
It was down to the trustworthy sat nav that I arrived safe and sound at Hay Festival this year; torrential downpours meant that navigating was tougher than usual and being told where to go, and when, was more than helpful.
Despite the wet and muddy conditions that met me at Hay, and stayed with me throughout the week, the enthusiasm of the crowd never dwindled. Nothing, it seems, keeps a book lover away from their passion to hear, meet, and have their book signed by their favourite author. But let’s not ignore the fact that festival-goers at Hay not only support their favourite authors, they also relish hearing and discovering new ones.
My working holiday centres on our very own creators of text, our very own exponents of knowledge, our very own Oxford authors! Here I will endeavour to distil just some of the events I was privileged to attend in the call of duty!
Peter Atkins was an Oxford Professor of Chemistry and fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford until his retirement in 2007 – many of us, including myself, studied his excellent text-books at ‘A’ level and at university. What Peter Atkins does so well is make science accessible for everyone and none less so than an attentive Hay audience. Peter puts chemistry right at the heart of science. ‘Chemistry has rendered a service to civilization’ Atkins says ‘it contributes to the cultural infrastructure of the world’. And thereon he took us through just nine things we needed to know to ‘get’ chemistry.
Ian Goldin’s event on Is The Planet Full? addressed global issues that are affecting, and will affect, our planet. So, is the planet full? Well, the Telegraph tent for his talk certainly was! Goldin, whose lime green sweater brought a welcome brightness to the stage, is Professor of Globalisation and Development and Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. His words brought clarity and insight: “politics shapes the answer to this question,” said Goldin.
Hay mixes the young with the old and academics with us mere mortals, and what we publishers call the ‘trade’ authors with the more ‘academic’ types. This was demonstrated aptly by Paul Cartledge who right from the start referenced an earlier talk he attended by James Holland. Cartledge is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at University of Cambridge and James (who is an ex-colleague and friend) is a member of the British Commission for Military History and the Guild of Battlefield Guides but a non-academic. The joy of Hay is that it brings everyone together. Paul Cartledge was speaking about After Thermopylae, a mere 2,500 years ago, but rather a more tricky period to illustrate through props and pictures which Holland so aptly used in his presentation.
OUP had 15 authors at The Hay Festival but the Hay Festival also had other visitors such as Chris Evans whose show was broadcast live from the festival as it was the 500 Words competition announcement and I was lucky enough to be there.
So what does Hay mean to me? It’s a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with heroes in literature and culture, as well as academia. It’s a week of friends, colleagues, and drinking champagne with Stephen Fry whilst discussing tennis with John Bercow – and wearing wellies every day!
Kate Farquhar-Thomson is Head of Publicity at OUP in Oxford.
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Image credits: Stephen Fry, Ian Goldin, and 500 Words competition at the Hay Festival. Photos by Kate Farquhar-Thomson: do not reproduce without permission.
The post Post-Hay Festival blues appeared first on OUPblog.
I’m lucky enough to live close to Hay on Wye, it’s my destination of choice on a wet Sunday afternoon. The bookshops go on forever, and there are one or two decent places to eat, not something that can be said of many small Welsh towns. I’m a food snob, and a book snob, and a snob in general, so when the festival comes around, I like to make sure everyone I know who tells me they intend to go that I prefer Hay when it’s quieter, when I have the place to myself.
After all, most people who attend the festival are not there because of a hunger for all things literary. What they want more than anything else is to see, and if possible talk to, a celebrity. This doesn’t interest me at all. If I go, I'm there out of sheer intellectual curiosity.
Yesterday, however, after tramping through heavy rain from the car park in town to the main festival site, one end of Hay to the other, and thankfully having seen not one celebrity, I found a quiet bar, bought a hideously expensive pint and slumped myself in a sofa. I’d arranged to meet friends there, but they were scattered about the site, and none of them genuinely interested in books (unless you include ones by Alan Titchmarsh) so I had a few minutes to plan my intellectual journey for the day. I don’t know about you, but when I attend things like this I always have to have a focus – whether it’s poetry, or fiction, or history, I have to prepare myself, consider in advance what perspective I intend to take in order that I’m not thrown in any direction, and end up completely adrift on a brown sea of aimless hogwash. (Hay is muddy, remember).
And then Adrian Edmondson walked into the bar, in wellies, and he stood right next to me and I could actually hear him talking.
Those few minutes were very difficult for me, you understand. I was suddenly sucked under by just the sort of empty headed nonsense I had hoped to avoid. I remember, ten years ago, having a pee next to Adrian Edmondson in the toilets at Leigh Delamare services. He was more famous then. I didn’t speak to him on that particular occasion, of course. It would have been very inappropriate, but here, in a bar, well, this was a different matter.
I found I couldn't help myself from continually glancing up at him. Not because I am in awe of him in any way, but more likely because I was considering how his comedy is in an intellectual tradition that follows Beckett and Pinter, and I was thinking I could go up and ask him something along these lines but decided against it because he might think I was a tosser.
After Edmondson left the bar (he drank two pints when I had managed just one) I decided I would go and look for my friends so I could just mention, in passing, that I had just seen a very famous comedian, and making sure I shoehorned Beckett and Pinter into the same garbled sentence so I could impress upon them that I was interested in Edmondson from a cultural standpoint and really his fame was of no interest to me. He’s just a bloke like other blokes, he drinks beer and uses the urinal (I have witnessed both, remember).
So I hurried out of the bar, fighting against a tide of bodies making their way to some ‘talk’ or other. I pushed through the middle class masses wondering why it is that they feel this need to see someone talk. It’s as ridiculous as listening to someone paint. Why go all the way to Hay to see people talk? Similar talks are all over the internet. If you are truly interested in what these people have to say, then just stay at home and watch the videos on youtube. Or better still, read their books. It’s all very hollow, isn’t it?
And then I saw the great Australian novelist Tim Winton, and wasn’t that Martha Kearney just behind him? And what the hell is John Bercow doing here and, suddenly, looming out of the light like a great galleon emerging from fog, there is Stephen Fry, right there, in front of me, smiling, avuncular, our national treasure. He was being ushered towards the new signing area next to the bookshop, nodding, his massive brain working away.
Lower status celebs (like Bercow) sign books in the main shop, but those of bigger stature, like Fry, sit in a sort of corridor next to the shop, so fawning admirers can line up and wait their turn for a few seconds of unselfconscious, fully paid, staring.
I am above all this, of course, and when I eventually meet my friends, I quickly steer the conversation to the Theatre of the Absurd and just drop in the fact I had been in a bar with Adrian Edmondson, and wasn’t it pathetic that grown men and women stare and whisper, and that I’d also seen Stephen Fry.
One of my friends, Gary, then mentioned that he had a ticket to see Fry talking about Shakespeare. Gary has never seen a Shakespeare play in his life. So why, I wondered, was he so keen to hear what Fry had to say about the bard? I have all the BBC Shakespeare on DVD, as well as one or two of the Branaghs. I'm serious about my Shakespeare, not like Gary, who's just a dilettante. But off he went, ticket clasped in his hand, his eyes glazed over in expectation. Fool.
Later that day I made my way back to the car park in the town, still curious as to true nature of the festival. What is this desire human beings have to be close to famous people, who, just because they choose to write, or perform, are given inordinate status? I was thinking this, and as I entered the car park, much emptier than it was earlier on, there walking towards me was Blackadder himself, Rowan Atkinson.
I tried not to stare, but there was nobody about, no one could see me, so it didn’t matter, and Atkinson had his eyes on the tarmac, obviously keen not to meet my gaze, so I had a big long look. He isn’t as tall as I expected. Not much between him and Bercow.
Anyway, I got into my car, and starting the engine felt a trifle disappointed that there was no one I could tell about my encounter with a superstar. I’m above all that anyway, so decided to keep it to myself.
The potted history of animation’s shifting demographics should be familiar. Once, animated films were aimed at general audiences. Over time, animation began catering primarily to children. Then, more recently, animation intended for older audiences once again began to make itself known.
But the closer we look, the more intricacies we find. From Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir being discussed on the BBC’s current affairs program Newsnight, to the premiere of the late-night animated sitcom, there are countless example of adult animation bubbling up, sometimes disappearing again, other times leaving a mark.
Adult television animation developed in different ways around the world. In America, cartoons from The Simpsons to Adult Swim show that it is the ribald ethos of Ralph Bakshi and Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted festival which ultimately won out. The Japanese industry, meanwhile, found vast quantities of source material in the country’s multifaceted comics scene.
Sometimes it takes only a single agency to have a major impact. In Britain, adult television animation is associated primarily with Channel 4, which adopted the festival model. Throughout the Eighties and Nineties it screened countless animated shorts, mixing original commissions with work gathered from around the world.
If I were to pick a single work in which multiple streams of adult cartoons converge to great success, I would pick Some Protection, a 1987 short made by Marjut Rimminen for Channel 4. This film is based around an unscripted monologue from an incarcerated teenager named Josie O’Dwyer; the other characters with speaking roles are portrayed by actors, making the film a mixture of fact and fiction. The case of Josie O’Dwyer is abstracted into something broader, her story becoming potentially representative of any number of people with similar experiences.
Some Protection is mostly literalistic but makes use of expressionist elements. When the central character is isolated, she is placed naked against a plain white background. To show her bewildering new surroundings, there is a point of view shot swinging from one leering face to another. The film also uses symbolism in the same way as political cartoons: the outside world is portrayed as a colorful funfair, but when the protagonist escapes into it, she is immediately grabbed by the tentacle of a policeman-octopus. The imagery is not subtle, but it serves its purpose in carrying the narrative forward through a scene which would have been unwieldy if portrayed in a more literal manner.
Political cartoon, biography, social commentary, expressionism, drama, documentary – all of these elements combine in Some Protection, showing just what can be achieved once the many strains of adult animation begin to merge.
If animation was greatly affected by television, then the coming of the Internet shook things up even more. The effects of the online revolution are twofold: firstly, sites such as YouTube provide unprecedented access to animation old and new. Secondly, it has increased communication between animation viewers by providing new ways for fans to gather and share recommendations.
The Internet emerged as the ideal home for what can be termed the geek demographic, with TV Tropes being a prime example of a website put together by and for self-proclaimed geeks. The site prides itself on covering as broad a range of fiction as possible, emerging as a sometimes fascinating form of populist, open-access media scholarship. In theory, this would make it the perfect place to cover lost gems of animation, but in practice it has many blind spots. There is little discussion about Svankmajer or Norstein, while juvenile mediocrities such as Disney’s Gargoyles are treated as masterpieces on a par with the television dramas of Dennis Potter and David Simon.
TV Tropes has a page devoted to what it calls the Animation Age Ghetto, which gives a reasonable if scattershot overview of the subject. The page’s “examples” section, however, consists in large part of people filibustering about how their favorite superhero cartoons never caught on. The main reason that most of these cartoons never attracted adult audiences, of course, is that they are simply not for adults.
That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with having guilty pleasures. The humorist Stephen Fry summed things up well: a fan of Doctor Who, he commented that “every now and again we all like a chicken nugget.” As he continued, however,
If you are an adult you want something surprising, savory, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong. You want to try those things, because that’s what being adult means.
The ever-enthusiastic geek demographic certainly does not see animation as being merely for children. But it suffers from an inverted snobbery, with more inventive or experimental animation dismissed as “pretentious” or “arthouse”, and from a view of the medium that is built largely on nostalgia for beloved childhood cartoons. Even dedicated animation enthusiasts can overlook much of the best work which is out there: perhaps it is in human nature for audiences to stick to the films which they think they might enjoy rather than try anything new.
When commercial television first arrived in Britain in 1954 it was opposed by Lord Reith, then director-general of the publicly-funded BBC. Reith was a firm believer that television should provide quality programming which was beneficial to the public, commercial considerations and popular taste be damned. Now, with producers of online animation competing to create the crudest and most lowbrow fare, the approaches taken by festivals or outlets such as Channel 4 look rather Reithian by comparison.
Works such as Some Protection show us what adult television animation can achieve when supported by a body that is willing to back inventive and challenging creations. Just think what the broad canvas of Internet animation could achieve with a similar agency, be it a prominent funding body or a broader-minded fandom.
(Images in this post from Marjut Rimminen‘s “Some Protection”)
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Autumn is slowly creeping into the atmosphere with its dropping temperatures and beautifully changing leaves, and Overlook has brand new paperbacks to enjoy while you're wrapped up in a sweater enjoying a mug of hot cocoa. From crime thrillers and totalitarian art to celebrity stories and a history of magic, this list will surely provide something for every book lover.
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By:
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I was going to spend a lot of time on this Fusenews. Then I picked up Doug TenNapel’s Cardboard and lost most of my evening in the process. So it goes. I really am going to have to be brief today. To sum up:
The Battle of the (Kids’) Books rages on in earnest! Wish I’d submitted my bracket this year. So far the winners make sense to me.
- Opinions I do not share. #1: “Here is a list of eleven children’s books that still have value in a writer’s adult years.” I might agree with you if you meant that Rainbow Fish makes for an excellent source of protein. #2: “Ten Tips for Avoiding Terrible Children’s Books.” This may actually be the strangest collection of children’s book-related advice I’ve seen in years. I live in hope that I misread it and that this is all the stuff you’re supposed to avoid, not do.
- Stephen Fry + a pub called The Hobbit = lawsuit city. Actually, you don’t even need the Stephen Fry part.
- It’s spine poem time! With Poetry Month right around the corner you just know you want to partake. Spine poem it up!
- Of course THIS month is Women’s History Month. So I wrote a little guest blog piece just for the occasion where I noted the little known historical heroines making their debut in juvenile print this year.
- Speaking of apps n’ such, did you know that over in Italy where the Bologna Book Fair takes place there is now a Bologna Ragazzi Digital Award? In incredibly good idea. International apps. A whole new world.
- New Blog Alert: New to me anyway. We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie which describes itself as “Being a Compendium of Children’s Books by Twentieth Century ‘Adult’ Authors Currently Out of Print”. It’s beautifully done. Go see.
British comedian, actor, playwright, and author Stephen Fry graced New York City and the Overlook Press office with his warm and magnetic presence last Tuesday, January 24. We invited Fry to the States to promote his newest autobiography, THE FRY CHRONICLES, a witty and brutally honest stunner that we’ve praised here before. Yet the novelty of having the real life Jeeves from the comic series
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Tomorrow night brings two out-of-town Overlook authors, as well as one northeastern native to bookstores across New York for an evening of readings, signings, and lively discussion. Award-winning English novelist R.J. Ellory, author of A Quiet Vendetta will be joined by A Killer’s Essence author Dave Zeltserman to promote their latest crime thrillers at Brooklyn’s BookCourt, while English
BBC Radio 4 seems to have performed a partial u-turn on its decision to cut the number of short stories it airs from three to one, going with two a week.
Listeners, authors and even celebrities such as Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry are among 5,500 of those who signed an online petition opposing the move to reduce the number of short stories aired, which was borne out of Radio 4 controller Gwyneth Williams’s desire to extend the programme The World at One.
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John Blake is to offer an unofficial guide to the witticisms of actor, TV presenter, writer, comedian and noted Twitter-phile Stephen Fry.
The Wit and Wisdom of Stephen Fry, to be published in October, will be “a collection of the master’s bon mots”, according to the publisher.
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I dunno. Seems pretty coincidental that the man who does all the Harry Potter audio books in England (Stephen Fry) would get into trouble because he tweeted some HP pics without the express permission of Warner Bros. Then again, England is a mighty small island. Hey, I know a fun game we can do! Let’s play six degrees of Harry Potter! So, um, Stephen Fry was in Wilde with Jude Law who was in A Series of Unfortunate Events with Timothy Spall who plays Wormtail in the Harry Potter movies. That’s okay, but I bet you can link him even faster than I. Maybe you could use the Spice Girls Movie or something. Don’t use Extras, though. Television shows don’t count.
- Speaking of tweets, how many of you were aware that Peeta from The Hunger Games has his own twitter feed? Tis true. Alongside HalfPintIngalls (who always outdoes herself with the Halloween tweets) there is a dedicated and growing fictional community out there. Thanks to @molly_oneill for the link.
- Webcomics. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re out there (have you seen the great Dracula-related Hark, a Vagrants?). At least I can appreciate the one called Waiting for Bilbo. There’s a premise that makes sense to me. You’ve got your plot, your characters, your end date, all that stuff.
We can still milk a couple Halloween links for all they’re worth, right? I’m thinking specifically of the pictures Alvina Ling posted of the Little Brown costumes. Everything from Arthur to The Curious Garden to (my personal favorite) the cover of Twilight. Now THERE is an obvious LB&Co. costume! Very fun.
- Monica takes our recent debate about the role of real world facts in fictional books and displays a chart that shows “the continuum between nonfiction and fiction.” That’s how the teacher types do it. With charts!
- New Blog Alert: I would be amiss in missing a missive (all right, enough of that) about the new Horn Book blog. Tantalizingly named Out of the Box: “An exclusive look at what comes into the Horn Book offices”, the site is the brainchild of editorial and marketing assistant Katie Bircher. Gotta say, I like what she’s written so far. I mean, I totally missed that the endpapers of The Baby Goes Beep failed to make the cut in the board book version. That didn’t stop me from giving it to one of my buddies’ new babies recently though. I mean, the book’s a hoot.
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Greetings from Oxford, where we are currently between downpours of rain, though I’m assured that it is still officially summer. Who knew? Anyway, here’s my pick of the web this week.
The Guardian asks what’s the best TV show of the 2000s? Frontrunner so far seems to be The Wire (although I voted for The West Wing).
With the Edinburgh Fringe kicking off this week, here’s a list of the 10 strangest festival venues.
Mary Beard on what computers do to handwriting.
The longlist of 2009’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction has been announced.
Stephen Fry on America’s place in the world.
Apparently there might have been cannibals in England 9000 years ago.
How Orwellian was George Orwell?
Farewell John Hughes, who has died at the age of 59. The Guardian looks at his career in clips.
The secret royals: illegitimate children of British monarchs.
I'm still avoiding the sestina. If I'm ever bedridden for several months at a time, maybe I'll get around to it. Until then, don't count on it.
Meanwhile, the next exercise in The Ode Less Travelled is to write a pantoum. Stephen Fry compares it to bells tolling, but I thought that with a few more exclamation points it would suit the circular mentality of my dog Carly very well.
Pantoum of a Canine Spaz
I leap up from my latest nap—
ohboyohboyohboyohboy—
charge to my water dish for a lap,
jump-attack my favorite toy.
Ohboyohboyohboyohboy!
There’s so much I’ve gotta do:
slobber up my favorite toy
andchewandchewandchewandchew.
But that’s not all, there’s more to do!
Bite the heads of squirrels and rats!
Andchewandchewandchewandchew
the tails off little kitty cats!
I’ll bite the heads off squirrels and rats,
show them all that I’m the boss—
and not those stupid kitty cats.
Each of us must bear a cross,
and mine’s to prove that I’m the boss.
There’s cunning in my doggy head,
an intellect you dare not cross.
But now it’s time to go to bed;
I’ve overtaxed my doggy head.
I race to my water dish for a lap,
turn three times, flop into bed.
It’s time to take another nap!
That actually could have gone on another ten stanzas, come to think of it. We'll just pretend that was Carly on a 90-degree day, when her energy level is below average.
This week I also participated in Laura Salas's 15 Words or Less poetry challenge, inspired by a delicious photo of a pomegranate.
Yat-Yee Chong has this week's Poetry Friday round-up. Check it out!
Observant readers may have noted that while I love fall, with that love comes anxiety over winter. I guess this poem is me reminding myself that I get through this every year; winter's part of the cycle, not The End. (Unless we're living in Life as We Knew It, in which case the sun has been blocked out by volcanic ash and we're all screwed.)
The next task Stephen Fry sets in The Ode Less Travelled is a sestina, but I wasn't feeling that ambitious. Just the same, I decided to play with repeated end words, cycling through them like the seasons... or something.
Oh, and Mom? If you're reading this? Please note, it's happier than the last one.
Phoenix Feathers
With fall comes the phoenix, darkening the sky
with outstretched wings. It swoops down to our ash
tree for its final roost, its feathers a blaze
of vermillion, cadmium, copper—a fiery sweep
bold against the blue—until a strong wind
rips feathers from bone, stripping limbs bare,
showering shimmering flakes. The bird cannot bear
the coming winter, cannot endure the savage wind.
The fallen feathers soften our steps as we sweep
them up, rake them into rusty barrels, set them ablaze.
Our throats swell with savory smoke and flecks of ash,
as charred phoenix feathers swirl back to the sky.
Catch this week's Poetry Friday round-up at Check It Out!
I'm still working my way through The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry, but also still have no non-terrible poems to show for it. Someday, I hope!
So far I've read about meter (both Greek and Anglo-Saxon traditions) and different kinds of rhyme (consonance, assonance, etc.) and have finally moved on to forms that combine the two. The so-called poetry units of high school English class are finally making some sense, thanks to Fry.
One of Fry's favorite poems he shares which I also quite liked is "Pied Beauty," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It's apparently the quintessential of example of a meter called "sprung rhythm," which Hopkins himself invented and which I don't completely understand. His Wikipedia entry has a decent explanation, however.
When I was Googling for the poem's text, I found at least one page that held up "Pied Beauty" as a celebration of the power and eternity of God. I must demur. Whether or not one believes in God, "Pied Beauty" is a lovely paean to the beauty of contrast, taking diversity and idiosyncrasy as evidence of perfection rather than imperfection.
Without further, ado, here's the poem.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Catch this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up at
Biblio File!
British actor/aesthete Stephen Fry is a favorite personality in our household. He's also written some books, including The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, which my husband picked up recently and I've been gradually working through.
In The Ode Less Travelled, Fry introduces the reader to poetry from a technical angle. I'm a quarter of the way through, and he has yet to discuss deriving meaning from poetry; as he says, "I certainly do not attempt in this book to pick up where [your] poor teachers left off and instruct you in poetry appreciation." Instead, Fry dissects meter, rhyme, and classic poetic forms and guides readers through exercises to try it for themselves. He believes all people are poetic by nature but don't have the tools to make anything of it; this book is the toolbox he offers.
Fry doesn't touch free verse at all; in fact, in his foreword, he quotes W. H. Auden, as I will now:
"The poet who writes 'free' verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive but more often the result is squalor—dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor."
In my own (albeit dubious and sporadic) poetic efforts, I have preferred the structure offered by formal verse. Free verse feels a bit like being thrown into the middle of a foreign country sans tour guide, phrase book, or proper shoes. I'm at a loss as to where to go, what to do. When I'm working within the structure of a sonnet, however, there's just enough confinement to make me feel safe.**
As of page 75, Fry has given me an overview of meter to beat the pants off the high school English class version: the various feet, the various -ameters, enjambment and caesura, the various substitutions and adding/lopping of "weak" syllables to add emphasis to the "strong." Along the way, he offers dozens of illustration from classic verse (from Shakespeare's to modern times), examples he's made up for illustrative purposes (for which he makes no apologies), and exercises he insists readers attempt.
His authorial voice is engaging and, often, amusing. How often did your English teacher interrupt class to shout, "NO, DAMN YOU, NO! A THOUSAND TIMES NO! THE ORGANISING PRINCIPLE BEHIND THE VERSE IS NOT THE SENSE BUT THE METRE"? Or comment on William Blake's verse, "My dear, the scansion!" Fry doesn't pretend to be a great scholar or a great poet; he's the appreciator of poetry we could all be if we spent the time and thought.
So far, none of my exercises have yielded anything unembarrassing enough to share here, but I'm planning to continue through the book and, I hope, someday have some more verse I wouldn't be ashamed to put my name on.
The Ode Less Travelled isn't a poet's bible, but it is full of valuable information for those of us who know little but are willing to learn. It ought to be required for all writers who wants to write a rhyming picture book. It won't help them write a better story, but with any luck it will prevent their readers from wrinkling their noses and exclaiming, "My dear, the scansion!"
**Thinking of formal verse always reminds me of this dialogue from A Wrinkle in Time:
(Mrs. Whatsit) [The sonnet] is a very strict form of poetry, is it not? There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That's a very strict rhythm or meter, yes? And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?
(Calvin) You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?
(Mrs. Whatsit) Yes. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.
Isn't that lovely?
Kelly at Big A little a has this week's Poetry Friday round-up. Be sure to check it out!
I've mentioned before what a great extemporaneous speaker Stephen Fry is. This morning I enjoyed his latest "podgram," entitled "Wallpaper."
After some initial meandering, Fry settles in, with his usual eloquence and beautiful, sonorous voice, to discuss Oscar Wilde and his critical involvement in the aesthetic movement.
Fry summarizes aestheticism as viewing the world not in terms of good versus evil, but rather beautiful versus ugly. Nature with its sunsets, its snowy peaks, its fantastic flora and fauna, is beautiful; all ugliness in the world is due to the interference of humankind. But if we view ourselves as only able to mar Nature's perfection, unable to create anything beautiful of our own, hopelessness sets in. What is to stop us, to loosely quote Fry, from crapping in our own nests? That is why, when Oscar Wilde said Americans were so violent because our wallpaper was ugly, he was not simply making a flippant remark.
Recently I was involved in a discussion with other writers about why we write. This was my basic argument: that in writing, as in any other pursuit, you have to believe you have something to offer, some improvement to make (no matter how infintessimal), or you might as well give up—on life, on everything. I believe writing is one way humankind can make the world more beautiful. Writing might also be moral or utilitarian, but in the case of novels, at least, I'm with the aesthetes: I believe their main purpose is to be enjoyed. And I believe the act of writing itself is a way of seeking the truth, making sense of the world from all its clamor—to quote Wildes's "Hélas!":
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God...
And though scholars disagree on the precise meaning of the final lines of aesthetic forerunner John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," I'll twist them to my own aesthetic ends by concluding thusly:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"—that is all
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
Catch this week's Poetry Friday round-up at The Well-Read Child!
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am i missing something, ms fuse? are you quoting tim eagn’s dodsworth? and if so… why?
Thanks so much for mentioning my chart. The link is: http://medinger.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/telling-the-reality-behind-fiction/
And, David, I’m guessing the answer is yes! One of my favorite early reader series.
I am indeed, David. But it requires you to follow the commonplace book link. I make my readers work for my references!
And sorry about the missing link, Monica. Apparently my brain has a hard time remembering to put more than one in any given post. Whoops!
Stephen Fry was in Peter’s Friends with Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson and Imelda Staunton, who’ve all been in one or another Potter movie.
Cindy’s point makes me realize that Hugh Laurie was the other now-big name in that movie, but no Harry P for him. Hmmmm….. Who should he have played? Lupin, maybe?
He would have made a superb Lupin, I agree. The thing you always hear about Lupin is that he looks exhausted. Laurie could look perpetually exhausted with very little effort. And thanks to his work on House we don’t have to go far to imagine his dilapidated state.
ah, i see what i did. i thought i clicked the link, but it was the regular list and not the children’s-only list, and that’s how i missed the connection with the quote. i figured it had to be me.
that crazy duck!
Thanks for the link to Out of the Box! I had missed that one. Love the idea of book characters becoming tweeters … gotta believe someone out there is already thinking Wiki!
Any British actor can usually be linked through Gosford Park. The cast of that movie was enormous, and I always forget – oh yeah! Clive Owen AND Stephen Fry AND Lord Cutler Becket from Pirates of the Caribbean AND Derek Jacobi AND Richard E. Grant AND Helen Mirren… and both Dumbledore (mark II) and McGonagle. Michael Gambon gets killed in that movie too, come to think of it!