Because the guys who say life isn’t worth living without some principle so important you’re willing to die for it they are all nuts. And the guys who say you’ll see there’ll come a time you can’t escape you’re going to have to fight and die because it’ll mean your very life why they are also nuts. They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren’t alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn’t say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn’t say I will spend all my money in order to save my money. He doesn’t say I will burn my house down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living? There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.
—Dalton Trumbo
—from Johnny Got His Gun
canorous /cə-NOR-us/. adjective. Musical, melodious, richly resonant, tuneful. From canor (melody), from canere (to sing). From PIE root kan- (to sing) from which are derived accent, canto, chant and incentive, among other words. See also: euphonious, harmonious.
“The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine: but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in this unhappy contretems, taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven Sleepers.” (Thomas De Quincey)
“Motions of waking trouble winter air,
I wonder, and his face as it were forms
Solemn, canorous, under the howled alarms,—
The eyes shadowed and shut.”
(John Berryman)“Silence had raised a startled head and poised there, listening. Then, with crack of pick and boom of blast, man had hurled her back. Further and further had he driven her. With his advancing horde, mad in their lust for the loot of the valley, he had banished her.” (Robert W. Service)
“Though canorous spells from the musical bells
Of the city’s fifty towers
Shouted the news of his lunatic cruise
In the early morning hours…”
(J. R. R. Tolkien)
There is something amazing and comforting and classically awe-inspiring about listening to ► the sound of the wind on Mars. || Pairs well with: The Search for Alien Life Begins in Earth’s Oldest Desert.
Announcing the Winner of the 2018 Bad Sex Writing in Fiction award || See also (if you can bear it), the shortlist.
Ironically, significantly less robotic writing can be found in this roundup of the 2018 Interactive Fiction Competition entries. Also known as IFComp, the competition is “an annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators.” || See also: the full list of 2018 entries.
The US Library of Congress’ Crowd initiative invites everyone to help transcribe and tag items from their vast collection. How can you pass up a chance to discover fascinating writing and make a contribution to historical knowledge? Campaigns right now include Civil War Reminiscences and Letters to Lincoln. Thanks, Reader C.
Is speciesism, aka anti-animal language, really a thing? || See also: a new PSA from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Philosophers
What if there was a war on a religious minority with more than one million detainees, constant surveillance and espionage, and a complete abrogation of human rights…and no one seemed to care? → China’s Uighurs told to share beds, meals with party members & Spying On The Uyghurs: A First-Person Account From A Han Chinese Student & China’s brutal crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority, explained & China admits to locking up Uyghurs, but defends Xinjiang crackdown
“In their latest installment of Literature vs Traffic, Spanish design collective luzinterruptus transformed a major street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, into a glowing river of 11,000 books.”
Two fantastic (in very different ways) longform pieces about technology and humanity and connection at its best → The Friendship That Made Google Huge and worst → Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche.
The eyes have it, paper and books edition → Daria Aksenova’s narrative shadowboxes and “illusionary paper” series & Elizabeth Sagan’s book-lov(ing)(er) photos & for the DIY-ers How to make a book page wreath, and more book art ideas.
Today in 1905, screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo is born in Montrose, Colorado, USA. Trumbo’s 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun won one of the first National Book Awards…and so inspired the band Metallica that they not only wrote their well-known song “One” as homage, but bought the rights to the film so they could use segments from it in their iconic ► music video. But it was as a screenwriter that Trumbo would find his greatest fame, success and eventually—as a blacklisted member of the Hollywood Ten—heartache, writing films such as The Brave One (which won an Academy Award he couldn’t claim because he couldn’t be credited), Roman Holiday (same), Spartacus, Exodus, Papillon and the aforementioned Johnny Got His Gun.
“In this stunning 360° video, former U.S. inmate Rickey Jackson, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 40 years (including being on death row and in solitary), ► tells the story of his rebirth.” || See also: After 39 Years of Wrongful Imprisonment, Ricky Jackson Is Finally Free.
It’s a spoken word poem. It’s performance art. It’s why we have the interwebs. It’s the ► Official “Tainted Love” Dance Tutorial.
Reader A.: “Don’t think some of us didn’t notice you’ve started slipping an interrobang into the title of the WHAT section!” – You noticed‽
Reader S.: “I applaud your bravery in linking to a Quillette article. That said, it’s hard for me not to see the magazine’s proponents as the children of CP Snow, doubling down once more against Hume. That’s to reduce all of this far too much, but in the rush to kill off theism’s delusions we seem to be accepting Scientism far too easily. My own life remains a constant struggle to balance my reason and my passion, yet balance we must. ¶ also thanks for the article on ‘reading problematic writers/DFW’ as it led me to Mary Karr’s poem ‘Suicide’s Note: An Annual.’”
Reader B.: “I was sure you were pulling my leg with the pronunciation of contretemps [/KON-trə-ton/]! I guess if I accept that the final ‘n’ is really that gargly, back-of-the-throat, almost-silent, thing the French seem to have a thing for, I can accept how wrong I’ve been pronouncing this word for the last 30 years.”
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