Ambrose & Elsewhere

A happy Independence Day to my compatriots; a happy July 4th to all.

Now the forces of entropy have attacked my bicycle: one of the brake cables snapped as I was cycling around town this morning. This has never happened to me before, but then I can’t remember the last time I had a bike that actually lasted two years, as my current one has. (Here’s a fair sample of my bike-luck in academic year 2007-2008, a.k.a. “The Year of Four Bikes” or “That Long but Single Year”.)

Still there were things keeping me in a good mood all day. Copyedits for The Wolf Age went in, practically nearly almost on time almost. Swords & Dark Magic seems to be piquing some people‘s interest in reading Morlock novels, anyway, which is encouraging. I’m working my way through the anthology myself, and every time I pick it up I’m a little freaked out that I have a story in it.

My copies of Le Sang des Ambrose arrived last month, and only today did I realize that this means my ego-googling can now ascend to a new linguistic dimension: JE googlant. (There are some very civil reviews of the book here and here.)

The best things about the day, though, had nothing to do with me, except that I was lucky enough to be there: reading Livy with an old student; running around in the most beautiful July day in the history of the Great Black Swamp; listening to an oboist talk about music, etc.

Not much strictly classical content at “HEY, OSCAR WILDE! IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME”, a site where artists render their favorite writers and/or literary characters.

But here’s a nice sort of “Classic Comics” take on Homer and his two big books, by Eric Shanower (of “Age of Bronze” fame”)

And an unhappy Odysseus on Calypso’s isle by Yannick Paquette

If Achilles is not killing Hector in this stark rendering by Gabriele Pennacchioli, I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe his DVR failed to record Glee or something.

Only one Muse is depicted in this now-sizeable catalogue, and she’s rendered twice: Thalia. Maybe there are a lot of Ovid (or Martial) fans out there?

If you like any of these, you’ll want to browse through the whole site. There are some great depictions of Dorothy Parker, for instance, and C.S. Lewis, cartoony but somehow haunting. Lots of great takes on Mark Twain (a visual subject that’s almost too easy) and Hunter S. Thompson (who elicits a greater variety of images). And buckets of Harry-Potter-related pictures (not all equally interesting, although I liked this one by Humberto Ramos).

A thousand thanks to jreynolds for the link.

1. My daughter graduated from high school on Friday and immediately robbed her first bank, so I figure my work there is done. Later we took her out for a celebratory supper at perhaps the best teppanyaki place in or around the Great Black Swamp. (In my ignorance I would have called it a hibachi grill, but apparently that’s not what those-who-know call it.)

2. I watched Divorzio all’ Italiana last night, for maybe the third or fourth time. Some great moments in there, though as comedies go it’s pretty dark. One thing that struck me this time was a book the wife in the story, Rosalie, was reading (or pretending to read) as her oily, treacherous husband slipped back into bed with her. It was an issue of Urania, the venerable Italian magazine of fantascienza. The lead story on the cover was Il Vagabondo dello Spazio. It looks like this was Urania 170; the cover story was a translation of Fredric Brown’s Rogue in Space; the second story was “Le acque di Saturno” by Asimov–no doubt a translation of “The Martian Way.”

I don’t know why I think it’s hilarious that 1960-vintage Sicilian aristocrats living in 17th century mansions should be reading science fiction novels in bed, as recreation from their long days and nights of sneaking around on each other. I’m sure Brown and Asimov approved, if they knew: they both liked crime stories (which this is). But I think the director meant it to be incongruous, a clashing of worlds. The hero/villain worms his way toward the happy ending of his choice, using all the traditional rules he knows. But his happiness is doomed because he’s already living in the future; he just doesn’t know it yet.

Because Everything is Better with Latin™ I feel compelled to mention that the name of this screwed-up family is Cefalu, a pretty clear reference to the equally screwed-up marriage of Cephalus and Procris. And their story forms a subplot of Cavalli’s opera Gli Amori d’Apollo e di Dafne. And I find that Divorzio all’ Italiana has since been made into an opera itself. So there you go. Everything is connected, except my train of thought.

…Our minds are one… I feel what you feel… I… OUCH! STOP THAT!

No, what I really mean to say is that John De Nardo invited me to cast my 2 cents into this week’s Mind Meld feature, on underrated fantasy series. So. Um. I did. (Note the finely honed skills of a professional writer!)