"In Our Bedroom After The War"

[greygirlbeast]

I'm having a spectacularly shitty day, during which nothing much work-wise has been accomplished. Maybe I can at least make a LiveJournal entry. Maybe. We'll see.

1. An ARC for Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart has now been added to our current (to pay back Spooky's Mom for the iMac loan) eBay auctions. These reached me day before yesterday.

Comments

[rosefox]

My mother lent me her copy of the robotic edition of Tom Sawyer, which I thought was pretty ridiculous until I started reading it. Now I'm kind of fascinated, not because I think it's especially enlightening about the past but because it makes me think about how people interact with machines and how we might continue doing so as those machines become more human-like and seemingly sentient. I really need to do a proper blog post on it at some point.

[sovay]

but because it makes me think about how people interact with machines and how we might continue doing so as those machines become more human-like and seemingly sentient. I really need to do a proper blog post on it at some point.

Yes.

[oldfossil59]

I'm sorry about your "spectacularly shitty day." But I am glad you've gotten a chance to post a blog entry. (I still check every day)

I agree with you on literature, and art and history. It should all be presented as close to the raw bare bones truth, that so many revisionists would gladly gloss over.

Thanks for the photos. You look great!

Release Party

[crowsink]

I can't get to Providence/Boston for the release party from here just north of Raleigh, but the bookstore was kind enough to accept a phone order for copies of DROWNING GIRL, which I'm hoping will arrive here signed, and perhaps with little drawings of bow ties. If that's a doable option for others in like my boat, wanted to spread the word.

That CONFESSIONS proof is killer.

[from_ashes]

I thought the Mark Twain with robots was sort of a joke. Like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? I'm honestly a little freaked out if they're serious...

[ext_1080035]

I believe such bowdlerization of literature must be realised for the censorship it is. Generally, done by tasteless, wrongheaded morons. It's a manner for them to inflict there sensibilities on others, while not being sullied by the process of actually creating something.
Mithrien is pretty.

Yes! It's terrible. Here are the back cover blurbs for this Robotic filth. Blegh!

[ext_1106199]

"Mark Twain has been criticized for his use of the term "Robot" to describe the mechanically created people who worked as unpaid drudges. Some MechPeople regard the term as offensive. Other MechPeople, like myself, see it as important to understand the world in which our ancestors vied and toiled. And this telling of Huckleberry Finn and of Robot Jim and his quest for Freedom speaks to all of us: human and mechanical." - Neil Gaiman
Author of "American Gods" and noted Mechperson

"How do you challenge a wrong-headed bowdlerization of a great novel? Diani & Devine's response is inspired: suggest an even more preposterous one. In the spirit of some of the over-the-top satire in which Twain himself occasionally indulged, the Robotic Huck Finn is designed to get readers to see why "improving" the words of a writer as careful as Twain is such a terrible idea." - Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Joseph S Atha Professor of Humanities and Professor of English, Stanford University