Last week we featured The Georgia Review as our Journal-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations:
To claim your free subscription, please email us at the following address:
winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com
If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!
You probably know what a CAPTCHA is, even if you didn’t know its name. Those warped words that you sometimes have to type out? That’s a CAPTCHA. Websites use them to prevent spambots from posting (spam) comments. Humans can read CAPTCHAs very easily. Robots, not so much.
But did you know that although CAPTCHAs seem like gibberish, they actually help preserve and create literature?
Some CAPTCHAs actually help digitize books and magazines: the reCAPTCHA system uses scanned words from old books. Every time a user like you types in the word, it helps the system decipher old books. Explains the reCAPTCHA site:
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.
But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
CAPTCHAs have even inspired literature of their own. Some sites use two CAPTCHAs side-by-side, and reading them, I find myself making up a sentence or story. Apparently I’m not the only one. At imgur, one user posted a fantasy comic inspired by the random phrases, via GalleyCat:
via imgur
It’s proof, I suppose, that writers see stories in everything.
(Oh, and if you were wondering? CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Bust that factoid out at your Superbowl party!)
If you love a book, then give it away. Isn’t that how the saying goes?
World Book Night launched in the UK in 2011, with thousands of people handing out copies of paperbacks. This year, it’s taking place in the U.S. too, on April 23, with plans to give away a MILLION books for free to “new or light readers.” The list of books includes lots of great titles, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Colllins, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and many more.
Want to get involved? Apply to be a volunteer WBN Giver—the deadline is February 1! You don’t need to buy the books; you just have to explain which book you want to give away, why you love it, and where you plan to give your copies. If you’re chose, you’ll pick up 20 copies of your chosen book at a local bookstore to give away on April 23. Says the event’s website:
Q. Do I have to buy the books?
A. There is no charge for these special, not for resale editions. We’re just looking for enthusiastic readers to help get some books into the hands of new and light readers. Givers will be responsible for any expenses incurred in picking up their carton and distributing the books. We expect that such expenses will be negligible. World Book Night U.S. is supported by American book publishers, the American Booksellers Association, Barnes & Noble, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and Ingram Book Distributors. Through their generosity, we are able to make the books available free of charge.
To apply or find other ways to get involved, visit the World Book Night website.
Earlier this week, Stephen Colbert interviewed the fantastically curmudgeonly Maurice Sendak on the Colbert Report. If you like either Colbert or Maurice Sendak, you’ll enjoy it. Like both, and you’ll be chortling with joy.
Part 1:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1 | ||||
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Part 2:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 2 | ||||
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As you might guess from its name, Tumblr site Slaughterhouse 90210 pairs stills from TV shows with literary quotes—with both hilarious and thought-provoking results:
If you think about it, My So-Called-Life and Anne of Avonlea are indeed thematic soulmates. And Mad Men and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook make an inspired match.
Still need convincing?
“She felt, in every way it was possible, astonished that she had slept with him.”
—Lorrie Moore, Like Life
‘Nuff said. Go check it out.
Last week we featured Eileen Pollack’s new novel, Breaking and Entering, as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations:
To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address:
winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com
If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!
Did you know that periodically, the French comb through their language and pick out interloping words? The Academie Francaise, charged with publishing an official (if non-binding) dictionary of French, intermittently posts lists of banned English words that have wormed their way into the French language. In previous years, the Academie has suggested banning “le email,” “le blog,” and “le fast-food.”
But this kind of linguistic purification isn’t just for the French. Lake Superior State University has come up with a list of banished words for 2012 (via). Topping the list? “Amazing,” “baby bump,” and “shared sacrifice.” Other much-used words made it as well, including “ginormous” and even “occupy.”
Unlike the French banned-word list—where the main criteria is the Frenchness, or lack thereof, of the word—Lake Superior State’s banned words have more to do with the freshness of the words themselves. Each of the words on the list is criticized as being overused or otherwise diluted in meaning—a one-word cliche, if you will.
Interestingly, though, not everyone finds widespread use to be a bad thing: the American Dialect Society overwhelmingly chose “occupy” as its 2011 word of the year. Explained Ben Zimmer, chair of the organization’s New Words Committee:
“It’s a very old word, but over the course of just a few months it took on another life and moved in new and unexpected directions, thanks to a national and global movement,” Zimmer said. “The movement itself was powered by the word.”
So which is it? Is “occupy” being used in fresh, unexpected ways now? Or is it—as one nominator for the LSS list put it—”overused and abused even to promote Black Friday shopping”? Perhaps this gets at the limitations of lists like these: the problem may not be with the word itself, but in how it’s used.
Perhaps one of your resolutions this year was to write more. (You too?) And now January is two-thirds over, and well, you haven’t done quite as much as you’d hoped.
All you need is a gentle kick in the pants prompt to get you started. This year, two great writing sites are each offering tidbits of inspiration:
First up, Figment, a digital community for young fiction writers, is offering a new “Daily Themes” newsletter. Between January 2 and March 30, subscribers will receive a prompt via email—what a great way to get writing first thing in the morning! Good offers a peek at the prompts so far:
Figment’s prompts have asked writers to draft a journal entry describing a character’s aspirations, dream up a scene in which disaster strikes just before a major event is scheduled to take place, and draw out the tense moments leading up to a decisive action. Figment’s prompts will occasionally come from guest writers, including today’s by Nell Freudenberger, author of forthcoming novel The Newlyweds, and a whole week later this month hosted by author Lev Grossman.
Visit the Figment blog to subscribe.
And for those who want inspiration for the whole year, the Grub Street Daily, the blog for Boston’s independent writing center Grub Street, has started a new series called 366 Days. (Disclaimer: I teach for Grub Street.) Every day of 2012, the series–curated by writer and instructor Stuart Horwitz–will offer a literary fact, along with a related prompt or meditation to spark your own work. Here’s a sample:
FACT: January 4 (1960) Albert Camus is killed in a car crash. In his black leather briefcase are found copies of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science and Shakespeare’s Othello.
PROMPT: Read authors you have an affinity for so you enjoy yourself. It’s okay to sound like them for a time until you land your own style. By studying past models of creative expression that you actually like, you will find your own mode infinitely more quickly.
It’s not too late. There are 346 more days left in 2012. Now go forth and write.
Every week for the past two months, I’ve played a game where, on Sunday mornings, before I open the New York Times Book Review, I try to guess how many more books of nonfiction than fiction it will review. Fiction is consistently outnumbered, and don’t even get me started on the Book Review’s nearly nonexistent poetry coverage.
But the past week surprised even this pessimistic grouch—only TWO fictional works are reviewed in the January 8, 2012 edition, plus Marilyn Stasio’s excellent crime reviewlets, in contrast to ELEVEN nonfiction works. The two fiction reviews are both skimpy half-pages, which means that in the thirty-one-page section, fiction is allotted a total of two pages. Surely this is a nadir—or is it? Will the shrinkage continue, dropping to one novel next week, and the week after—to zero?
What’s going on? The editor’s note highlights the three political books reviewed in the issue, but there’s not a political theme throughout. I’ve read that we’re living in a era of astonishing nonfiction, and it certainly seems like there are lots of interesting books being published in that category. But I have yet to hear any convincing theory about why fiction is less important. Surely the invented stories of our age tell us as much about ourselves as the actual ones, as good invention is always based in some kind of truth.
Of the nonfiction books reviewed in the New York Times Book Review that week, the selection contains several uninspired choices, including Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners. (It gets an entire page. Really?) Then there’s Dava Sobel’s latest: A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos—fine, okay. Sobel started the “thing-person” biography craze with Longitude and in any given week you can find a review of one of these books in the paper, from bananas to booze. I’m sure Copernicus is very interesting—but so is fiction!
Finally, we have The Tender Hour of Twilight: Paris in the ’50s, New York in the ’60s: A Memoir of Publishing’s Golden Age. Ah, the nostalgia of newspaper publishers for the golden age! Any of these books are probably interesting on their own, but as members of a group that crowds out fiction, they make me want to use the section for kitty litter. Is this unbalanced table of contents purely a reflection of Sam Tanenhaus’s nonfiction bent? Is my gripe just subjective feeling based on the fact that I find Peter Orner more compelling than Copernicus?
Of course book reviews all over have shrunk in recent years, but I had hoped the Times was a bulwark, and I’m afraid it’s turning into a wall against fiction, rather than one defending it. A healthy literary culture depends on many outlets reviewing many books. When the most widely-read newspaper in the country hacks its coverage of fiction and poetry down to a minimum—and I see this as a pattern of late, not just an off week—it makes me nostalgic for the golden age of reviewing. Maybe someone should write a book about that.
What do you think about the recent coverage or lack thereof of fiction in the Times, dear readers? Everyone loves to be right, but on this one I’d love to be wrong…
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Eileen Pollack’s work at FWR. In fact, as our Founding and Features Editor, Anne Stameshkin, noted in an addendum to a 2009 interview with the author that we published on the site, Eileen Pollack–and her Contemporary Novel class at the University of Michigan–was one of the inspirations for the creation of Fiction Writers Review. So it’s with particular pleasure that we announce her new novel, Breaking and Entering, as our featured Book-of-the-Week title. Congratulations, Eileen!
And we’re not alone in our admiration for this new book or Pollack’s work. In her laudatory review of Breaking and Entering (Four Way Books, 2012) in last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, author Jen Thompson writes:
Pollack is an engaging writer with a first-rate eye for the telling sociological detail, like the Militia Babes calendar in the Banks’s farmhouse. There is tension and menace when Richard or Louise encounters some new misunderstanding or threat. But since the author’s intent is to explore intolerance, hatred and evil, it is not enough that these forces merely simmer and self-perpetuate. The stakes are raised, and escalating consequences play out.
The “militia” referred to here is the Michigan Militia. More specifically, the Michigan Militia of the mid-1990s, a period that was, as Thompson writes, “the epicenter and high point of the militia movement, before increased scrutiny and revulsion at the Oklahoma City bombing put some militia groups out of business and sent others underground.” And Richard and Louise are outsiders from Northern California who have moved, with their daughter, to the middle of the state. Thompson says of the Shapiro family’s move and the book’s beginnings:
It’s an unlikely migration, precipitated by Richard’s breakdown and depression. He’s a therapist (as is Louise), and one of his patients has committed suicide. Then, during a camping trip, he accidentally started a forest fire. The move to Michigan, where he will work as a prison psychologist, is meant as a new start. But should they have bought the house in the tiny outlying town, just down the street from the Joyful Noise Church and the Wolverine Sportsmans Club? They’re like the teenagers in horror movies who decide to check out the haunted mansion.
Of course the spacious Midwest is a more appealing place for the Shapiros to raise their child than high-pressure California. And neither Richard nor Louise is aware, at first, of just how much suspicion they engender. Richard is Jewish, Louise is not, although everyone in town assumes she is, and people are often cheerful and upfront about their prejudices. “Didn’t you think I would get upset being told I’m descended from the Devil and responsible for just about every evil deed the world has ever known?” Richard finally demands, exasperated. (This descent from the Devil is meant literally, as genealogical information.) Louise, despite her splendid qualifications and genuine affinity for young people, is only grudgingly given a part-time job as a social worker at the high school. The school’s sole Jewish faculty member advises her to look for work in Ann Arbor instead. The janitor, Mike Korn — a fictional stand-in for Mark Koernke, “Mark from Michigan” — hosts a hate-filled and conspiracy-minded radio program. Two particularly repulsive prison guards tell Richard the events in Oklahoma City are part of a Zionist plot.
As is no doubt clear from this description, Breaking and Entering is a page-turning yet insightful book about a period of this country’s history that has often been overlooked in the long shadow of September 11th, but which nonetheless reverberates in the American consciousness in haunting and moving ways. In Brian Short’s 2009 interview with the author, responding to a question about drama and “boldness” in contemporary fiction and her own work, Pollack replies:
There are people who say I use too much plot, or too much sex, or too many dirty jokes, too much humor, my strokes are too broad. And sometimes they are. I’m sure if I redid Paradise, New York [Temple University Press, 2000], it wouldn’t be so slapstick. I started that in graduate school. But I like that. The first thing I love, when I read, is the language. Just like any literary writer, it’s got to be about the voice. I can’t read anything where I don’t like the voice. But then what do I like? I like plot, I like setting, I like humor, I like boldness. I think part of it has to do with being female. No one ever told Philip Roth to be more timid or nice, to have nicer characters or less sex, to not be as broad. And when a woman tests boundaries, it’s seen as unbecoming. We’re supposed to write these quiet, domestic stories or novels. I’ve just never been one to do that.
Eileen Pollack
To all of you who are already fans, thank you!
