In Quotation Nation

I've been reading a lot of interviews with writers over the last couple of days. No real reason why, just something that's happened.

I've also been tasked with thinking about what the Commonwealth means (it's hard not to say this phrase without the Double Rainbow guy's voice in my head) for my sesh at the Auckland Writers Festival, but I find my thoughts are far from quotation-worthy.

Mostly just jokes about bronze medals and corgis.

Nothing like these excerpts from my Quotations Catalogue (incomplete)

#25 The tongue-in-cheek quotation

“The number of rooms in a fictional house should be inversely proportional to the years during which the couple living in that house enjoyed true happiness"  -- George Saunders (in an interview at Bomblog).

#51 The surely I read that wrong quotation

“I’m a perfectionist. I go to great lengths to get it all right. It’s the biggest challenge I face when I’m writing. If you’re confused about something in one of my books, you’ve just got to realize, Ellroy’s a master, and if I’m not following it, it’s my problem.” -- James Ellroy (Paris Review interview)

#67 The hells yeah quotation (depending on what mood you're in)

"A lot of writing nowadays is very intellectual. Very wussy. Correct, wussy, and too much rationalization. That was my experience at Iowa when I was teaching. Stories had simply become too small, they took such low altitude. Take a couple, and then someone would acknowledge something in a Kroger parking lot about their relationship and he’d get back in his car and drive on. People were not going for much. They were going for very limited American realism, which is a bore to me. I really want stories that are rippers in the old sense. Tales of high danger, high adventure, and high exploration. Tales that are as wonderful as frontier tales. I want more adventure." -- Barry Hannah (Paris Review interview)

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While I'm kind of pointing people in directions, I'll say that I'm loving Joan Fleming's new(ish) photo-poetry blog and hope it's a stayer.

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Playlist for a cold but-not-as-cold-as-the-last-two-days evening

1. 'Like A Rolling Stone' by Spirit (hattip to David Kilgour)

2. 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' by Donovan

3. 'Halluncination Bomb' by Monster Magnet

4. 'Give Up and Go Away' by Strippers Union

5. 'Off He Goes' by Pearl Jam (earworming big time lately, dunno why)

6. 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' by The Animals

7. 'Quarantined' by At The Drive In

8. 'It's Easier' by John Grant

9. 'Solitude is Bliss' by Tame Impala

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Craig's fortnightly photo diary (first and last)

My brother (the real photographer), Raumati Beach

Shipwreck, Tora

Obligatory seagull

FIN

Quotation Corner: 7 February

I frown upon people who underline passages in library books. Strange annotations can be entertaining, though rarely enlightening.  But simply higlighting passages — what's the point?  Are you underliners trying to highlight this for yourself or future readers?  Coz I hate to break it to you, but most of the time your passages aren't any more striking than the rest of the text.

Sometimes, however...

... moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness.  A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers.  We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist."

— Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut (p.76)

It was a tad depressing to read this on Friday during my lunch hour, then trudge back to the office. I wonder what sort of job the underliner has, what light he or she hides under their bushel? They seem like the kind of library vandal I would like to meet.