remmers
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Reflections on Literature
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Jul 17 05:34 UTC 1995 |
Jack was just a little bit angry. Just a bit. Not raging
mad, mind you. I didn't say that. No, just a bit miffed.
In fact, if you hadn't been looking straight at him, you
might have missed the fleeting frown that crossed his face
for but an instant. So, in summary, he was just a teeny
tiny bit angry. Just an itsy itsy bit.
Is this necessary? Must the writer try to convey every
minute detail of an emotional episode, no matter how
trivial? Are there not better things with which the
writer could occupy his time, such as stamp collecting?
Or, if that is unappealing, perhaps bicycle riding or
learning to add long columns of numbers in one's head
would better suit.
The car screeched to a halt in front of the house. Two
men leaped out, followed by two more men, three women,
fourteen gerbils and a hamster. Phoebe drew the shades
quickly and hoped that they were not planning to call
upon her. As would anyone placed in a similar situation.
Except for theatrical agents, of course.
Aliens. Every story must have aliens, nowadays. I mean
as in interplanetary type aliens, not your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free. Stories never used to have
aliens. The other day I was reading a collection of
stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald; not a single alien in
the whole lot. You'd be hard pressed to find a collection
by a contemporary writer that doesn't have any aliens in
it. It's the publishers -- they insist on it. I can
see their point of view I guess. They want to make
money, and aliens is what sells stories. It used to be
sex. Some unscrupulous publishers actually revise the
texts of classic works of literature to put aliens in them.
This practice is known as alienation.
In the old days a writer would have to stop writing when
he or she ran out of ink. But nobody uses ink anymore.
So what will make them stop?
One must resist the impulse to summarize.
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was caused by Martians in the Air -
Plotting out our Doom.
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md
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response 1 of 2:
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Jul 17 12:42 UTC 1995 |
I was surprised the other day to find the story "Roman Fever"
in my Edith Wharton collection had been changed to "Martian
Fever." Also, I don't think you browsed F. Scott Fitzgerald's
collected stories closely enough, because you missed "The Martian
Death Machine As Big As The Ritz." I was *greatly* distressed,
as you might imagine, to find the subtitle of Thoreau's _Walden_
changed to: "or, Life on Mars." I had long ago resigned myself
to _King Lear_ being changed to _King Mftxlt_, but this was
too much. Well, what to do? "Something there is that doesn't
love an earthling," to quote Robert Frost.
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