“There are some things which have no business being put into books for all the world to read.”
– Mr. Norrell
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury, 2005. pg12
Tag: novels
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“Drawing is about two fundamental things,” I explained, my hand stabilizers compensating for the motion of the horse. “Use of shapes and use of shadows.” I did a quick sketch of her head, using broad, firm pencil strokes for the parts of the face. Some shading, a little more work on the eyes, and it started to pop. I’d always been good at faces; just don’t ask me do do hands.
”I’ve seen art before,” she said, curious. “But how do you make it seem so real?” “one of the tricks is something we call perspective,” I explained. “Some things are farther away, right? And some things closer? That goes for parts of a person too. On a face, some parts are close to you, other parts are farther away. The trick is to make it seem that way in a drawing.
”You can’t draw it like it’s flat. If I use shadows–and put the eyes on a curved line like this–and use just a touch of foreshortening. . .”
There’s a moment in drawing, at least for me, when a face transforms from shapes and lines into a person. The eyes were a big part, and the dots of light reflecting in them, but the lips were important too.
Was not expecting a flurry of drawing craft notes as we drive towards the conclusion of act three, but Brandon Sanderson…
Sanderson, Brandon. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England. United States, Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC. pp284,285
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He had played almost all of his career since his defection to the United States in the National League, first for the Phillies, and then for the Mets. He had played centerfield, and then as his legs gave out and the surgeries mounted he switched to right; but since coming to the American League he had played nothing but designated hitter, never taking the field, spending the whole game on the bench until his turn to bat came around. Sometimes an aging player can flourish as the DH, smacking home runs at a decent clip and stretching his career by a couple of years. But hitting, though he did it magnificently, had always been only one part of Rodrigo Buendía’s game. As a younger player he had been one of the top outfielders in the game, covering vast distances, making legendary catches, throwing out runners at home plate from deep in the outfield grass. He had not been moved to the DH position, so much as reduced to it.
Passages like this is why I’ve kept my ticket aboard the Summerland locomotive. There’s whole pages where I give it a blank stare, hoping it will all make sense at the end. But the baseball bits, here Rodrigo Buendía’s back story, where Ethan, Jennifer T., Thor and co have all “jumped” (a form of sort-of time traveling and teleporting?) to Buendía’s compound in some mini-verse Cuba?
Weird.
Chabon, Michael. Summerland. United States, Thorndike Press, 2003.
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The ferisher baseball lay warm and almost animate, a living thing, in his fingers, he recalled Peavine’s words: “A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.”
Or a November evening.
For the Rangers, World Series Champions.
Chabon, Michael. Summerland: A Novel. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2002. (pp332)
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“Secret Passages,” she whispered.
“Eh?” Taffy said. “What’s that?”
Jennifer T. got up and, carrying the handbook, began searching the walls of the cell for what the book described as Telltale Signs of a Secret Passage. “Look for a section of the wall,” the anonymous author had written, “or, as it may be, of the ceiling, which is of a different shade or hue, however slightly, than the rest.”
and
The next recommended technique was, of course, tapping. Jennifer T. knelt down at the bottom of the wall by the door and began to tap, working her way up and down, using the spine of the handbook itself, listening for that Telltale Hallowness.
It’s wonderful when fictions include facts, real or imagined. See The Fantastic Mr. Fox (film), when Mr. Fox, outlines the master plan to Kylie he tells him “Beagles love Blueberries”.
Or Chuck Dugan is AWOL. A novel stocked full of Naval “facts”. I suspect most are real.
These “facts” make the worlds they inhabit vivid.
Chabon, Michael. Summerland: A Novel. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2002. (pp 294-295)
Floodlights and Goalposts 