Northrop Frye, Lit Crit: Wikiquote Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself. Herman Northrop Frye (14 July 1912 – 23 January 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Quotes[edit] Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model. The twentieth century saw an amazing development of scholarship and criticism in the humanities, carried out by people who were more intelligent, better trained, had more languages, had a better sense of proportion, and were infinitely more accurate scholars and competent professional men than I. Fearful Symmetry : A Study of William Blake (1947)[edit] Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957)[edit] A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. Polemical Introduction[edit] Mythical Phase: Symbol as Archetype[edit]
What Is the Metaverse? Philip Rosedale’s Big Dream for Immersive Virtual Worlds What Is the Metaverse? Philip Rosedale’s Big Dream for Immersive Virtual Worlds What is the metaverse? It’s Philip Rosedale’s second crack at playing god—at least in the virtual sense. Rosedale created his first virtual world, Second Life, in 2002. Speaking at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) conference this week, Rosedale said that by harnessing the shared power of home PCs, “We could collectively create a space whose literal scale is comparable to the landmass of the planet Earth.” There's no predicting what new sights will emerge in future user-created virtual worlds. Rosedale and High Fidelity aim to build a scaffold, set the ground rules, and hit play. But first—what about that scaffold and ground rules? High Fidelity’s virtual world, launched in alpha this April (more refinement to come), is cool for a few reasons. While you can access the world on your laptop or desktop PC, you can also visit using a headmounted display, like the Oculus Rift. Image Credit: Shutterstock.com
An Answer to the Novel’s Detractors - The New Yorker Less than a hundred years ago, D.H. Lawrence called the novel “the highest form of human expression so far attained.” Jane Austen said that it had nothing to recommend it but “genius, wit and taste.” Today, even novelists themselves—maybe especially novelists themselves—are unlikely to make such large and unironic claims in favor of their art. It is no coincidence that many of the most exciting novels to have appeared in recent years—Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, Ben Lerner’s “10:04” and Sheila Heti’s “How Should a Person Be?”—have been distinctly un-novelistic, featuring protagonists who share many biographical details (and sometimes names) with the authors, and substituting the messiness of experience for conventional plots. These books made David Shields’s “Reality Hunger” (2010) seem prescient.
Neil Gaiman: Libraries are cultural 'seed corn' A feral child who was raised in libraries Toby Litt: You’ve described yourself as a “feral child who was raised in libraries”. What age were you when you were first drawn into a library, and why do you think they hooked you? Neil: I was probably three or four when I first started going to libraries. We moved up to Sussex when I was five, and I discovered the local library very, very quickly. Toby: Was it, was it a brand-new, 1960s, idealistic, “we’ll educate the masses” library, or was it a slightly down-at-the-heel one? Neil: It was a very large, respectable Victorian house, of the kind that looked like it might have once been an upmarket doctor’s practice. But there was a point, I was probably about eight years old, when I discovered this series of books: the Alfred Hitchcock Presents ... Toby: Approach the nest … Neil: I did. A shelf with unread books Toby: Or library vans, you know, which still go around in Lambeth where I live, or did until a couple of years ago.
Ten rules for writing fiction Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin 1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. 2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. 3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. 5 Keep your exclamation points under control. 6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". 7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. 9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. 10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Diana Athill Margaret Atwood 3 Take something to write on.
Dark Mountain Since we launched in 2009, Dark Mountain has received attention from various parts of the media, printed and online, and has popped up on websites, radio programmes and the like. Below we’ve listed some of the responses to our work that we’ve come across. We’re always interested to hear of any reactions we’ve missed. The Project ‘We were learning how to become grown-ups.’ Aeon Magazine is faintly bemused by Dark Mountain. ‘Dark Mountain … is about facing the reality of the matter.’ ‘Sharing stories is at the heart of the Dark Mountain Project’ – The Irish Times on Dark Mountain. ‘This engagement of narratives in re-imagining and shifting the way we live drew my attention’ – Jeppe Graugaard writes about Dark Mountain and academia. ‘The Dark Mountain project tells us the things we don’t want to hear, and it is a no-nonsense Zen-like response to the ‘age of ecocide’ that our civilisation is causing.’ ‘All we did was give it a name. Dark Mountain publications Dark Mountain events
Eric Edwards Collected Works | Miscellaneous Writings & Articles 45 ways to avoid using the word 'very' Writers Write is your one-stop resource for writers. Use these 45 ways to avoid using the word ‘very’ to improve your writing. Good writers avoid peppering their writing with qualifiers like ‘very’ and ‘really’. They are known as padding or filler words and generally add little to your writing. According to Collins Dictionary: ‘Padding is unnecessary words or information used to make a piece of writing or a speech longer. Synonyms include: waffle, hot air, verbiage, wordiness.’ Adding modifiers, qualifiers, and unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, weakens your writing. This post gives you 45 ways to avoid using the padding word ‘very’. Three Telling Quotes About ‘Very’ “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. If you enjoyed this, you will love: Top Tip: If you want to learn how to write a book, sign up for our online course. by Amanda Patterson © Amanda Patterson