Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Amigos, transcrevo o discurso feito por Stephen King quando lhe foi atribuído o prémio pela National Book Foundation.
Para alguns dos snobs que têm a distinta lata de definir literatura pelos seus gostos e inclinações pessoais, e que ostentam uma soberba e um preconceito cultural próprio de pessoas de vistas curtas e vícios velhos, é um documento franco, directo e muito interessante.
Para outros, é um elogio da verdade na escrita, daquilo que se quer dizer com honestidade e do imenso valor que isso representa seja lá no que for. Fingir e mentir é escrever, mas deve fingir-se e mentir-se o honestamente possível. Chama-se imaginação ou em ultima instância, criação.
Diviritam-se. Eu cá diverti-me.
Stephen King
Winner of the 2003
DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LETTERS AWARD
Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you for the applause and thank you for coming. I'm delighted to be here but, as I've said before in the last five years, I'm delighted to be anywhere.
This isn't in my speech so don't take it out of my allotted time. There are some people who have spoken out passionately about giving me this medal. There are some people who think it's an extraordinarily bad idea. There have been some people who have spoken out who think it's an extraordinarily good idea. You know who you are and where you stand and most of you who are here tonight are on my side. I'm glad for that. But I want to say it doesn't matter in a sense which side you were on. The people who speak out, speak out because they are passionate about the book, about the word, about the page and, in that sense, we're all brothers and sisters. Give yourself a hand.
Now as for my remarks. The only person who understands how much this award means to me is my wife, Tabitha. I was a writer when I met her in 1967 but my only venue was the campus newspaper where I published a rude weekly column. It turned me into a bit of a celebrity but I was a poor one, scraping through college thanks to a jury-rigged package of loans and scholarships.
A friend of Tabitha Spruce pointed me out to her one winter day as I crossed the mall in my jeans and cut-down green rubber boots. I had a bushy black beard. I hadn't had my hair cut in two years and I looked like Charlie Manson. My wife-to-be clasped her hands between her breasts and said, "I think I'm in love" in a tone dripping with sarcasm.
Tabby Spruce had no more money than I did but with sarcasm she was loaded. When we married in 1971, we already had one child. By the middle of 1972, we had a pair. I taught school and worked in a laundry during the summer. Tabby worked for Dunkin' Donuts. When she was working, I took care of the kids. When I was working, it was vice versa. And writing was always an undisputed part of that work. Tabby finished the first book of our marriage, a slim but wonderful book of poetry called Grimoire.
This is a very atypical audience, one passionately dedicated to books and to the word. Most of the world, however, sees writing as a fairly useless occupation. I've even heard it called mental masturbation, once or twice by people in my family. I never heard that from my wife. She'd read my stuff and felt certain I'd some day support us by writing full time, instead of standing in front of a blackboard and spouting on about Jack London and Ogden Nash. She never made a big deal of this. It was just a fact of our lives. We lived in a trailer and she made a writing space for me in the tiny laundry room with a desk and her Olivetti portable between the washer and dryer. She still tells people I married her for that typewriter but that's only partly true. I married her because I loved her and because we got on as well out of bed as in it. The typewriter was a factor, though.
When I gave up on Carrie, it was Tabby who rescued the first few pages of single spaced manuscript from the wastebasket, told me it was good, said I ought to go on. When I told her I didn't know how to go on, she helped me out with the girls' locker room stuff. There were no inspiring speeches. Tabby does sarcasm, Tabby doesn't do inspiration, never has. It was just "this is pretty good, you ought to keep it going." That was all I needed and she knew it.
There were some hard, dark years before Carrie. We had two kids and no money. We rotated the bills, paying on different ones each month. I kept our car, an old Buick, going with duct tape and bailing wire. It was a time when my wife might have been expected to say, "Why don't you quit spending three hours a night in the laundry room, Steve, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer we can't afford? Why don't you get an actual job?"
Okay, this is the real stuff. If she'd asked, I almost certainly would have done it. And then am I standing up here tonight, making a speech, accepting the award, wearing a radar dish around my neck? Maybe. More likely not. In fact, the subject of moonlighting did come up once. The head of the English department where I taught told me that the debate club was going to need a new faculty advisor and he put me up for the job if I wanted. It would pay $300 per school year which doesn't sound like much but my yearly take in 1973 was only $6,600 and $300 equaled ten weeks worth of groceries.
The English department head told me he'd need my decision by the end of the week. When I told Tabby about the opening, she asked if I'd still have time to write. I told her not as much. Her response to that was unequivocal, "Well then, you can't take it."
One of the few times during the early years of our marriage I saw my wife cry really hard was when I told her that a paperback publisher, New American Library, had paid a ton of money for the book she'd rescued from the trash. I could quit teaching, she could quit pushing crullers at Dunkin' Donuts. She looked almost unbelieving for five seconds and then she put her hands over her face and she wept. When she finally stopped, we went into the living room and sat on our old couch, which Tabby had rescued from a yard sale, and talked into the early hours of the morning about what we were going to do with the money. I've never had a more pleasant conversation. I have never had one that felt more surreal.
My point is that Tabby always knew what I was supposed to be doing and she believed that I would succeed at it. There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
That vulnerable time for me came during 1971 to 1973. If my wife had suggested to me even with love and kindness and gentleness rather than her more common wit and good natured sarcasm that the time had come to put my dreams away and support my family, I would have done that with no complaint. I believe that on some level of thought I was expecting to have that conversation. If she had suggested that you can't buy a loaf of bread or a tube of toothpaste with rejection slips, I would have gone out and found a part time job.
Tabby has told me since that it never crossed her mind to have such a conversation. You had a second job, she said, in the laundry room with my typewriter. I hope you know, Tabby, that they are clapping for you and not for me. Stand up so they can see you, please. Thank you. Thank you. I did not let her see this speech, and I will hear about this later.
Now, there are lots of people who will tell you that anyone who writes genre fiction or any kind of fiction that tells a story is in it for the money and nothing else. It's a lie. The idea that all storytellers are in it for the money is untrue but it is still hurtful, it's infuriating and it's demeaning. I never in my life wrote a single word for money. As badly as we needed money, I never wrote for money. From those early days to this gala black tie night, I never once sat down at my desk thinking today I'm going to make a hundred grand. Or this story will make a great movie. If I had tried to write with those things in mind, I believe I would have sold my birthright for a plot of message, as the old pun has it. Either way, Tabby and I would still be living in a trailer or an equivalent, a boat. My wife knows the importance of this award isn't the recognition of being a great writer or even a good writer but the recognition of being an honest writer.
Frank Norris, the author of McTeague, said something like this: "What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter? I never truckled, I never lied. I told the truth." And that's always been the bottom line for me. The story and the people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I've told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation.
Of course, I only have my own senses, experiences and reading to draw on but that usually - not always but usually - usually it's enough. It gets the job done. For instance, if an elevator full of people, one of the ones in this very building - I want you to think about this later, I want you to think about it - if it starts to vibrate and you hear those clanks - this probably won't happen but we all know it has happened, it could happen. It could happen to me or it could happen to you. Someone always wins the lottery. Just put it away for now until you go up to your rooms later. Anyway, if an elevator full of people starts free-falling from the 35th floor of the skyscraper all the way to the bottom, one of those view elevators, perhaps, where you can watch it happening, in my opinion, no one is going to say, "Goodbye, Neil, I will see you in heaven." In my book or my short story, they're far more apt to bellow, "Oh shit" at the top of their lungs because what I've read and heard tends to confirm the "Oh shit" choice. If that makes me a cynic, so be it.
I remember a story on the nightly news about an airliner that crashed killing all aboard. The so-called black box was recovered and we have the pilot's immortal last four words: "Son of a bitch". Of course, there was another plane that crashed and the black box recorder said, "Goodbye, Mother," which is a nicer way to go out, I think.
Folks are far more apt to go out with a surprised ejaculation, however, then an expiring abjuration like, "Marry her, Jake. Bible says it ain't good for a man to be alone." If I happen to be the writer of such a death bed scene, I'd choose "Son of a bitch" over "Marry her, Jake" every time. We understand that fiction is a lie to begin with. To ignore the truth inside the lie is to sin against the craft, in general, and one's own work in particular.
I'm sure I've made the wrong choices from time to time. Doesn't the Bible say something like, "for all have sinned and come short of the glory of Chaucer?" But every time I did it, I was sorry. Sorry is cheap, though. I have revised the lie out if I could and that's far more important. When readers are deeply entranced by a story, they forget the storyteller completely. The tale is all they care about.
But the storyteller cannot afford to forget and must always be ready to hold himself or herself to account. He or she needs to remember that the truth lends verisimilitude to the lies that surround it. If you tell your reader, "Sometimes chickens will pick out the weakest one in the flock and peck it to death," the truth, the reader is much more likely to go along with you than if you then add something like, "Such chickens often meld into the earth after their deaths."
How stringently the writer holds to the truth inside the lie is one of the ways that he can judge how seriously he takes his craft. My wife, who doesn't seem to know how to a lie even in a social context where people routinely say things like, "You look wonderful, have you lost weight?" has always understood these things without needing to have them spelled out. She's what the Bible calls a pearl beyond price. She also understands why I was in those early days so often bitterly angry at writers who were considered "literary." I knew I didn't have quite enough talent or polish to be one of them so there was an element of jealousy, but I was also infuriated by how these writers always seemed to have the inside track in my view at that time.
Even a note in the acknowledgments page of a novel thanking the this or that foundation for its generous assistance was enough to set me off. I knew what it meant, I told my wife. It was the Old Boy Network at work. It was this, it was that, on and on and blah, blah, blah. It is only in retrospect that I realize how much I sounded like my least favorite uncle who believed there really was an international Jewish cabal running everything from the Ford Motor Company to the Federal Reserve.
Tabitha listened to a fair amount of this pissing and moaning and finally told me to stop with the breast beating. She said to save my self-pity and turn my energy to the typewriter. She paused and then added, my typewriter. I did because she was right and my anger played much better when channeled into about a dozen stories which I wrote in 1973 and early 1974. Not all of them were good but most of them were honest and I realized an amazing thing: Readers of the men's magazines where I was published were remembering my name and starting to look for it. I could hardly believe it but it appeared that people wanted to read what I was writing. There's never been a thrill in my life to equal that one. With Tabby's help, I was able to put aside my useless jealousy and get writing again. I sold more of my short stories. I sold Carrie and the rest, as they say, is history.
There's been a certain amount of grumbling about the decision to give the award to me and since so much of this speech has been about my wife, I wanted to give you her opinion on the subject. She's read everything I've written, making her something of an expert, and her view of my work is loving but unsentimental. Tabby says I deserve the medal not just because some good movies were made from my stories or because I've provided high motivational reading material for slow learners, she says I deserve the medal because I am a, quote, "Damn good writer".
I've tried to improve myself with every book and find the truth inside the lie. Sometimes I have succeeded. I salute the National Book Foundation Board, who took a huge risk in giving this award to a man many people see as a rich hack. For far too long the so-called popular writers of this country and the so-called literary writers have stared at each other with animosity and a willful lack of understanding. This is the way it has always been. Witness my childish resentment of anyone who ever got a Guggenheim.
But giving an award like this to a guy like me suggests that in the future things don't have to be the way they've always been. Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction. The first gainers in such a widening of interest would be the readers, of course, which is us because writers are almost always readers and listeners first. You have been very good and patient listeners and I'm going to let you go soon but I'd like to say one more thing before I do.
Tokenism is not allowed. You can't sit back, give a self satisfied sigh and say, "Ah, that takes care of the troublesome pop lit question. In another twenty years or perhaps thirty, we'll give this award to another writer who sells enough books to make the best seller lists." It's not good enough. Nor do I have any patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.
What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say. And if your only point of reference for Jack Aubrey is the Australian actor, Russell Crowe, shame on you.
There's a writer here tonight, my old friend and some time collaborator, Peter Straub. He's just published what may be the best book of his career. Lost Boy Lost Girl surely deserves your consideration for the NBA short list next year, if not the award itself. Have you read it? Have any of the judges read it?
There's another writer here tonight who writes under the name of Jack Ketchum and he has also written what may be the best book of his career, a long novella called The Crossings. Have you read it? Have any of the judges read it? And yet Jack Ketchum's first novel, Off Season published in 1980, set off a furor in my supposed field, that of horror, that was unequaled until the advent of Clive Barker. It is not too much to say that these two gentlemen remade the face of American popular fiction and yet very few people here will have an idea of who I'm talking about or have read the work.
This is not criticism, it's just me pointing out a blind spot in the winnowing process and in the very act of reading the fiction of one's own culture. Honoring me is a step in a different direction, a fruitful one, I think. I'm asking you, almost begging you, not to go back to the old way of doing things. There's a great deal of good stuff out there and not all of it is being done by writers whose work is regularly reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. I believe the time comes when you must be inclusive rather than exclusive.
That said, I accept this award on behalf of such disparate writers as Elmore Leonard, Peter Straub, Nora Lofts, Jack Ketchum, whose real name is Dallas Mayr, Jodi Picoult, Greg Iles, John Grisham, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connolly, Pete Hamill and a dozen more. I hope that the National Book Award judges, past, present and future, will read these writers and that the books will open their eyes to a whole new realm of American literature. You don't have to vote for them, just read them.
Okay, thanks for bearing with me. This is the last page? This is it. Parting is such sweet sorrow. My message is simple enough. We can build bridges between the popular and the literary if we keep our minds and hearts open. With my wife's help, I have tried to do that. Now I'm going to turn the actual medal over to her because she will make sure in all the excitement that it doesn't get lost.
In closing, I want to say that I hope you all find something good to read tonight or tomorrow. I want to salute all the nominees in the four categories that are up for consideration and I do, I hope you'll find something to read that will fill you up as this evening as filled me up. Thank you. "
Para alguns dos snobs que têm a distinta lata de definir literatura pelos seus gostos e inclinações pessoais, e que ostentam uma soberba e um preconceito cultural próprio de pessoas de vistas curtas e vícios velhos, é um documento franco, directo e muito interessante.
Para outros, é um elogio da verdade na escrita, daquilo que se quer dizer com honestidade e do imenso valor que isso representa seja lá no que for. Fingir e mentir é escrever, mas deve fingir-se e mentir-se o honestamente possível. Chama-se imaginação ou em ultima instância, criação.
Diviritam-se. Eu cá diverti-me.
Stephen King
Winner of the 2003
DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LETTERS AWARD
Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you for the applause and thank you for coming. I'm delighted to be here but, as I've said before in the last five years, I'm delighted to be anywhere.
This isn't in my speech so don't take it out of my allotted time. There are some people who have spoken out passionately about giving me this medal. There are some people who think it's an extraordinarily bad idea. There have been some people who have spoken out who think it's an extraordinarily good idea. You know who you are and where you stand and most of you who are here tonight are on my side. I'm glad for that. But I want to say it doesn't matter in a sense which side you were on. The people who speak out, speak out because they are passionate about the book, about the word, about the page and, in that sense, we're all brothers and sisters. Give yourself a hand.
Now as for my remarks. The only person who understands how much this award means to me is my wife, Tabitha. I was a writer when I met her in 1967 but my only venue was the campus newspaper where I published a rude weekly column. It turned me into a bit of a celebrity but I was a poor one, scraping through college thanks to a jury-rigged package of loans and scholarships.
A friend of Tabitha Spruce pointed me out to her one winter day as I crossed the mall in my jeans and cut-down green rubber boots. I had a bushy black beard. I hadn't had my hair cut in two years and I looked like Charlie Manson. My wife-to-be clasped her hands between her breasts and said, "I think I'm in love" in a tone dripping with sarcasm.
Tabby Spruce had no more money than I did but with sarcasm she was loaded. When we married in 1971, we already had one child. By the middle of 1972, we had a pair. I taught school and worked in a laundry during the summer. Tabby worked for Dunkin' Donuts. When she was working, I took care of the kids. When I was working, it was vice versa. And writing was always an undisputed part of that work. Tabby finished the first book of our marriage, a slim but wonderful book of poetry called Grimoire.
This is a very atypical audience, one passionately dedicated to books and to the word. Most of the world, however, sees writing as a fairly useless occupation. I've even heard it called mental masturbation, once or twice by people in my family. I never heard that from my wife. She'd read my stuff and felt certain I'd some day support us by writing full time, instead of standing in front of a blackboard and spouting on about Jack London and Ogden Nash. She never made a big deal of this. It was just a fact of our lives. We lived in a trailer and she made a writing space for me in the tiny laundry room with a desk and her Olivetti portable between the washer and dryer. She still tells people I married her for that typewriter but that's only partly true. I married her because I loved her and because we got on as well out of bed as in it. The typewriter was a factor, though.
When I gave up on Carrie, it was Tabby who rescued the first few pages of single spaced manuscript from the wastebasket, told me it was good, said I ought to go on. When I told her I didn't know how to go on, she helped me out with the girls' locker room stuff. There were no inspiring speeches. Tabby does sarcasm, Tabby doesn't do inspiration, never has. It was just "this is pretty good, you ought to keep it going." That was all I needed and she knew it.
There were some hard, dark years before Carrie. We had two kids and no money. We rotated the bills, paying on different ones each month. I kept our car, an old Buick, going with duct tape and bailing wire. It was a time when my wife might have been expected to say, "Why don't you quit spending three hours a night in the laundry room, Steve, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer we can't afford? Why don't you get an actual job?"
Okay, this is the real stuff. If she'd asked, I almost certainly would have done it. And then am I standing up here tonight, making a speech, accepting the award, wearing a radar dish around my neck? Maybe. More likely not. In fact, the subject of moonlighting did come up once. The head of the English department where I taught told me that the debate club was going to need a new faculty advisor and he put me up for the job if I wanted. It would pay $300 per school year which doesn't sound like much but my yearly take in 1973 was only $6,600 and $300 equaled ten weeks worth of groceries.
The English department head told me he'd need my decision by the end of the week. When I told Tabby about the opening, she asked if I'd still have time to write. I told her not as much. Her response to that was unequivocal, "Well then, you can't take it."
One of the few times during the early years of our marriage I saw my wife cry really hard was when I told her that a paperback publisher, New American Library, had paid a ton of money for the book she'd rescued from the trash. I could quit teaching, she could quit pushing crullers at Dunkin' Donuts. She looked almost unbelieving for five seconds and then she put her hands over her face and she wept. When she finally stopped, we went into the living room and sat on our old couch, which Tabby had rescued from a yard sale, and talked into the early hours of the morning about what we were going to do with the money. I've never had a more pleasant conversation. I have never had one that felt more surreal.
My point is that Tabby always knew what I was supposed to be doing and she believed that I would succeed at it. There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
That vulnerable time for me came during 1971 to 1973. If my wife had suggested to me even with love and kindness and gentleness rather than her more common wit and good natured sarcasm that the time had come to put my dreams away and support my family, I would have done that with no complaint. I believe that on some level of thought I was expecting to have that conversation. If she had suggested that you can't buy a loaf of bread or a tube of toothpaste with rejection slips, I would have gone out and found a part time job.
Tabby has told me since that it never crossed her mind to have such a conversation. You had a second job, she said, in the laundry room with my typewriter. I hope you know, Tabby, that they are clapping for you and not for me. Stand up so they can see you, please. Thank you. Thank you. I did not let her see this speech, and I will hear about this later.
Now, there are lots of people who will tell you that anyone who writes genre fiction or any kind of fiction that tells a story is in it for the money and nothing else. It's a lie. The idea that all storytellers are in it for the money is untrue but it is still hurtful, it's infuriating and it's demeaning. I never in my life wrote a single word for money. As badly as we needed money, I never wrote for money. From those early days to this gala black tie night, I never once sat down at my desk thinking today I'm going to make a hundred grand. Or this story will make a great movie. If I had tried to write with those things in mind, I believe I would have sold my birthright for a plot of message, as the old pun has it. Either way, Tabby and I would still be living in a trailer or an equivalent, a boat. My wife knows the importance of this award isn't the recognition of being a great writer or even a good writer but the recognition of being an honest writer.
Frank Norris, the author of McTeague, said something like this: "What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter? I never truckled, I never lied. I told the truth." And that's always been the bottom line for me. The story and the people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I've told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation.
Of course, I only have my own senses, experiences and reading to draw on but that usually - not always but usually - usually it's enough. It gets the job done. For instance, if an elevator full of people, one of the ones in this very building - I want you to think about this later, I want you to think about it - if it starts to vibrate and you hear those clanks - this probably won't happen but we all know it has happened, it could happen. It could happen to me or it could happen to you. Someone always wins the lottery. Just put it away for now until you go up to your rooms later. Anyway, if an elevator full of people starts free-falling from the 35th floor of the skyscraper all the way to the bottom, one of those view elevators, perhaps, where you can watch it happening, in my opinion, no one is going to say, "Goodbye, Neil, I will see you in heaven." In my book or my short story, they're far more apt to bellow, "Oh shit" at the top of their lungs because what I've read and heard tends to confirm the "Oh shit" choice. If that makes me a cynic, so be it.
I remember a story on the nightly news about an airliner that crashed killing all aboard. The so-called black box was recovered and we have the pilot's immortal last four words: "Son of a bitch". Of course, there was another plane that crashed and the black box recorder said, "Goodbye, Mother," which is a nicer way to go out, I think.
Folks are far more apt to go out with a surprised ejaculation, however, then an expiring abjuration like, "Marry her, Jake. Bible says it ain't good for a man to be alone." If I happen to be the writer of such a death bed scene, I'd choose "Son of a bitch" over "Marry her, Jake" every time. We understand that fiction is a lie to begin with. To ignore the truth inside the lie is to sin against the craft, in general, and one's own work in particular.
I'm sure I've made the wrong choices from time to time. Doesn't the Bible say something like, "for all have sinned and come short of the glory of Chaucer?" But every time I did it, I was sorry. Sorry is cheap, though. I have revised the lie out if I could and that's far more important. When readers are deeply entranced by a story, they forget the storyteller completely. The tale is all they care about.
But the storyteller cannot afford to forget and must always be ready to hold himself or herself to account. He or she needs to remember that the truth lends verisimilitude to the lies that surround it. If you tell your reader, "Sometimes chickens will pick out the weakest one in the flock and peck it to death," the truth, the reader is much more likely to go along with you than if you then add something like, "Such chickens often meld into the earth after their deaths."
How stringently the writer holds to the truth inside the lie is one of the ways that he can judge how seriously he takes his craft. My wife, who doesn't seem to know how to a lie even in a social context where people routinely say things like, "You look wonderful, have you lost weight?" has always understood these things without needing to have them spelled out. She's what the Bible calls a pearl beyond price. She also understands why I was in those early days so often bitterly angry at writers who were considered "literary." I knew I didn't have quite enough talent or polish to be one of them so there was an element of jealousy, but I was also infuriated by how these writers always seemed to have the inside track in my view at that time.
Even a note in the acknowledgments page of a novel thanking the this or that foundation for its generous assistance was enough to set me off. I knew what it meant, I told my wife. It was the Old Boy Network at work. It was this, it was that, on and on and blah, blah, blah. It is only in retrospect that I realize how much I sounded like my least favorite uncle who believed there really was an international Jewish cabal running everything from the Ford Motor Company to the Federal Reserve.
Tabitha listened to a fair amount of this pissing and moaning and finally told me to stop with the breast beating. She said to save my self-pity and turn my energy to the typewriter. She paused and then added, my typewriter. I did because she was right and my anger played much better when channeled into about a dozen stories which I wrote in 1973 and early 1974. Not all of them were good but most of them were honest and I realized an amazing thing: Readers of the men's magazines where I was published were remembering my name and starting to look for it. I could hardly believe it but it appeared that people wanted to read what I was writing. There's never been a thrill in my life to equal that one. With Tabby's help, I was able to put aside my useless jealousy and get writing again. I sold more of my short stories. I sold Carrie and the rest, as they say, is history.
There's been a certain amount of grumbling about the decision to give the award to me and since so much of this speech has been about my wife, I wanted to give you her opinion on the subject. She's read everything I've written, making her something of an expert, and her view of my work is loving but unsentimental. Tabby says I deserve the medal not just because some good movies were made from my stories or because I've provided high motivational reading material for slow learners, she says I deserve the medal because I am a, quote, "Damn good writer".
I've tried to improve myself with every book and find the truth inside the lie. Sometimes I have succeeded. I salute the National Book Foundation Board, who took a huge risk in giving this award to a man many people see as a rich hack. For far too long the so-called popular writers of this country and the so-called literary writers have stared at each other with animosity and a willful lack of understanding. This is the way it has always been. Witness my childish resentment of anyone who ever got a Guggenheim.
But giving an award like this to a guy like me suggests that in the future things don't have to be the way they've always been. Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction. The first gainers in such a widening of interest would be the readers, of course, which is us because writers are almost always readers and listeners first. You have been very good and patient listeners and I'm going to let you go soon but I'd like to say one more thing before I do.
Tokenism is not allowed. You can't sit back, give a self satisfied sigh and say, "Ah, that takes care of the troublesome pop lit question. In another twenty years or perhaps thirty, we'll give this award to another writer who sells enough books to make the best seller lists." It's not good enough. Nor do I have any patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.
What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say. And if your only point of reference for Jack Aubrey is the Australian actor, Russell Crowe, shame on you.
There's a writer here tonight, my old friend and some time collaborator, Peter Straub. He's just published what may be the best book of his career. Lost Boy Lost Girl surely deserves your consideration for the NBA short list next year, if not the award itself. Have you read it? Have any of the judges read it?
There's another writer here tonight who writes under the name of Jack Ketchum and he has also written what may be the best book of his career, a long novella called The Crossings. Have you read it? Have any of the judges read it? And yet Jack Ketchum's first novel, Off Season published in 1980, set off a furor in my supposed field, that of horror, that was unequaled until the advent of Clive Barker. It is not too much to say that these two gentlemen remade the face of American popular fiction and yet very few people here will have an idea of who I'm talking about or have read the work.
This is not criticism, it's just me pointing out a blind spot in the winnowing process and in the very act of reading the fiction of one's own culture. Honoring me is a step in a different direction, a fruitful one, I think. I'm asking you, almost begging you, not to go back to the old way of doing things. There's a great deal of good stuff out there and not all of it is being done by writers whose work is regularly reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. I believe the time comes when you must be inclusive rather than exclusive.
That said, I accept this award on behalf of such disparate writers as Elmore Leonard, Peter Straub, Nora Lofts, Jack Ketchum, whose real name is Dallas Mayr, Jodi Picoult, Greg Iles, John Grisham, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connolly, Pete Hamill and a dozen more. I hope that the National Book Award judges, past, present and future, will read these writers and that the books will open their eyes to a whole new realm of American literature. You don't have to vote for them, just read them.
Okay, thanks for bearing with me. This is the last page? This is it. Parting is such sweet sorrow. My message is simple enough. We can build bridges between the popular and the literary if we keep our minds and hearts open. With my wife's help, I have tried to do that. Now I'm going to turn the actual medal over to her because she will make sure in all the excitement that it doesn't get lost.
In closing, I want to say that I hope you all find something good to read tonight or tomorrow. I want to salute all the nominees in the four categories that are up for consideration and I do, I hope you'll find something to read that will fill you up as this evening as filled me up. Thank you. "
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Amigos, tenho nova casa.
Aos que tiveram a amabilidade de seguir este site inconsequente, e aos que têm links para este local, peço que alterem o endereço para http://www.estacoesdiferentes.blogspot.com , e o consequente nome para Estações Diferentes.
O que é que querem? É a lusofonia...
Abraços e espero ver-vos por lá!
SK
Aos que tiveram a amabilidade de seguir este site inconsequente, e aos que têm links para este local, peço que alterem o endereço para http://www.estacoesdiferentes.blogspot.com , e o consequente nome para Estações Diferentes.
O que é que querem? É a lusofonia...
Abraços e espero ver-vos por lá!
SK
Friday, September 12, 2003
Gostava de conseguir insultar alguém assim,quando se justificasse...
Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood
False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand, hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey
This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet
Thou art a traitor, false to thy gods, thy brother and thy father
From the extremest upward of thy head to the descent and dust beneath thy foot, a most toad spotted traitor
Shakespeare - Rei Lear
Abraços!
Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood
False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand, hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey
This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet
Thou art a traitor, false to thy gods, thy brother and thy father
From the extremest upward of thy head to the descent and dust beneath thy foot, a most toad spotted traitor
Shakespeare - Rei Lear
Abraços!
Ao ler por acidente uma posologia, leio a seguinte contra indicação:
"Em casos raros, verificaram-se situações de suicídio".
Arrepiei-me. Não se tratava de um "downer" vendido clandestinamente, ou feito artesanalmente por um qualquer vendedor de estupefacientes. Era um medicamento frequentemente prescrito para tratar determinada maleita que até por sinal é bem comum.
Por alguma razão não consegui tirar isto da cabeça durante alguns dias. Há normalidades que me assustam .Só isso.
Abraços
"Em casos raros, verificaram-se situações de suicídio".
Arrepiei-me. Não se tratava de um "downer" vendido clandestinamente, ou feito artesanalmente por um qualquer vendedor de estupefacientes. Era um medicamento frequentemente prescrito para tratar determinada maleita que até por sinal é bem comum.
Por alguma razão não consegui tirar isto da cabeça durante alguns dias. Há normalidades que me assustam .Só isso.
Abraços
"Sexo e a Cidade" está cada vez a ficar mais parecido com Margarida Rebelo Pinto? O encanto do início da série está a esbater-se num registo arriscadamente generalista e caricatural, ou é impressão minha?
Que saudades da Ally Macbeal, dos Sete Palmos Abaixo de Terra, ou da fantástica primeira época dos X-Files.
Já agora se alguém se lembrasse de passar na TV, a horas decentes, a série CSI ( Crime Scene Investigation), a malta não se importava.
Eu e a minha mania de sonhar... Com um Big Brother 4, quem é que quer coisas para pensar? Meia sinapse e força... a malta quer é ver pornochanchada em horário nobre... especialmente depois de codificarem o canal 18.
Enfim...
Abraços
Que saudades da Ally Macbeal, dos Sete Palmos Abaixo de Terra, ou da fantástica primeira época dos X-Files.
Já agora se alguém se lembrasse de passar na TV, a horas decentes, a série CSI ( Crime Scene Investigation), a malta não se importava.
Eu e a minha mania de sonhar... Com um Big Brother 4, quem é que quer coisas para pensar? Meia sinapse e força... a malta quer é ver pornochanchada em horário nobre... especialmente depois de codificarem o canal 18.
Enfim...
Abraços
Ainda no outro dia andava ás voltas com esta questão novamente.
Discutia-se inflamadamente a importância da aparência física versus o valor humano, a riqueza interior.
Chegaram a extremar-se posições, e por muitos, a questão física foi considerada algo inferior, e até dispensável.
Meia hora depois ouço os queixumes de quem já não conseguia vestir nada do que tinha, ou os comentários desesperadamente cobiçosos relativos a uma silhueta que passa.
Reforço a crença no equilíbrio necessário, desvalorizo o discurso politicamente correcto de talk show, meto a viola no saco e continuo a preferir mulheres inteligentes mas também bonitas.
Abraços
Discutia-se inflamadamente a importância da aparência física versus o valor humano, a riqueza interior.
Chegaram a extremar-se posições, e por muitos, a questão física foi considerada algo inferior, e até dispensável.
Meia hora depois ouço os queixumes de quem já não conseguia vestir nada do que tinha, ou os comentários desesperadamente cobiçosos relativos a uma silhueta que passa.
Reforço a crença no equilíbrio necessário, desvalorizo o discurso politicamente correcto de talk show, meto a viola no saco e continuo a preferir mulheres inteligentes mas também bonitas.
Abraços
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Sim, e eis-me de volta.
No fundo estou a falar para mim mesmo, mas não seria a primeira vez que me surpreenderia a falar sozinho.
No entanto lamento, em tom crítico a mim mesmo, que o blog tenha andado em maré baixa, devido a uma falta de tempo avassaladora conjugada com uma fase complicada daquela coisa que por vezes mais valia vir com livro de instruções - a vida pessoal.
Existem imensas coisas acerca das quais me apetece disparatar com a pouca informação de que disponho, e tentarei voltar a isso mesmo assim que me for possível. Quando as coisas estiverem menos confusas.
Abraços
No fundo estou a falar para mim mesmo, mas não seria a primeira vez que me surpreenderia a falar sozinho.
No entanto lamento, em tom crítico a mim mesmo, que o blog tenha andado em maré baixa, devido a uma falta de tempo avassaladora conjugada com uma fase complicada daquela coisa que por vezes mais valia vir com livro de instruções - a vida pessoal.
Existem imensas coisas acerca das quais me apetece disparatar com a pouca informação de que disponho, e tentarei voltar a isso mesmo assim que me for possível. Quando as coisas estiverem menos confusas.
Abraços
Friday, August 29, 2003
Quem traça o limite entre a emoção real e o sentimentalismo?
Haverá qualquer forma de escaparmos a essa ultima ideia, quando estamos completamente lançados contra as cordas e a percepção do mundo sensível mais parece uma saraivada de directos e uppercuts do Tyson?
Eu cá tenho uma opinião mista. Penso que assim como é possível ler um livro incrivelmente difícil e gostar-se, resistindo-se á tentação de o fechar para sempre, , ou sentir o prazer imenso da presença do corpo após uma sessão de exercício físico intenso, conseguindo não desistir quando o ácido láctico já só manda mensagens da República das dores continuadas, também será possível receber a inspiração de algo avassalador e conter a tendência que há para fazer tudo o que há de errado e trapalhão, ainda que em nome da emoção certa.
A produção de criatividade na expressão do amor dito irrestrito é talvez das tarefas mais complicadas que existem. Mas é mais um passo, uma etapa e uma permanência num estado de desorientação docemente dolorosa, que se traduz num estágio de vida no qual até os mais cínicos esbarram, ainda que só por um instante. Nesse segundo, até a mais empedernida desconfiança genérica acaba por conhecer um instante de dúvida inconfessável. E curiosamente são aqueles que, na minha parca experiencia, mais aparentam vulnerabilidade peerante o sentimentalismo, rendendo-se naquele segundo á deselegância de que são feitas as verdadeiras emoções.
Sentir é como respirar, como a própria cadência sexual. É na alternatividade que sobrevive tudo. Nos picos e vales. Na rendição atabalhoada e no rescaldo criativo e com sorte, elegante e inspirador.
Não sei o que me deu hoje....
Abraços!
Haverá qualquer forma de escaparmos a essa ultima ideia, quando estamos completamente lançados contra as cordas e a percepção do mundo sensível mais parece uma saraivada de directos e uppercuts do Tyson?
Eu cá tenho uma opinião mista. Penso que assim como é possível ler um livro incrivelmente difícil e gostar-se, resistindo-se á tentação de o fechar para sempre, , ou sentir o prazer imenso da presença do corpo após uma sessão de exercício físico intenso, conseguindo não desistir quando o ácido láctico já só manda mensagens da República das dores continuadas, também será possível receber a inspiração de algo avassalador e conter a tendência que há para fazer tudo o que há de errado e trapalhão, ainda que em nome da emoção certa.
A produção de criatividade na expressão do amor dito irrestrito é talvez das tarefas mais complicadas que existem. Mas é mais um passo, uma etapa e uma permanência num estado de desorientação docemente dolorosa, que se traduz num estágio de vida no qual até os mais cínicos esbarram, ainda que só por um instante. Nesse segundo, até a mais empedernida desconfiança genérica acaba por conhecer um instante de dúvida inconfessável. E curiosamente são aqueles que, na minha parca experiencia, mais aparentam vulnerabilidade peerante o sentimentalismo, rendendo-se naquele segundo á deselegância de que são feitas as verdadeiras emoções.
Sentir é como respirar, como a própria cadência sexual. É na alternatividade que sobrevive tudo. Nos picos e vales. Na rendição atabalhoada e no rescaldo criativo e com sorte, elegante e inspirador.
Não sei o que me deu hoje....
Abraços!
Pode ser uma questão de mau feitio, mas detesto diminuitivos quando não aplicados a crianças. E mesmo assim...
Sinceramente, são raros aqueles que assentam, e na grande generalidade soam-me a uma afectação pretensamente carinhosa, mas que normalmente parece uma qualquer espécie de crachá identificativo que é suposto indicar qualquer recorte de personalidade que se pega á pessoa como uma doença congénita.
Está dividido em duas espécies bem identificadas, sendo que uma consegue ser bem pior que a outra. Por ordem crescente de detestabilidade, aqui ficam:
Os "inhos" - Joãzinho, Soninha, Jaquinzinho ( só com um bom arroz de feijão), Nuninho, Dadinha... iurgh.....
Ou pior ainda
Os "itos" - Belita, Paulita, Susanita, ... ahhh!!!!
Existem ainda os "ecos", mas sinceramente não me recordo de qualquer nome próprio aplicável, embora alguns substantivos - politicozeco ( uma numerosa praga impossível de exterminar), badameco ( não é diminuitivo, mas também se aplicam aos anteriores), comentadorzeco ( aqueles que ainda acham que há ADM no Iraque), amoreco ( aquilo que se chama á cara metade meio dia antes de acabar a relação amorosa).
Tirando uma ou outra excepção, soam mal e transmitem erradamente uma ideia de calor ou proximidade. No fundo, acho que ate significam exactamente o que são, ou seja, forma de diminuir alguma coisa.
Um idiotazinho é bem pior que um idiota. Um cretininho é mais grave que um cretino. E quem é que quer ser apelidado de bonzinho? Chiça, e há lá maior condescendência existente num termo que aquele que reputa alguém de "queridinho"? Livra!
No entanto há excepções. A rapariga que faz engolir em seco pode muito bem ser um bombonzinho, á maneira do piropo educado de outros tempos, assim como entre amigos só se bebe um bom "whiskynho", ainda que seja meia garrafa do mesmo. E contra mim falo, porque sou um ocasional pecador, uma vez que volta e meia a lingua lá me foge para o terrível diminuitivo . "Deixa-me cá ler o meu livrinho em paz" ou " não gosto muito dessa roupa amorzinho".
Mas para mim não há dúvidas. Os diminuitivos são um flagelo, e em consciência, mais vale restringí-lo o mais possível, mesmo no que diz às crianças. Porque se o nosso filho se chama Francisco ou Catarina, o resultado é tão catastrófico que nem me atrevo a proferi-lo.
Abraços!
Sinceramente, são raros aqueles que assentam, e na grande generalidade soam-me a uma afectação pretensamente carinhosa, mas que normalmente parece uma qualquer espécie de crachá identificativo que é suposto indicar qualquer recorte de personalidade que se pega á pessoa como uma doença congénita.
Está dividido em duas espécies bem identificadas, sendo que uma consegue ser bem pior que a outra. Por ordem crescente de detestabilidade, aqui ficam:
Os "inhos" - Joãzinho, Soninha, Jaquinzinho ( só com um bom arroz de feijão), Nuninho, Dadinha... iurgh.....
Ou pior ainda
Os "itos" - Belita, Paulita, Susanita, ... ahhh!!!!
Existem ainda os "ecos", mas sinceramente não me recordo de qualquer nome próprio aplicável, embora alguns substantivos - politicozeco ( uma numerosa praga impossível de exterminar), badameco ( não é diminuitivo, mas também se aplicam aos anteriores), comentadorzeco ( aqueles que ainda acham que há ADM no Iraque), amoreco ( aquilo que se chama á cara metade meio dia antes de acabar a relação amorosa).
Tirando uma ou outra excepção, soam mal e transmitem erradamente uma ideia de calor ou proximidade. No fundo, acho que ate significam exactamente o que são, ou seja, forma de diminuir alguma coisa.
Um idiotazinho é bem pior que um idiota. Um cretininho é mais grave que um cretino. E quem é que quer ser apelidado de bonzinho? Chiça, e há lá maior condescendência existente num termo que aquele que reputa alguém de "queridinho"? Livra!
No entanto há excepções. A rapariga que faz engolir em seco pode muito bem ser um bombonzinho, á maneira do piropo educado de outros tempos, assim como entre amigos só se bebe um bom "whiskynho", ainda que seja meia garrafa do mesmo. E contra mim falo, porque sou um ocasional pecador, uma vez que volta e meia a lingua lá me foge para o terrível diminuitivo . "Deixa-me cá ler o meu livrinho em paz" ou " não gosto muito dessa roupa amorzinho".
Mas para mim não há dúvidas. Os diminuitivos são um flagelo, e em consciência, mais vale restringí-lo o mais possível, mesmo no que diz às crianças. Porque se o nosso filho se chama Francisco ou Catarina, o resultado é tão catastrófico que nem me atrevo a proferi-lo.
Abraços!
Alguém tenha a caridade de oferecer duas coisas a Luis Delgado
Uma camisola cor de laranja com a bandeira americana bordada no peito. Desconfio que ele terá umas vinte, mas uma a mais não fará mal algum.
Um bom dicionário que contenha a definição para algumas coisas como: imparcialidade, rigor ( ambos jornalisticos)
Façam a vossa boa acção do dia.
Abraços
Uma camisola cor de laranja com a bandeira americana bordada no peito. Desconfio que ele terá umas vinte, mas uma a mais não fará mal algum.
Um bom dicionário que contenha a definição para algumas coisas como: imparcialidade, rigor ( ambos jornalisticos)
Façam a vossa boa acção do dia.
Abraços
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Até Arrepia...
É caso para dizer que a este moço passou-lhe alguma coisa pela cabeça...
Arrepiante.
Abraços
É caso para dizer que a este moço passou-lhe alguma coisa pela cabeça...
Arrepiante.
Abraços
Detesto repetir-me, mas são demasiadas as alturas em que tal me acontece.
Perante a palhaçada descontrolada que está a situação no Iraque, as armas de destruição que não aparecem ( caraças, aquilo tem muita areia e os tipos andam com dificuldades em encontrar o que era evidente...), e a inevitabilidade da partilha do controlo da soberania para uma posterior devolução ao Iraque, (coisa que obviamente não estava nos planos dos EUA), eu pergunto-me.
Onde andam os inflamados comentadores e opinadores que mantinham ferreamente a convicção da existência das armas? Os que, como o primeiro ministro, defenderam a intervenção com o fundamento da existencia das ditas armas? Os que mentiram com quantos dentes tinham e classificaram as posições pacifistas, legalistas e moderadas de irrealismo e ingenuidade?
Onde andam essas sumidades?
Calados que nem ratos. Pois é... São as férias... Ou então é outra coisa, que Pacheco Pereira uma vez classificou de desonestidade intelectual (sic). Mas parece que aqueles que acusavam com tal argumento, padecem deles de uma forma que roça o vergonhoso.
Ao menos o Primeiro Ministro poderia dizer á nação que se enganara, que mentira ao país acerca da situação. Retiraria um pouco da montanha de desonestidade que cresceu ás suas costas.
Vá lá... ainda estamos á espera. Um acto de contricção só faz bem ao sangue, e o orgulho estupido é um pecado mortal. E o católico não sou eu...
Abraços
Perante a palhaçada descontrolada que está a situação no Iraque, as armas de destruição que não aparecem ( caraças, aquilo tem muita areia e os tipos andam com dificuldades em encontrar o que era evidente...), e a inevitabilidade da partilha do controlo da soberania para uma posterior devolução ao Iraque, (coisa que obviamente não estava nos planos dos EUA), eu pergunto-me.
Onde andam os inflamados comentadores e opinadores que mantinham ferreamente a convicção da existência das armas? Os que, como o primeiro ministro, defenderam a intervenção com o fundamento da existencia das ditas armas? Os que mentiram com quantos dentes tinham e classificaram as posições pacifistas, legalistas e moderadas de irrealismo e ingenuidade?
Onde andam essas sumidades?
Calados que nem ratos. Pois é... São as férias... Ou então é outra coisa, que Pacheco Pereira uma vez classificou de desonestidade intelectual (sic). Mas parece que aqueles que acusavam com tal argumento, padecem deles de uma forma que roça o vergonhoso.
Ao menos o Primeiro Ministro poderia dizer á nação que se enganara, que mentira ao país acerca da situação. Retiraria um pouco da montanha de desonestidade que cresceu ás suas costas.
Vá lá... ainda estamos á espera. Um acto de contricção só faz bem ao sangue, e o orgulho estupido é um pecado mortal. E o católico não sou eu...
Abraços
Quando leio um jornal e leio relatos de casos de escravatura em Portugal, ou seja lá onde for, instala-se a pele de galinha juntamente com uma azia dificilmente debelável.
É uma realidade, mas na essência das coisas, é impressionante que alguém que se auto-intitula um ser humano consiga viver com a sua consciência quando o faz através da exploração mais indigna e repugnante de um semelhante.
Desculpem o tom ingénuo, mas a verdade é que as noções mais básicas de justiça são completamente denegridas com situações destas, que de forma mais ou menos institucionalizada ( vejam o que fazem ás pessoas na China industrial, e aquilo de que é feito o crescimento económico do gigante) acontecem por toda a parte.
Um país Europeu, civilizado, com mais de cem casos registados, (fora os outros), de escravatura.
Estou envergonhado.
Abraços
É uma realidade, mas na essência das coisas, é impressionante que alguém que se auto-intitula um ser humano consiga viver com a sua consciência quando o faz através da exploração mais indigna e repugnante de um semelhante.
Desculpem o tom ingénuo, mas a verdade é que as noções mais básicas de justiça são completamente denegridas com situações destas, que de forma mais ou menos institucionalizada ( vejam o que fazem ás pessoas na China industrial, e aquilo de que é feito o crescimento económico do gigante) acontecem por toda a parte.
Um país Europeu, civilizado, com mais de cem casos registados, (fora os outros), de escravatura.
Estou envergonhado.
Abraços
Congelamento de admissões na função pública provoca aumento de custos.
A notícia, publicada no Público de hoje, parece uma contradição em termos, mas não é. A verdade é que a medida, tomada como foi, sem qualquer forma de planeamento ou gestão dos serviços e do pessoal correspondente, levou, como já há muito se sabia, a situações que obrigaram a um dispêndio superior de verbas, quando a intenção era precisamente a contenção. O outsorcing, através das empresas de trabalho temporário e outras afins, representa uma fatia considerável dos custos.
Agora pergunto-me. Para quando o descongelamento, ou pelo menos, uma estratégia lógica e racional para que o equilíbrio se obtenha, ou seja, qualidade dos serviços, custos controlados e boa gestão dos recursos humanos, de acordo com a lei e os direitos fundamentais nela incluidos?
Vamos lá ver se a "medida estúpida" (sic) ainda terá mais consequências.
Abraços
A notícia, publicada no Público de hoje, parece uma contradição em termos, mas não é. A verdade é que a medida, tomada como foi, sem qualquer forma de planeamento ou gestão dos serviços e do pessoal correspondente, levou, como já há muito se sabia, a situações que obrigaram a um dispêndio superior de verbas, quando a intenção era precisamente a contenção. O outsorcing, através das empresas de trabalho temporário e outras afins, representa uma fatia considerável dos custos.
Agora pergunto-me. Para quando o descongelamento, ou pelo menos, uma estratégia lógica e racional para que o equilíbrio se obtenha, ou seja, qualidade dos serviços, custos controlados e boa gestão dos recursos humanos, de acordo com a lei e os direitos fundamentais nela incluidos?
Vamos lá ver se a "medida estúpida" (sic) ainda terá mais consequências.
Abraços
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
"ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a
newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize."
THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by AMBROSE BIERCE
pois é...
O ilustre bloguista Pedro Mexia foi buscar a designação da sua "casa" a esta obra, assim como eu fui ao título de um livro que simplesmente adoro. No fundo, os processos são recorrentes. Só gostava de ter a cultura que ele tem, e o tempo que tem para a cultivar. Mas como dizia um amigo meu, a criatividade é a capacidade de compor e transformar o produto de pequenos roubos. Não só concordo como pratico.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (Junho 24, 1842 - 1913 or 1914) foi escritor de contos, histórias sobrenaturais e um jornalista/cronista conhecido como "Bitter Bierce".
Nascido no Ohio, Bierce combateu na Guerra Civil Americana, chegando á patente de Major, mudando-se para São Francisco em 1867, trabaçlhndo durante muitos anos como cronista no San Francisco Examiner.
As suas histórias curtas e contos são considerados como dos melhores do seu tempo, de onde se destacam "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" e "Chickamauga".
Bierce era reconhecido como um mestre do "puro" inglês pelos seus contemporâneos. Um dos seus mais famosos trabalhos é "The Devil's Dictionary", originariamente criado como uma crónica em série num jornal, onde se reinterpretavam palavras da lingua inglesa de forma a que o discurso político ambivalente fosse impecalmente satirizado. (O amigo JP Coutinho fez a mesma coisa na crónica que escrevia para a MAX MEN, dando um ar de originalidade que afinal não tinha, mas enfim...)
Em 1913, no ano prévio á sua morte, o já septuagenário Bierce viajou para o México de com o intuito de se juntar ao exército de Pacho Villa, tendo desaparecido em 1914, deixando um denso mistério em torno daquele que teria sido o seu destino final.
Apesar de todos estes encómios, com os quais concordo porque li o Dicionário do Diabo e gostei, não sei o que pensar da tirada transcrita logo no início deste post. Sátira ou não, incomoda-me...
Bem, mas já o Ezra Pound era um fascizoide de primeira, assim como o H.P. Lovecraft não fazia por esconder a sua xenofobia.
É a velha história da avaliação da obra pelo seu criador.
A maior parte das vezes consigo distanciar-me. Algumas vezes não.
Acho esta entrada transcrita acima de um profundo mau gosto, mascarado de sátira pretensamente superior. Ao contrário da esmagadora maioria das entradas do Devil's Dictionary.
Abraços
newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize."
THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by AMBROSE BIERCE
pois é...
O ilustre bloguista Pedro Mexia foi buscar a designação da sua "casa" a esta obra, assim como eu fui ao título de um livro que simplesmente adoro. No fundo, os processos são recorrentes. Só gostava de ter a cultura que ele tem, e o tempo que tem para a cultivar. Mas como dizia um amigo meu, a criatividade é a capacidade de compor e transformar o produto de pequenos roubos. Não só concordo como pratico.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (Junho 24, 1842 - 1913 or 1914) foi escritor de contos, histórias sobrenaturais e um jornalista/cronista conhecido como "Bitter Bierce".
Nascido no Ohio, Bierce combateu na Guerra Civil Americana, chegando á patente de Major, mudando-se para São Francisco em 1867, trabaçlhndo durante muitos anos como cronista no San Francisco Examiner.
As suas histórias curtas e contos são considerados como dos melhores do seu tempo, de onde se destacam "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" e "Chickamauga".
Bierce era reconhecido como um mestre do "puro" inglês pelos seus contemporâneos. Um dos seus mais famosos trabalhos é "The Devil's Dictionary", originariamente criado como uma crónica em série num jornal, onde se reinterpretavam palavras da lingua inglesa de forma a que o discurso político ambivalente fosse impecalmente satirizado. (O amigo JP Coutinho fez a mesma coisa na crónica que escrevia para a MAX MEN, dando um ar de originalidade que afinal não tinha, mas enfim...)
Em 1913, no ano prévio á sua morte, o já septuagenário Bierce viajou para o México de com o intuito de se juntar ao exército de Pacho Villa, tendo desaparecido em 1914, deixando um denso mistério em torno daquele que teria sido o seu destino final.
Apesar de todos estes encómios, com os quais concordo porque li o Dicionário do Diabo e gostei, não sei o que pensar da tirada transcrita logo no início deste post. Sátira ou não, incomoda-me...
Bem, mas já o Ezra Pound era um fascizoide de primeira, assim como o H.P. Lovecraft não fazia por esconder a sua xenofobia.
É a velha história da avaliação da obra pelo seu criador.
A maior parte das vezes consigo distanciar-me. Algumas vezes não.
Acho esta entrada transcrita acima de um profundo mau gosto, mascarado de sátira pretensamente superior. Ao contrário da esmagadora maioria das entradas do Devil's Dictionary.
Abraços
O REGRESSO
É sempre uma chachada. Ao contrário do que sugeria o nosso amigo Pacheco Pereira, eu gosto de férias, e não possuo qualquer senso de vergonha ou conciência pesada por simplesmente fazer o que quero do meu tempo, e mais, aproveitar coisas simples, prazeres do dolce fare niente.
Mas em três semanas, li dois livros. Ou melhor, reli os dois volumes da saga do Tolkien, que são realmente uma obra de arte monumental. Também ao contrário do que dizia o referido comentador, não é preciso desligar a cabeça quando se vai de férias, somente dar-lhe descanso.
E não se trata de silly season. Penso que os silly são aqueles que a partir de uma certa altura parecem sentir-se imbuidos que uma qualquer missão quase obstinada que os impede de se descontrairem. Lá que não queiram aproveitar a vida e gozar a veia hodonística, o problema é deles.
Mas adiante.
De volta. Com os disparates, opiniões, visões e delírios do costume.
Louve-se a paciência de quem os interioriza.
Abraços a todos
É sempre uma chachada. Ao contrário do que sugeria o nosso amigo Pacheco Pereira, eu gosto de férias, e não possuo qualquer senso de vergonha ou conciência pesada por simplesmente fazer o que quero do meu tempo, e mais, aproveitar coisas simples, prazeres do dolce fare niente.
Mas em três semanas, li dois livros. Ou melhor, reli os dois volumes da saga do Tolkien, que são realmente uma obra de arte monumental. Também ao contrário do que dizia o referido comentador, não é preciso desligar a cabeça quando se vai de férias, somente dar-lhe descanso.
E não se trata de silly season. Penso que os silly são aqueles que a partir de uma certa altura parecem sentir-se imbuidos que uma qualquer missão quase obstinada que os impede de se descontrairem. Lá que não queiram aproveitar a vida e gozar a veia hodonística, o problema é deles.
Mas adiante.
De volta. Com os disparates, opiniões, visões e delírios do costume.
Louve-se a paciência de quem os interioriza.
Abraços a todos
