Odds and Sods! Who? What!

 It is 9:09 Am. Splash is on the TV.

I have been awake since 5:30. I am sucking down the Coke Zero I got from McClure's around 6.

Last night, I did not make an entry. I also forgot to take my meds. The later I figured out about 5:45.

So far this morning has been about submitting stories and rebooting Firefox.

The Sloe Gin Effect" went to The Lakeshore Review. 

I was wondering about "Problem Solving" and INK Babies, so I emailed them about an anticipated publication date.

Calendared submissions to other magazines.

"Exemplary Employee" and "The Local Boy Who Made Good" went to Of Rust and Glass.

Yesterday, I worked on "Love Stinks." I managed 1029 words. Yes, I did some editing, but the result was blurry eyes. I do not want to think about how many hours were spent in putting out those words. How did Anthony Trollope put out so many words?

Anthony Trollope wrote 250 words every 15 minutes before going off to a job at the post office.

Anthony Trollope’s writing habit was the precise opposite of catch-as-catch-can: he was scarily disciplined, setting a habit of 250 words every quarter of an hour.

“He woke in darkness and wrote from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., with his watch in front of him. He required of himself two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour. If he finished one novel before eight-thirty, he took out a fresh piece of paper and started the next. The writing session was followed, for a long stretch of time, by a day job with the postal service. Plus, he said, he always hunted at least twice a week. Under this regimen, he produced forty-nine novels in thirty-five years.“

 A bit of un reading from this morning: The big idea: Are cats really domesticated?

I walked won to Dollar General last to get a can of chili. I also bought some hot dogs. I need to get some supplies today. Which means I need to get words down. Not like Mr. Trollope, but something.

BTW, I read one of Trollope's novels while in prison, and I did like reading him. Far less grim than Thomas Hardy and less meandering than Dickens. I think he remains readable.

 I want to do some more submissions, but think it best to save them for later.

From here down is stuff from yesterday and earlier that I meant to post yesterday. Have fun.

 Opinion: A map of 1,001 novels to show us where to find the real America

From Pitchfork's reviews this week, the only two bands I knew, and like:

The Age of Pleasure Janelle Monáe - fascinating mind behind the music.

Weathervanes Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - a different kind of soulfulness

A blog for Dylan Fans: Untold Dylan . I have not been able to spend much time, but what I have has been fun.

Another rejection for "Local Boy Makes Good" came a while back, but I am not sure if I published the news:

"The Local Boy Who Made Good" has been carefully read by our editors and, unfortunately, we feel it is not right for Hypertext. We do thank you for allowing us to consider your work and we wish you luck placing it elsewhere.

Sincerely,

The Editors of Hypertext Magazine

I got to thinking yesterday on something KH has said, that these stories may be too interconnected to be sold individually. 

And here is why we let the Republicans run Indiana: Majority of wages in Indiana’s counties lag behind national average.

Becoming a Writer at Shakespeare & Co. 

I Don’t Trust Images: The Millions Interviews Ottessa Moshfegh by Lucia Senesi from 2018, has me liking Moshfegh:

TM: I saw this interview where you were joking about the fact that female characters in literature are always described as “the magic source of drama.” And it’s true. I read this year Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms and I was horrified by Catherine Barkley. I mean, there’s the war, people die around them, and she keeps talking about the fact that she wants to be skinny so that he can love her again.

OM: I mean, Hemingway, I don’t know how self-aware he was, but I have to give every writer the benefit of the doubt, that these are just completely blind self-presentations. I didn’t read A Farewell to Arms but I have to believe that a writer isn’t necessarily as stupid as his character might be in your assessment. So maybe there was a deeper intention, I don’t know, we make decisions. Getting back to your point of human being impetus for spiritual change, it makes perfect sense, because maybe one of the only things that can disarm the male ego is romantic love and sexual desire. So I don’t think it’s necessarily stupid, but I do think that it’s not very creative. It’s kind of boring when that is the thing in a book or a movie, “This magic girl!” You’ve seen the movies all the time. It’s like there’s a very cliché—like, the hair and slow motion closeup on her mouth from the way that she moves her eyes and she’s looked at. But you know, she doesn’t have a will or an intelligence unto herself is where the things start to be problematic.

TM: Yes, because they focus on the ideal of the perfect woman as society trained them to think.

OM: Men and women play that game. I mean I think that’s the difference between dating and sleeping around and then falling in love. When you’ve fallen in love with someone, that person has to become your best friend. So you’ve got to get to know them. They can’t just be some kind of anachronistic fantasy.

“TOMB OF SAND” BRINGS HINDI LITERATURE TO THE WORLD 

Why are there not more Hindi books in translation on the global market? In the landscape of Indian literature too—mostly dominated by English-language books—Shree has not enjoyed widespread attention despite her illustrious career. Her latest book, Tomb of Sand, was released in the US earlier this year from Harper Collins. Shree’s book is nothing short of a doorstopper, a grand epic narrated like a folktale, chronicling the life of an octogenarian emerging from depression after the death of her husband. From this point on, the plot moves with the force of an explosive, indefinable experiment. And it is this experimentation that makes its English translation a laboratory for forging new possibilities beyond the hegemonies of both English and Hindi.

###

This is the kind of book I recommend to my mother, if only for the selfish purpose of observing whether it provokes her anxieties about motherhood. But my mother, otherwise a slow reader, managed to read Tomb of Sand within a couple of days and felt as though the writing had passed by her like the sound of a wind chime. Having also read the book in Hindi—my mother tongue, you could say—as well as English, I was unsettled by that metaphor, partly because I experienced a similar lightness. I had to ask myself if I somehow bypassed its most painful moments. Had I skipped the tragedy-laden pages? Had I somehow read the book wrong? Over subsequent readings, I’ve realized that this is one of the tricks of Shree’s narrative: an elusive tug-of-war in which the reader could be accused of enjoying themselves too much. The tension exists in the book, but it always appears as if it’s crossed out, written over. It makes for a strangely fun reading experience, even when it makes you doubt your reactions.

Rockwell’s translation makes the most of this gray area, incarnating the levity and spirit of Shree’s work. Instead of putting up resistances or defending itself, Rockwell’s translation embraces the full musicality and tongue-in-cheek humor of Shree’s Hindi. Rockwell’s translation dares to bend the rules, obscure its grammar, and localize itself to fit into the frame of Shree’s language. Rockwell’s English can, therefore, appear wrong in order to do right by Shree’s writing.

sch 9:30 am