Pinprick Publishing

19/04/2024

BYRONIC BICENTENARY

Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron). The characters in his long poems and his own colourful life have given us the adjective “Byronic”.

Byron is now more read about that read (certainly by me). He wrote in the early 19th century and provided what modern media provides us with—adventure, travel, and tantalisation.

Byron died on 19 April, 1824, at the age of 36 in Missolonghi, Greece, where he had been living and participating in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. His death was attributed to a fever, which may have been caused by complications from an infection. However, his recovery was compromised by the massive blood-letting that his doctors subjected him to (modern doctors suggesting that he was so weakened that he could not recover).

Byronic Bicentenary - Lord Byron died on 19 April 2024 at the age of 36 in Missolonghi, Greece participating in the Greek War of Independence

04/03/2024

Google the word “Byronic” and up, with a toss of the forelock, comes this: “alluringly dark, mysterious, and moody.” The Devil take him!

But Byron was Byronic. One observer, Lady Mildmay, is said to have felt the full force:

Once, when he spoke to her in a doorway, her heart beat so violently that she could hardly answer him. She said it was not only her awe of his great talents, but the peculiarity of a sort of under look he used to give, that produced this effect upon her.

Two centuries after his death, the works of the great Romantic poet reveal a sensibility whose restless meld of humor and melancholy feels thoroughly contemporary.

27/01/2024

Too old to enlist when the First World War broke out, W. Somerset Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers," a group of some 24 well-known writers, including the Americans John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, and Ernest Hemingway. Maugham proofread "Of Human Bo***ge" at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties.

"Of Human Bo***ge" initially was criticized in both England and the United States; the New York World described the romantic obsession of the protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". The influential American novelist and critic Theodore Dreiser rescued the novel, referring to it as a work of genius and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. His review gave the book a lift, and it has never been out of print since.

The novel is considered to have many autobiographical elements. Maugham gave Philip Carey a club foot (rather than the author's stammer); the vicar of Blackstable appears derived from the vicar of Whitstable; and Carey is a medic. Maugham insisted the book was more invention than fact. The close relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark. He wrote in 1938: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."

In 1932, Michael Curtiz showed John Cromwell a print of his recently completed film "The Cabin in the Cotton" because Cromwell was interested in casting its leading man, Richard Barthelmess, in a project he was preparing. Instead of Barthelmess, Cromwell's attention was drawn to Bette Davis, whose portrayal of a femme fatale brought to mind the slatternly waitress Mildred in Maugham's novel. Cromwell knew producer Pandro S. Berman had purchased the rights to Maugham's story for Leslie Howard and when he suggested Davis would be the perfect co-star, Berman agreed. Maugham also supported her being cast in the role.

Davis wanted the role of Mildred Rodgers (below) because she thought it would be her breakout role after years of starring in films that were getting her nowhere. She begged Warner Brothers studio chief Jack L. Warner to let her out of her contract so she could make the film, which was being produced at RKO. He relented because he was sure she would fail; but, when her performance sparked talk of an Oscar, Warner began a spite campaign by encouraging academy members not to vote for her. At the time, the voting campaigns and the tabulation of the results were handled by the heads of the academy (of which Warner had a membership) and it worked in his favor when Davis was left out of the Best Actress competition.

Supporters of Davis, shocked by her omission, petitioned the academy for a write-in vote. She was added to the nominees as a write-in but she lost to Claudette Colbert for her performance in "It Happened One Night" (1934). As a result of this incident, write-in votes were henceforth disallowed. Also, as a result of Warner's coup, the academy decided to change its voting practices and hand over the counting of the results to the independent accounting firm of PriceWaterhouse, who still does the official counting to this day.

Commercial success with high book sales, successful theatre productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could. Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary, and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work. (Wikipedia/IMDb)

Happy Birthday, W. Somerset Maugham!

21/01/2024

OBITUARY—Lev Rubinstein, a Devoted and Defiant Lover of Language

The Russian poet and essayist was a founding member of the Moscow conceptualist movement, an “implausibly social” presence in Moscow, and a firm believer to the end in the possibility of living in Russia with dignity and decency.

The Russian poet and essayist was a founding member of the Moscow conceptualist movement, an “implausibly social” presence in Moscow, and a firm believer to the end in the possibility of living in Russia with dignity and decency.

19/11/2023

I love this comic.

Poetry Comics Month, Day 2: Three-dimensional

25/10/2023

When the results of The Lyric Year’s 1912 poetry competition were announced, readers were indignant, most declaring that the poem that was awarded fourth place was by far the best. The winning poet agreed with that assessment and the second-place poet even sent his prize money back. The poem that was awarded fourth place that year was “Renascence,” by 20-year-old Edna St. Vincent Millay, and its publication marked the beginning of an extraordinary career.

By the 1920’s, Edna was a poetic rock star. Her volumes were best-sellers and she read her poems to packed houses. She achieved a level of fame and success that poets rarely attain.

Raised by a wildly Bohemian mother, Edna was herself a radical libertine, which contributed significantly to the public’s fascination with her. A petite and alluring redhead, Edna unabashedly celebrated female sexuality (at a time when doing so was scandalous) and she had unhidden, often brief, intimate relationships with many men and women.

She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923. Twenty years later she was awarded the Robert Frost medal for lifetime achievement in American poetry, although by then her poems had fallen out of critical favor, though still loved by the public.

Sadly, there was a dark side to Edna’s life. Despite her hefty advances and string of best-sellers, she spent more than she earned. That problem was solved when she married a wealthy man, with whom she had a loving (albeit sexually open) relationship. The more serious problem was one she never conquered: dependency on alcohol and narcotics throughout her adult life. After her husband died in 1949, Edna was hospitalized several times for alcohol- and morphine-related nervous breakdowns. The following year, while suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and while heavily intoxicated, she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.

Edna St. Vincent Millay died at age 58, on October 19, 1950, seventy three years ago today. She had burned her candle at both ends.

The Penitent

I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been!"

Alas for pious planning —
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit!
My Little Sorrow would not weep,
My Little Sin would go to sleep —
To save my soul I could not keep
My graceless mind on it!

So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad.
And, "One thing there's no getting by —
I've been a wicked girl," said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!"

03/09/2023

Ben Law's favourite outdoor spots in Sydney. A few interesting ones its the list.

Favourite secret spot: The Tarpeian Precinct Lawn in the Royal Botanic Gardens, where there's a sculpture called Bara by an Aboriginal artist called Judy Watson. It has a beautiful outlook of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, the sculpture itself is beautiful. It's a great place to lay down, have a picnic, read a book in the sun. The most stunning, uninterrupted, non-touristy view of Circular Quay.

Favourite gallery: White Rabbit Gallery.

Best date spot: Golden Age in Surry Hills downstairs for cocktails, or Hand-Picked Wines in Chippendale, because you can actually hear each other talk.

Your favourite theatre: Belvoir.

The best library: Darling Square Library – not only is it a great library, but it is an architectural marvel, and the only library with a food court downstairs.

The best bookshop: Better Read Than Dead, Newtown.

This city slicker chats about discovering he's outdoorsy – plus shares his fave Sydney spots (indoors and out)

30/08/2023

I love this word, FLOPBUSTER. Does it really need an explanation? It is of course a new word that combines the words “flop” and “blockbuster” (known as a portmanteau word).

The new film, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, had a disappointing start at the box office. Despite earning AUD$190 million (£102 million) globally during its opening weekend, industry experts consider the result underwhelming considering the film’s massive budget of AUD$430 million (excluding marketing costs).

Variety’s Rebecca Rubin described it as “one of the most expensive movies ever”. She expressed doubts about its ability to turn a profit in theatres. Online Hollywood news platform Deadline suggests “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has been destined to live in a Temple of Box Office Doom“.

So what is a flop buster?

What is a tentpole flopbuster? - What is a flopbuster and why are we seeing so many of them? Some reasons are offered by the experts.

30/08/2023

I find great pleasure in seeing how history is embedded in our language with words having travelled with us through many generations. I was thinking particularly about how certain places have become metaphors for the attributes that they are most well known for. Here are some of the most well-known metaphorical places

Crossing The Rubicon

In January of 49 BC Julius Caesar crossed the River Rubicon with his army. By doing so he had declared war on Rome and was therefore guilty of treason. It was a decision that could not be undone or as Caesar said, “the die is cast”. So from then on “crossing the Rubicon” has meant an irreversible decision.
.. and there's more.

Metaphorical places - When Julius Caesar crossed the River Rubicon there was no going back—the die was cast.

14/04/2023

The tradition of wayzgoose is no longer widely observed in the printing and publishing industry (sadly). However, some people still hold wayzgoose celebrations to try to restore this wonderful old printing tradition.

Is it time to celebrate the wayzgoose? - The traditional annual event held by English printers and publishers to mark the end of the summer.

23/02/2023

BOWDLERISATION OF ROALD DAHL

A literary and media furore erupted in the UK earlier in the week when it was discovered that Roald Dahl's children's books had been censored by their publisher, Puffin Books. Dahl's most famous books include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Witches and Matilda.

The latest editions of Dahl's books have had some of the passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race altered. The books were reviewed by the Roald Dahl Story Company, with Puffin and Inclusive Minds, a collective aiming to make children's literature more inclusive and accessible.

The bowdlerisation of Roald Dahl - about the prudish expurgation of works of literature that weaken or damage their value

13/02/2023

Emily Stewart is the author of numerous chapbooks, including Like and The Internet Blue. Her debut poetry collection Knocks (Vagabond Press 2016) won the inaugural Noel Rowe Poetry Award and reflected an assuredly varied approach as it experimented with multiple voices (not just in monologues but polyphonic within poems), erasure as a feminist poetics (with homage-like condensations of Lydia Davis, Helen Garner, Susan Sontag, Clarice Lispector and more), post-digital affect (extracting poetic value from online idioms in particular, though sometimes overwhelming the poetic value), all while interleaving themes of climate change, the cost of living, and more in an exploration of what it means and feels like to live in so-called Australia in the Anthropocene.

Emily Stewart is the author of numerous chapbooks, including Like and The Internet Blue. Her debut poetry collection Knocks (Vagabond Press 2016) won the inaugural Noel Rowe Poetry Award and reflec…

20/12/2022

Mom, mother or maman? How to translate Camus!

For the modern American reader, few lines in French literature are as famous as the opening of Albert Camus’s “L’Étranger”: “Aujourd’hui, …

08/12/2022

This is a great reading list for Christmas. How do you get through this much?

Non-Fiction No Enemies No Friends: Restoring Australia’s Global Relevance by Allan Behm Shortlisted for Australian political book of the year award 2022. The orthodoxy that increased defence spending will deliver increased national security confirms the status quo. But it does not help us to deal ...

10/10/2022

Philip K. Dick, whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the film Blade Runner, did not live to enjoy his Hollywood success. He died on March 2, 1982, three months before the film was released.

In the years since, the novelist once dismissed as a gutter pulp sci-fi weirdo has steadily climbed the ladder of posthumous literary reputation.

Good science fiction — as opposed to fantasy novels set on other planets — is defined by a quasi-philosophical examination of interactions between men and machines and other products of modern science. It is part novel and part thought-experiment, centered on our idea of the human.

Nothing is private and no one is free

06/09/2022

LEXICAL CLONING by KRISTIN ROBERTSON

On his first day, the resident calls
his mother to say he’s a doctor doctor.

She answers, Yes yes! to confirm his doctor
and her yes. She tells him his doctor doctor

is lexical cloning, repeating a word to indicate
the prototypical meaning is intended,

but hers is something else: epizeuxis,
repeating a word for emphasis. Ten hours

later, when he’s offered for dinner the other
half of a granola bar, he says he wants

food food. And even later, almost midnight,
he asks a crying woman to follow him

into the small room, and he says, Did not
survive. And then she asks, Dead dead?

He remembers medical school, his first day,
when he still dreamed about entomology.

So the woman in shock will understand
her husband is gone, he reaches for her hand

and says, Dead dead. Once the word epizeuxis
to him meant only a species of silver moth.

On his first day, the resident calls his mother to say he’s a doctor doctor. She answers, Yes yes! to confirm his doctor and her yes. She tells him his doctor doctor is lexical cloning, repeating a…

24/08/2022

THE LAST UNICORN—Peter S Beagle

Published in 1968, The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle spawned an animated movie 40 years ago and is a cherished novel that appeals to children and adults alike. But it’s not surprising if you haven’t heard of it. It hasn’t been published in the UK for half a century.

This week it is finally being reissued, the latest in a string of classic fantasy novels to find a new audience thanks to the prevalence of the genre on TV and the big screen.

With big-budget TV series about to hit streaming services, publishers hope a string of cult novels will find a new audience

10/08/2022

Many readers buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on the shelf.

Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don't know.

The Japanese call this practice tsundoku, and it may provide lasting benefits.

Thanks Allen Roberts

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love my tsundoku.

09/08/2022

The American modernist poet Hart Crane (1899-1932) demonstrates even in this early poem an inventive approach to traditional symbolism and language. The way the relationship of mirror and mirror-images is expressed in Legend steeps it in immediate mystery.

Written in the 1920s, this is a young man’s daring and defiant assertion of his sexuality

30/04/2022

Important story for many reasons.

Sarah Josepha Hale of Newport, New Hampshire was 34 years old and pregnant with her fifth child when her husband David died suddenly of pneumonia. With five young children to support, after a failed attempt to start a business, Sarah decided to make her living as a poet and novelist. Her 1827 novel Northwood contrasted life in the north and south in the early days of the American republic, promoting New England values and criticizing slavery and its effect on character. The book was well-received and firmly established her as one of the nation’s leading novelists. A poem titled “Mary’s Lamb,” from her second collection of poems, published in 1830, became an instant favorite and one of the world’s most popular children’s poems—known to us today as “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

With her literary success, Sarah was offered the position of editor of a new magazine called “Ladies Magazine” later renamed “American Ladies Magazine.” She would remain a highly esteemed editor (she always preferred the title “editress”) for the rest of her long and influential life.

In 1837 American Ladies Magazine was acquired by the owner of “Godey’s Lady’s Book” and Sarah became the editor. Under Sarah’s leadership, Godey’s was the dominant and most influential women’s publication in America for decades and she became essentially the arbiter of fashion, literature, and culture among American women. She worked to promote women authors (while also promoting and publishing great male authors such as Longfellow, Emerson, and Poe), and was one of the founders of Vassar College. Several issues of Godey’s were devoted entirely to women authors, at a time such a thing would not have been conventional, and in 1854 she edited and published a biographical dictionary of American women writers.

For seventeen years Sarah lobbied relentlessly for the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, and her efforts are credited with eventually persuading Congress and President Lincoln to establish in 1863 “A National Day of Thanksgiving and Praise,”—the holiday that Americans continue to love and celebrate today—and earning her the title “the Mother of Thanksgiving.”

Among Sarah’s many other accomplishments and legacies were her work to fund and create the Bunker Hill monument, and to preserve and protect Mount Vernon.

Because of her conservativism on the issue of women’s suffrage, late in her life Sarah fell out of favor with many women intellectuals and her magazine began to decline. She retired in 1877, just before her 90th birthday, leaving these final words to her readers: “And now, having reached my ninetieth year, I must bid farewell to my countrywomen, with the hope that this work of half a century may be blessed to the furtherance of their happiness and usefulness in their Divinely-appointed sphere. New avenues for higher culture and for good works are opening before them, which fifty years ago were unknown. That they may improve these opportunities, and be faithful to their higher vocation, is my heartfelt prayer.”

Sarah Josepha Buell Hale died at her home in Philadelphia at age 90, on April 30, 1879, one hundred forty-three years ago today.

27/04/2022

I've been meaning to post this one...

26/04/2022

A comic genius was Spike with an eye for the absurd.

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go B**g!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go B**g!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!

15/04/2022

Walt Whitman a great American poet, not taught to us in Australian schools but should have been!

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a play with his wife. The world mourned his death, but perhaps none so strongly as poet Walt Whitman. Whitman had long admired Lincoln and upon hearing of his killing, crafted several poems in his honor. The most famous of which is likely “O’ Captain! My Captain!”. Though somewhat out of Whitman’s typical style, it was immensely popular in its day, and has found its way into the greater American culture. It is now often used to mark the deaths of any notable leader, not just Lincoln.

The full text has been included below, and was signed by Whitman on March 9, 1887:

08/04/2022

It is funny. I do get upset thinking about all those lost books.

07/04/2022

27/03/2022

What more can we say ...

❤️

24/03/2022

The importance of books to us all.

|I Opened a Book|
By Julia Donaldson

22/03/2022

Ha ha ha. Mocking poetry is too easy.

19/03/2022

The journeys that books can take you on.

Love it! ❤️

16/03/2022

Today, 27 major monuments and many minor ones still stand in Ancient Olympia. Among them, the original Olympic Stadium. The temples of Zeus and Hera. The workshop of the renowned sculptor Phidias. These monuments have survived thousands of years of weather, war, earthquakes, and modernisation.

They have been meticulously conserved and restored by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. But they are now being digitally preserved as well, to ensure that all the evidence of the rich history and civil common ground values that the site was built upon is handed over to future generations.

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports is collaborating with Microsoft to create Common Grounds, a digital revival project that aims to preserve and restore valuable pieces of our past and empower global audiences to embrace the idea of finding common ground through our shared history.

This is quite spectacular work for those interested in these important sites from antiquity.

Ancient Olympia: Common Grounds, a collaboration between Microsoft and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, is a groundbreaking project that brings t...