In Praise of Short

A literary mag dedicates an issue to aphorisms.

On Dreams

Dreams are pure space, the species arrayed in eternity.

From César Aira's Ghosts.


 

Art as Plunder

[T]he ownership of antiquities, the public role of art, how a piece that inspires a world can be held hostage by one nation, and the ethics of private collections have been debated since Cicero, according to Margaret M. Miles' Art as Plunder: The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property. 

From Jessa Crispin's review of Art as Plunder.
She compares the ancient:

If you managed to overrun a people, you got to take their stuff.

With the modern:

In modern warfare, however, plunder is very taboo. 

She ends with a call for

new Ciceros, to remind us of the public function of art, and the value of art for the people.

 

Oracles

The prediction:

The dominance of ebooks is coming. I have no doubt. But I always thought it was the readers who would lead the charge, based on cost and convenience.

Now I'm starting to believe that the ones with the real power are the ones who should have had the power since the beginning of publishing. The ones who create the content in the first place. The authors.

Credit to thriller writer Joe Konrath for doing and not just theorizing. He continues:

The print publishing industry's biggest fear shouldn't be the eventual dominance of ebooks over print.

Their biggest fear should be not having any books to publish in any format, because the authors all wised up .

Still, when talking about technology or entertainment, I can’t shake the words of William Goldman:

Nobody knows anything.

 

Tell Me, Muse... (On Writing)

Gary Corby and commenters (including this blogger) discuss vastly different projects that share a title.

This reminded me of a screenwriter friend who, upon coming up with a title or high concept he liked, would ‘try it out’ in different genres, writing short synopses to see how the different plots might look.

A Sunday exercise for those who want one. Or perhaps a portal to a humorous little daydream.