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Bah. And bah again.

Are books dead? No, they are not. But we continue to see a brain-dead segment of society which refuses to recognise their existence.

"What's the name of Frodo's uncle in The Lord of the Rings?" someone asks. "I wouldn't know," comes the reply, "I haven't seen the films.”

Films? Where did the books go? Where did awareness of books go? Before Peter Jackson there was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He wrote books.

It happened again today, in a news report about efforts to teach computers to feel "regret". The report stated that boffins at Tel Aviv University were instructing computers to do something and then thwarting the process. The point, apparently, is to teach the machine the difference between a desired outcome and reality, this then making the computer less likely to repeat mistakes.

The public relations people who disseminated the story rather predictably got creative and likened the process to teaching computers to feel regret. Emotional machines!

The Tel Aviv engineers, perhaps embarrassed at the literary licence, were quoted as saying that these emotions, naturally, were not quite like those regularly ascribed to computers in science fiction films.

Films? Bah. And bah again. Science fiction writers had invented thinking, feeling machines well before anyone invented the motion picture.

Great ideas, boys and girls, make their way into screenplays through something called books.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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Make it sing 5: Carl Hiaasen creates a character

March 24th 2011 05:44

There are two ways for a novelist to put flesh and substance on a character: the dull way or the creative way.

Let’s take, for example, a character who has entered her advanced years with a rancorously judgmental attitude to life.

She’s bitter and twisted, and the novelist could describe her in those words. That, however, would be a cliché, and attractive to only the most undemanding of readers.

Or the writer could try letting the reader work it out on their own through the story. Some writers will introduce the evidence slowly. Some, like the masterful Carl Hiaasen in his new novel, Nature Girl, will give it to you in a rush of creative brilliance.

Hiaasen introduces a new character at the start of Chapter 7 with the following description: “Disappointment was the fuel that cranked the aging pistons of Della Shreave Renfroe Landry – disappointment in the father who’d cashed out his Shell Oil pension early and invested every dollar in the DeLorean Motor Company; disappointment in the mother who’d refused to hock her heirloom earrings and send Della to a prep school favored by the tall rangy sons of petroleum tycoons; disappointment in the three successive husbands who’d died without leaving Della wealthy and carefree; disappointment in the one daughter who’d run off to follow a rock band called Phish, then married a public defender who was a known Democrat and quite possibly a Jew; disappointment in the other daughter, who’d taken a nursing degree and, instead of bagging the first available neurosurgeon, hook ed up with the World Health Organisation amd moved to Calcutta.”

It’s a joyous romp of a sentence. It’s Carl Hiaasen doing what he does best, satirising America’s social, political and criminal misfits

And showing us what makes good writing.

Remember the words of our two great guides, Mark Twain, who said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug," and The Round Mound of Sound, who said, "Make it sing."

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Clichés, Make it sing, Writing

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And the news about Millennium 4 is ...

January 20th 2011 02:48

Eva Gabrielsson and Stieg Larsson

The world has been holding its breath forever, it seems, waiting to find out if there will a fourth book in the Millennium series.

The series – Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc – can count me amongst its collectively breath-holding fans, and so it was with delight I saw a news report today offering an update on the situation.

To summarise, we may indeed get a fourth instalment. Or we may not. Having read the whole news item, I can report that nothing has changed.

For those who have been hiding in the land of non-fiction for the past few years, Stieg Larsson joined Abba on the top shelf of Swedish artistic output with a trilogy of crime-thrillers which featured tortuous plot twists, tortured heroes and torture.

The fact that Millennium represents the biggest publishing success story since Harry Potter was made enormously poignant by the death of the author in 2004. He died of a heart attack, aged 50 and before the first book was published.

That means that the gazillions of kronor generated by the books has gone to an estate, and two parties are laying claim to it.

Larsson it turns out, was better at writing books than at writing a will. He died intestate. Neither did he have any children.

All that means his money should go to his family, says his family.

All that means his money should go to Eva Gabrielsson, says Eva Gabrielsson. She has a claim not without foundation: she was Larsson’s partner for 32 years.

Gabrielsson, who is an architect, also says she worked on the earlier novels with Larsson, and is capable of finishing the fourth, of which Stieg had completed just over 200 pages before he died.

She will not finish it, however, unless the question of inheritance is sorted out.

According to a statement by Larsson’s publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, “Only the estate, controlled by his family, can authorise publication of a fourth book, and they have no intention of doing so at the moment."

According to Eva Gabrielsson, only she can write the fourth book, and she has no intention of doing so in the current circumstances.

Time to stop holding my breath.
www.wordandfilm.com

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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The big mouth and small mind of Joe Hildebrand

October 22nd 2010 07:20

Elizabeth Gilbert

Another uninformed, wannabe-clever smartarse has jumped on the Eat Pray Love spleen train, publishing a column at thepunch.com.au last week making the whole Elizabeth Gilbert publishing phenomenon sound like a universal catastrophe.

It's easy for the moderately talented and poorly informed to fall into the tall-poppy syndrome trap. Take any successful writer - one who touches sufficient hearts, minds and imaginations to soar up the book popularity lists - and watch the knives come out

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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Eat Pray Love: Caroline Overington, you went too far

April 23rd 2010 07:22

Caroline Overington is one of the brighter lights of Australian newspaper journalism. She contributes to radio and television, writes a blog and has published three books, including a novel.

In her column yesterday in The Australian, Overington was witty and compelling with a satirical look at the publishing phenomenon Eat Pray Love, and the book's author, Elizabeth Gilbert

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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