clippings

[ellenkushner]

Gay couples trying to marry in China, while dad goes PFLAG.

A guy is writing & posting a song for every chapter in Moby Dick.

Possible new portrait of Shakespeare identified!!!!! (thanks, krismcd59!)

Aging Lesbian Separatists seek younger members for "womyn only" community: "the younger generation has not had to go through what we went through . . . In 20 to 25 years, we could be extinct."

BEST FOR LAST:
Writers' rooms. (I always knew I loved Jane Gardam.)

Comments

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

Separatist movements of all flavors always make me a little to a lot sad.

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

That lovely writing hut at the end of the garden reminds me of the House o' Quail.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Are they not to drool?

So glad you have Ellen's House o'Quail! Hope the words are flourishign there.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

I surveyed a couple dozen news articles about the newly rediscovered Shakespeare portrait, looking for the best-quality copyable digital photograph of the painting, and found it here:

http://tinyurl.com/dlea7h

A great portrait! But what precisely, pray tell, does "Principum amicitias" mean?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Better ask Kris - she's the Renaissance Drama scholar!

[peregrinejohn.livejournal.com]

"The friendship of princes."

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Bless you!

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, the writers' rooms link is wonderful! And since it leads to the Guardian, how can I resist posting a clipping of my own, from last week's Guardian, which quotes me!

http://tinyurl.com/c2zuoc

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Too too utterly cool!

Not only are they quoting you, they are promoting your Dream Project!

So glad to hear the book will be out soon. Warmest congrats.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Bless you!

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

That Chinese news story is lovely.

Do you know, I've seen people insist that the lesbian separatists of the seventies were more of a myth than reality?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Really? Ha. There was a big piece in the New Yorker, too, a couple weeks ago, about the last of the Van Dykes.

[elswhere1.livejournal.com]

I was just going to ask if you'd seen that article! It kind of cracked me up.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

That Chinese news story is lovely.

I got it from Will Shetterly's blog, actually.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, I thought I loved Jane Gardam when I first read BILGEWATER, many years ago. Then I re-read it as an adult, and was more than a little horrified at its vicious reflexive classism. (The handsome young man who our heroine idolizes as a young thing turns out to be the child of two *dentists* -- oh, what a lucky escape she had! Seriously, this is what the book is about.)

Which doesn't mean she can't have a great writing room.

Nancy Werlin

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I loved BILGEWATER, too! I'll have to reread and see, now. But knowing Gardam's work, I suspect she knew just what she was doing. Her narrators are generally "unreliable," i.e. she's looking at us over their heads to make some sort of point.

The writing room I most identified with was actually Marina Warner's: a storm of books and papers, with some objects of personal significance....

[elswhere1.livejournal.com]

Haven't read Bilgewater--The only Jane Gardam book I've read all the way through is A Long Way from Verona, which I love beyond all reason. Based on that, I'd say she has a keen and very British awareness of, but not fondness for, that country's class system.