Reasonable Tidbits

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend" - Robertson Davies

And since I've always been a fan of chiasmus, "...act like a man of thought and think like a man of action" - Henri Bergson

Paulo Coelho: Follow a Wise Rabbit Down the Hole

Remarkably, the renowned Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho is a vocal proponent of the piracy of his own works.  Piracy has such a powerful connotation that "sharing" may be a more apt description.  Coelho's books have been translated by other writers and fans into myriad languages, and now they bounce around in digital form for anyone to enjoy.  Like most creators who share their work in this way, Coelho depends upon the premise that those who take pleasure in his writing will eventually buy hard copies.  And when this model of dissemination works, it really works.

Read on about the author's views on piracy and much more at paulocoelhoblog.com

Of course, I've read The Alchemist with its intoxicating, timeless narrative.  Like any great work, its simplicity and exoticism make it a classic fable.  For me, next on deck from Coelho must be The Pilgrimage, which follows his autobiographical journey on the famed Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

This one, O Livro dos Manuais, is a "practical guide for your life" according to the jacket, and I perused the work in it's entirety online, for free.  Although you should check it out in .pdf form, it'd be worth buying for the vibrant illustrations alone!  Que linda obra de verdade!

Kerouac to Brando: "...put up your dukes and write!"

The following letter was a plea from a counter-culture idol to a budding star of the gritty, NYC film culture to get something done, to get (more) famous, to get rich. Kerouac uses words like "wanta" and calls the American movie industry an "outmoded dinosaur" as he goads Marlon Brando into turning On The Road into a feature.

letter hosted on boingboing.net

Thanks to legend-in-the-making, singer/songwriter/producer/bizarro West Coaster Chuck Prophet for posting this via Twitter or Facebook or some such socio-digital vehicle. Cheers, Chuck!

Chiasmus for the Rest of Us

As a Libra, and in keeping with the current blog title about introspection and self-knowledge, it's time to delve into a little literary device called chiasmus. Why? Just for fun...and because it's a rhetorical technique that is still used often even though it's ancient in origin. Even connections to Christ on the cross have been made to the format of chiasmus, so it carries its weight.

Any dictionary will tell you that chiasmus comes from the Greek "χιάζω or chiázō" which means "in the shape of the letter X". According to Wikipedia.org the device is used in speech and in prose to achieve a kind of parallelism of thoughts and to establish a sense of balance (hence my zodiacal connection).

My own introduction to chiasmus came from its more recent, but still historical usage, in African American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I've never quite been able to devise any decent 'chiasmi' of my own, so I'll borrow from the masters to illustrate its power and eloquence when employed correctly and efficiently.

Here we go with a some examples I enjoyed from the wikipost:

"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." John F. Kennedy

"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." Frederick Douglass

"I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." Tom Waits

"Well, it's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men." Mae West

"In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons." Croesus

This last is partuicularly appropriate for our times. Chiasmus can be succinct or befuddling. Sometimes the phrase's meaning jumps off the page and other times it requires some turning over in the mind. In more contemporary uses, like the Tom Waits quote, quirkiness and humor are what make the chiasmus form ring so truthfully.

Our President is a fan -- I've heard him use chiasmus more than once in speeches on the campaign trail -- but then again so are folks like Regis Philbin and your next door neighbor, probably when he's trying to sound wise from over the fence.

So, I declare, chiasmus for them and chiasmus for the rest of us!

Haruki Murakami...

Thanks in full again to DKT for yet another flawless suggestion. Haruki Murakami, heralded Japanese novelist, seems to hold a position of profound respect in the world of contemporary literature. Although I've yet to get into any of his many novels, I've made an effort to read up on his work, which has served only to oxygenate the flame of my interest. His short stories, as far as I've explored, seem to be tiny masterpieces of subtle character interaction set in evocative, sometimes very natural, environs. Take me there, please...

A fairly slick little site about Murakami even with some pages still under construction ~

http://www.murakami.ch/main_7.html

A lovely Murakami short story from an Emerson College source ~

http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmarticleID=7520

Short stories...

Thanks to Dennis, a.k.a. DKT , for his excellent recommendation, and subsequent lending of this phenomenally strange and entertaining compilation of short stories by T. Coraghessan Boyle. His most well-known mainstream work is The Road to Wellville, made popular by its film adaptation starring a youthful Matthew Broderick, Sir Anthony Hopkins, among other famous persons. The writing is a far better abdominal workout than any film could hope to be, although several of his other works currently being adapted for the screen. It took me a decent number of lunch hours to get through this volume, but that was mostly due to all the crumb brushing and re-reading of great turns-of-phrase in which I was engaged. Give it a try sometime if you're into the surreal, the demented, or simply in search of a more sublime trip than most of our work-a-day lives seem to afford.

Find out more at the author's site ~ http://www.tcboyle.com/index.html