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I have only TWO weeks to go before I leave the United States, and I have to say that it has been a marvelous experience. One trip that I took was a road trip to North Carolina, to Charlotte. Driving through some of the most spectacular country I have seen, especially through the Shenandoah Valley, a number of sites just stuck in my mind. To top this off, I just happened to be in a diner where a Southern writer, Sharyn McCrumb, popped in for something to eat just before she gave her author’s talk that night, where I was also scheduled to be in the audience. That was the first coincidence. The second was that she was talking about her book, ‘St Dale’ set in the very country that we had just been driving through. The third was that a friend bought me a copy of that book, signed by the author. The fourth is that this book is based on Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, and on my last trip to England I made a point of retracing the pilgrimage myself as part of my research for something that I was working on for publication (watch this space…my book is coming out soon).
Now, this book of McCrumb’s is based on the most fascinating proposition that modern pilgrims will undertake such things on the basis of modern saints, the celebrities that for some reason add meaning to their lives. Why, she asks, do some people beatify, if not sanctify, some celebrities and not others? Why Elvis Presley and not John Lennon, for example? Why Princess Diana? Pilgrims on the St Dale trek have elevated a Nascar driver, Dale Earnhardt, killed in a Nascar race, to the pantheon of their own modern saints, without any benefit of clergy to make such a decision for them, in much the same way, she argues, as ordinary people did with Thomas a’Beckett so many hundreds of years ago.

It is a fascinating concept, and I read the book intrigued by it. I had never even heard of Nascar racing before I went to Charlotte, and I really don’t know much more about it since I read the book, but I’d be interested to know if other folk have read it, and what they think of it. I still can’t cope with the idea of celebrities or the public devotion to them Perhaps it's an American thing? Would like to know what you think.

This posting is not about a book, but something that I am just so impressed with I have to tell the world. Spent last weekend in New York city (while I am living in upstate New York, I thought I'd go down to see the Big Apple for myself) I did take a book with me to read, and I will tell folk about that later, but found myself in the possession of a free ticket to an off-Broadway production that I had never heard of: 'The Toxic Avenger', a musical that absolutely blew me away. I reckon that I was present at the birth of a new cult following, just like 'Rocky Horror' generated. If you ever get a chance, you just MUST go to see this one. I looked it up on the Web, and apparently there is a B grade movie version that is not rated very highly by film goers, but this production you must not miss. The website:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=The%20toxic%20avenger&form=CPNTLB

In particular, look for the Shakesperaen actor who plays the role of 'Black Dude'. If there is anything that I take back to Australia with me, it will the memory of his performance.

While in the United States, folk have been most generous in responding to my requests for recommended reading in American literature. I have been reading some terrific books, especially Faulkner, whom I had not encountered before, and some more generalist books as well. One that somebody has loaned me is ‘Adventures of a Verbivore’, by Richard Lederer (1994 Pocket Books, New York), an American linguist who is apparently quite well known here. Something that I encountered regarding lipograms in this book might interest folk. Lipograms are passages that deliberately omit one or more letters of the alphabet. Here is what he has to say: ‘The most extensive lipogram in English is the 1939 novel ‘Gadsby’ by Ernest Vincent Wright, which contains fifty thousand words—and not a single letter ‘e’. In lipogram service, however, no writer in English has ever equaled [sic] the achievement of the Spanish writer Carlos Ibañez, who in each of his twenty-eight novels banished a single and different letter of the Spanish alphabet’ (p. 154). I have done this sort of thing myself, once writing a short play for a Faculty end-of-year Christmas celebration where all heads of department were asked to provide an entertaining item to the rest of the staff that would demonstrate their particular foci. I wrote the play, ‘In search of the schwa’, where I omitted the schwa entirely, and allotted a role to be played by each member of the department where they were to look for it in their work, but had none in any of the dialogue they were to speak. It is the sort of thing that what Lederer calls a ‘wordaholic’ might do. I had great fun writing it, and members of staff had great fun performing it, and I have to say it was most effective in entertaining the audience. Have never managed to get it published, though.

Well, as usual the conference was a terrific event, and Edinburgh set it off beautifully by turning on exquisite Autumn weather for the whole thing. I had some difficulty choosing sessions, but was unfailingly delighted with what was on offer. Presentations on books as the central characters of books, on publishers and their activities in getting books into the public’s hands, oral traditions of indigenous populations becoming print versions in spite of enormous cultural difficulties placed in their paths, various authors discussing their own works, and even Tin Tin and all sorts of problems with him and the faithful Snowy and Captain Haddock. The specialisms of each presenter had their individual charm, the sum total of which meant that once again new dimensions of our own engagements with the book were even further extended, and delightfully so. Given the tradition of this at the International Conferences on the Book (we note that ‘The Future of’ has disappeared from the name), St Galen next year promises to deliver more of the same. And that is an expectation devoutly to be explored as the year develops. In the meantime, look for the publication of these papers. You will love them (mine was 'A Clash of Chronotopes)'.

Blooks Comments
Folk may be interested in some comments that I have received re the posting on the blook, copied in below:
1. The term "blook" has been actively used since the 1990s, by librarian/collector, Mindell Dubansky, to describe unique or manufactured objects and ephemera that are made in imitation of a bound book or several bound books standing together. A blook is a replica of a book and has no text. The term "blook" is a shortening of "looks like a book."
2. With the advent of the blog people started to publish books serialized on their blogs. Chapters are published one by one as blog posts, and readers can then subscribe to the blook via an RSS feed, tag it and comment on it. This type of blook was popularized by Tom Evslin in September 2005, with the launch of hackoff.com, a murder mystery set in the dot-com bubble.
3. A blook can refer to either an object manufactured to imitate a bound book, an online book published via a blog, or a printed book that contains or is based on content from a blog.
Thank you to the commenters…you help to expand our knowledge.

I have just spent some time going through the program for the conference in Edinburgh next week in some detail, and I am blown away by what is on offer. That is what I like about this conference...people having their own particular interests that they pursue assiduously and are generous enough to let us in on. Like the rest of us, I attend a number of conferences, some regularly, some occasionally, but this one really stands out because of its unique opportunities for unique specialisations in relation to the book. I just can't wait to be part of it once again. I reckon everybosy else will be feeling the same way, although the first timers yet don't know what a treat is in store for them. I am so looking forward to talking to everybody there.

I have just made it to getting a paper accepted for the 2009 Conference in Edinburgh. Because I have this Visiting Scholar gig at SUNY in the USA I really did not think that I would be able to get everything done that I needed to in Oz before I left AND get material together for a paper, but I have, and it's been accepted, and it really looks like I will make it. I have once again been into the program page, and am thrilled to see some newcomers with really interesting-looking papers, and some oldcomers with similar offerings. It is such an extraordinarily good, focussed and different conference, different from just about any other that one might attend, and I am really looking forward to it. It's not such a big a deal getting to Edinburgh from here as it is from Oz. If anybody is still thinking about it, I urge you to take the plunge and just go. You will love it. And perhaps I will see some of you there, especially those anonymous folk who have been sending me such delightful messages in response to the postings I have made.

I know that this is no longer news, but I am surprised each time people in positions of authority make such decisions as that described below. I have copied it from http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/?s_campaign=8315

from a message sent to me by a colleague in the USA (where I am now...how exciting!!)




I don't know about anybody else, but it seems quite wrong to me.

I just love Benjamin Franklin, not just because of the great things that he did or invented, but the little things. Turning a genius mind to the invention of the stove, or to turkey as the emblem of the US...it's those things that appeal to me. I am about to take up a Visiting Professor gig at the State University of New York (leaving in a few hours in fact)until Christmas, and naturally enough reading up on a few things American. I was amazed to read (in Bradbury's book of last weeks' post) that Franklin was a book burner. I have to say I felt a pang! In 1790 it was. It was a matter of purging the new nation of all British or British-influenced books, but it was still book burning. I am just a little saddened by this flaw in my hero. This was not the only extreme anti-British action of his...he disowned his son for remaining loyal to Britain. That was not in Bradbury's book; I read that somewhere else. Isn't it strange though to think that I knew that fact about the great man but I never commented on it because somehow I understand that this sort of thing happens in families in times of conflict? But the book burning...that stuck in my mind and I do comment on that. So I accept the fallings out between people but get all upset if books are not considered as being above all such considerations and preserved properly? Are my proprities skewed?


Have been really heartened by the last few weeks' responses to my posts, which I am always glad to receive. The next post will be from good old New York.

I am sure that everybody has read, or is at least familiar with, Ray Bradbury's classic, 'Fahrenheit 451', the title indicative of the best temperature at which to burn books [Bradbury, R. (1953). Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books]. I picked up the 50th anniversary edition from my local library, because it has intersting bits added to the original one(the original came out in 1953, but the publisher of this edition of 50 years later STILL gives the date as 1953), such as a bit of an interview with Bradbury, called a conversation, at the end. In that conversation, Bradbury takes up the comparisons of his book with Orwell's '1984'. Bradbury argues that 'Fahrenheit 451' is more about social atmosphere than Orwell's, which is about political situations. A most interesting part of that conversation, though, is this bit:
'Let's imagine there's and earthquake tomorrow in the average university town. If only two buildings remainedintact at the end of the earthquake, what would they have to be ino order to rebuild everything that had been lost? Number one would be the medical building, because you need that to help pople to survive, to heal injuries and sickness. The other building would be the library. All the other buildingsare contained in that one. People could go into the library and get all the boks they needed in literature or social economics or politics or engineering, and take the books out on the lawn and sit down and read. Reading is at the centre of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization' (p. 184). I thought you'd like this idea. It certainly appeals to me.