I recently realized that many of my favorite reads are “road” books. My love for road books probably stems from my love for travel. I enjoy motion.
Some of my favorites:
Travels with Charlie—John Steinbeck
On the Road—Jack Kerouac
The Hobbit—J. R. R. Tolkien
Lonesome Dove—Larry McMurtry
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—Robert Pirsig (I can’t tell you how many years it has been since I read this book and yet I still debate with Phaedrus on road trips).
Books for experiential enhancement:
I often choose books to read on vacation based on where I am travelling. For example while trekking in Nepal I read Annapurna by Maurice Herzog… in a word: harrowing. While in the Cook Islands I read the Nordhoff and Hall trilogy: Mutiny on the Bounty, Men at Sea, and Pitcairn’s Island… in three words, egomania, ick, and megalomania. After being shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the arteries of a really important smart guy and submarining toward a deadly blood clot in his carotid artery, I read Fantastic Voyage… Okay, you caught me, I never read Fantastic Voyage. I would have, had I not been so busy fighting off white blood cells and helping Raquel Welch apply her mascara.
What are your favorite road books?
Munk's opening line (the kids helped me write this one)...
Technology stole my grandmother’s underpants.
Munk's "Opening Line" is yours to keep, use it. Munk
This week’s music:
Jonathon Richman and The Modern Lovers: Roadrunner
Was sent an e-mail this week by a friend with whom I share the love of creation. She is also one of my few blogging friends that I actually know exists. I can testify that she has an analog version of herself to compliment her digital form. That is to say, we’ve met. We work together. Kat, the photographer (her digital self), can be found here: www.kateyeview.com. The analog version of Kat resides, for the moment, in Italy… gridare evviva! She’s finishing a two-year TDY with her family in Milan and finds time to share her passion for photography on the web. Love that.
In addition to being an inspired photo jockey, and cracker-jack engineer, Kat is a voracious reader (I was thrilled that she enjoyed an early version of Syntropy). As it happens, her current read is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Circle of Quiet.
Kat graciously sent me an e-mail as a follow up to my blog post of last week and I was floored, purely and magnificently—floored. Have you ever read something that so clearly speaks to your opinion it’s as if someone has climbed inside your head, extracted the appropriate bits, and arranged them better than you could ever hope to? Jon Krakauer and John Irving have connected the dots in my mind on occasion… and Vonnegut has as well (which, to be honest, scares me a little).
In regards to choosing the right word, the dear departed Ms. L’Engle says thus…
p.148:
“I have a profound conviction that it is most dangerous to tamper with the word. I've been asked why it's wrong to provide the author of a pleasure book, a non-textbook, with a controlled-vocabulary list. First of all, to give an author a list of words and tell him to write a book for children using no word that is not on the list strikes me as blasphemy. What would have happened to Beatrix Potter if she had written in the time of controlled vocabulary? Lettuce has asoporific effect on Peter Rabbit. "Come come, Beatrix, that word is beyond a child's vocabulary." "But it's the right word, it's the only possible word." "Nonsense. You can't use soporific because it's outside the child's reading capacity. You can say that lettuce made Peter feel sleepy."
I shudder.
To give a writer a controlled-vocabulary list is manipulating both writer and reader. It keeps the child within his present capacity, on the bland assumption that growth is even and orderly and rational, instead of something that happens in great unexpected leaps and bounds. It ties the author down and takes away his creative freedom, and completely ignores the fact that the good writer will always limit himself. The simplest word is almost always the right word. I am convinced that Beatrix Potter used "soporific" because it was, it really and truly was, the only right word for lettuce at that moment.”
I swooned as she shredded the notion of “even and orderly” growth. I now have the book at my bedside. Ms. L’Engle surrounds the passage with further eloquence, but I believe the words above, the words Kat chose to share with me, provide a good summary.
Two questions:
1) Do you have writers that connect dots in your head?
2) Any comments regarding Ms. L’Engle’s philosophy on word choice?
Munk’s Opening line…
Never underestimate the reasoning ability of a three-year-old human.
Munk's "Opening Line" is yours to keep, use it. Munk
Music this week... probably not for everyone... but definitely for me. The Pixies, Subbacultcha (you know, when you grope for Luna)
Imagine you have just finished a comedy set at the Stork Club in 1946 and Sherman Billingsley greets you as you leave the stage. He’s really excited. He loved your set, and he says one of the following…
1) “You look smashing and your gags are to die for.”
2) “You killed out there tonight, you really slayed me.”
3) “You are so bad… you are the bomb.”
4) “You are so phat and dope and sick, you make me sick.”
In which scenarios do you smile and shake his hand?
In which scenarios do you slap him?
In which scenarios do you give him a great big wet kiss and yell, “Thanks dawg! Your club is the shit. I mean this joint is so totally ass, I want to burn it down!"?
This week's opening line... I'm thinking of it as a middle-grade novel, first-person narration...
Being invisible would be great, imagine all of the trouble you could stay out of.
Munk's "Opening Line" is yours to keep, use it. Munk
And now to music... from the movie "The Stork Club", I bring you, Betty Hutton, (I have to admit, I find this hilarious).
I led readers astray last week with drifty descriptors. I am sorry.
It is with mild humility and great excitement that I announce I have joined Analogists Anonymous. No more sloppy, far reaching, unclear analogies for me. I'm gonna be like, like a really clear speaking person. Yeah, that’s it, like a person who speaks his thoughts straight and really clear. This is gonna be a piece of pie.
To sum: though I have a book trailer (again, a massive thanks to Jodi and Lisa at www.surreels.com for choosing Syntropy as their first portfolio piece, see right-->), I do not have a book deal, nor even an agent. I am my own editor. I do have a goal of enlisting the help of a professional, and I am currently in the process of beating some freelance editor’s bushes (wait, that metaphor just went terribly wrong and began acting like a dirty little analogy). Which reminds me, I channeled George Carlin last week while trying to explain to my ten-year old how it is okay to use the word “prick” when describing the stab of a needle, but that... we humans bastardize word usage at an alarming rate, to the degree that we may soon run out of "safe" words, queer isn’t it?
And now for something completely different: It has been said, by those who know me well, that watching “Rango” the chameleon, is not unlike watching yours truly in a bad action flick. “No, Munk, really… it’s uncanny…”
I couldn’t be more proud.
Munk's opening line,
As I came spinning from the gun barrel, I knew the world would be forever changed.
Munk's "Opening Line" is yours to keep, use it. Munk
This week’s music
Ferlin Husky—I’ll Be Here For A Lifetime. Best known for “Gone” and “Wings of a Dove”, Ferlin Husky was tremendously influential in the 1950’s Nashville sound. Ferlin died this week at 85.
Welcome again to the high maintenance Munk Davis blog. I'm a bit early on the draw this week, but for good reason. The Talented needs our votes.
I can feel your pain... "Munk! Again with the links? I've got a life, I don't have time to be chasing you around the blogiosociosphere clicking your damn links all day, all day, all day."
Buck up Buckbeak, this link holds all the moxie of the last and is a video to boot, one I reckon you've never seen. Too bad for you if you miss out.
Jodi Chamberlain, from here forward to be referred to as the "The Talented", can use our help. She, The Talented, submitted a bright and shiny movie trailer to a dark and scary movie production company and now you can help her get noticed. Cut to the quick: A film titled Animal Charm ran a "give-us-your-best-video-on-which-to-roll-our-credits" contest and The Talented entered. The link to her entry is below, rather than forward you to the You Tube link, please follow the link and vote (if you like). It appears to me that numerous of her competitors have submitted material not related to the movie, but have a lot of "digital" backing. Take a moment, you won't regret it. By the way, for you writers out there... did I mention that Jodi may begin making book trailers?
Do you ever feel as if technology is just a little too difficult? Is the ease of plug and play, just not really that easy at all?
Take heart, you’re not the only one. This week NASA reported that their two-hundred million dollar "Stardust" probe inexplicably forwarded images of the Tempel 1 comet back to earth--get this--out of order from the order in which they were taken. Did some of the files take a longer route on their way back? Maybe one had to stop at a Martian diner for a cup of Joe.
Now, before you alien conspiracy folks get your black t-shirts in a knot, ask yourself when the last time your software decided to chart its own course.
It’s not the aliens… it’s obviously the ghosts in the machine.
Munk's opening line: Sure, stardust sounds enchanting, but get some in your eye and it burns like a bitch.
Munk's "opening line" is yours to keep, use it. Munk
Today's music? You guessed it... Stardust by Hoagy, sung by Willie.
