Just a reminder that I’ll be in Boston tomorrow, at the Westin Waterfront, for the Boskone Science Fiction convention. I’ve got a brief reading, and a full-slate of panels, starting at 12:30. My whole schedule is here.
Hope to see you there.
- "Also noted - the last US stop (in Nashua, this Saturday) and some reviews and interviews and photos and stuff: http://t.co/CGnaWkUrvl""A (somewhat dashed off) blog post about the UK tour, which starts in just a few days: http://t.co/CGnaWkUrvl""I should be normal by July.""Big apologies to everyone waiting on an email or a call; I'm just fackin' buried, not keeping up with correspondence & communication.""RT @JeremiahBonjean: NSFROTU spotted on the freeway today. http://t.co/FngkUVqlNi"
Have a good tour Joe, and hope filming of the Locke & Key pilot goes well (You get to meet Miranda-Eowyn-Otto, right …?
)
Also really hope there’s news on a new novel and/or short story collection soon, as I’ll confess this is my main interest in your work as opposed to the comic stuff.
Best,
Damien, England.
Your reading at Boskone was a hoot! I loved the naughty bits early warning system. Very professional. You charmed me into reading Heart Shaped Box. I’m still wicked afraid and will be more so before long.
‘Heart Shaped Box’ awesome read!!! Thanks – loved it!!!
Hi Joe! I would LOVE HORNS! It captivated me from the start, a true page turner. When will you be in California? Let me know so I can clear my schedule. Thanks Joe, looking forward to seeing you!
Joe…Saw where you mentioned “Sunset Limited” on your Twitter. I saw it and it broke my heart. If I know you at all you will feel the same. Hubby fell asleep but I think it’s because he has no internal debate going on about God.
Betsy Boo – you on Twitter yet? Nagnagnagnag…
I’m ascaird Joe. ‘Fraid I don’t have anything interesting to say in 140 characters or less.
Aw c’mon lady. It’ll be fun. You’ll find out about #fridayreads and that’ll be cool. You’ll get talking with other book people and that’ll be cool. Someone once said Facebook is a place that makes you hate all your friends, whereas Twitter is a place that makes you love total strangers; I think that’s roughly about right. Light and effortless. Give it a shot. Nagnagnagnag…
HORNS has renewed my faith in modern literature. Not finished yet, but thanks for the great story! Will you be doing a signing/reading in Philadelphia any time soon?
It’s weird the cultural differences that have sprung up between Facebook and Twitter in the U.K. Having a Facebook page is something most people do across the class spectrum, but which is nontheless still regarded as being a little “Chav” (by-word for common kids who wear baggy trousers, Burberry baseball caps and drink a lot on council estates, staring dead-eyed into their cam-phones whilst largely talking like Ali-G) – Y’know, they’ll dump their ex and spawn three new kids on welfare all through Faebook, innit? Maybe the draw of the two sentence status in txt spk suits their linguistic abilities; who’s to judge them?
Twitter by comparison remains a little more middle-class – also something most of us get brow-beaten with through the media via the celebrity doamain and in the press, i.e: there’s now officially a third news network to join the leviathans of BBC & ITN and that’s the twitter feed of Stephen Fry, who seems to undergo a brand new hissy-fit and quit each time someone has an argument with the poor lad about online etiquette. It all got a little tedious for a while, but I think that’s a little unfair on Twitter when you consider what an invaluable source of information it can be, and which can give ordinary people a genuine insight into the day-to-day perusals of writers and film-makers like no other (i.e: a Facebook celeb-page will usually = thousands of people swarming in with comments like drone bees over honey, with little or no interaction from the source.)
I haven’t read that much of it, but from what I have seen, Joe’s use of Twitter seems a like quite a good example of the latter, i.e: you don’t see some choice soundbite kicking off a furore in the press, primarily used to get attention like a Liz Hurley or Lindsay Lohan. It’s there for friends to share a laugh with and for the people who care about the progression of his work.
By the way, whilst on the subject of social networking, you should all check out a film called “Catfish” if you haven’t already – a far better, more emotional, and dare I say it scarier take on social networking than The Social Network (which, let’s face it, as good as it was, was just Zuckerberg: The Movie.)
Best, Damien.
(*Raises fists, Skeletor-stylee to Castle Greyskull, to curse the fact there is no edit function to correct the typos:
‘doamain’ (dead on arival?)
‘seems a like a good example’ (to whom? Borat?)
and my own personal favourite: ‘Faebook’ – Dunaway’s first foray into cyberspace.
Betsy Boo,
It’s easy. You can do it. Hook up with me once you join dparkernc. By the way, I’ve got an extra copy of The Cape comic – it’s yours if you want it.
Darrell
Um …
Why was my last long post above the typo comment thing completely deleted? No profanity or anything as far as I remember so, er …. beats me. ):
and now it’s back! What the hell?? :-O
Is there an admin messing with my mind here, or what, lol.
Come on Betsy. Come to twitter. Come to the dark side. Unfortunately I missed “Sunset Limited”.
I don’t even know what “Sunset Limited” is.
G – are you on twitter? How are you??
Ya’ll are so sweet! Ok…I’m gonna try!
dparker…I’ve got a copy of “The Cape”, but thanks for the offer.
G…glad to see you back! Missed you! “The Sunset Limited” is a Cormac McCarthy play recently shown on HBO. To say McCarthy has “a way with words” is a huge understatement! Even so, his work tends to make me sad. His emphasis is often on the futility of the human condition, which we are all aware of but at the same time, are in denial about. Sorta like, why bother if we’re all gonna die anyway?
PS…just got notification that I’m gonna get one of those bookplates Joe is giving away when you pre-order HORNS. Yay!
Big Cormac fan, Betsy, so will have to check that out. Know you from the messageboard days (but struggling to make any kind of contribution here in convos now it’s gone – always feel like I’m butting in here or knocking things off topic! Gah!)
What did you think of the recent The Road and No Country- adaptations? Preferred the latter personally, but I’m a Coen Brothers nut so … figures. (: The Road, despite having the talents of both Viggo & Charlize to play with didn’t really move me in the same way as the souce material, and that’s a shame as I loved Hillocaot’s previous flick, The Proposition.
It’s not even that it was a “bad” adaptation per se – very un-Hollywood, & considered. Perhaps it was for no more complex reason than that the prose was so stripped down and elegaic in the novel (gotta love the Cormac zero speech-marks gimmick) there was no way even the most faithful imagery could top it, no matter how many abandoned interstates, gaffer-taped shopping trolleys and twig sandwiches they threw up on that screen.
Not so sure about the futility = why bother point though. Whilst he is undeniably bleak there’s also a powerfully life-affirming message in, say, the boy’s taking up with a new family of sorts when his papa passes on. Compare that to Tommy Lee Jones’ epilogue in No Country where he relates that dream about his father leading him through the valley of the shadow. “And then I woke up.” There is a sense that the world has changed inexorably and there’s no longer any guarantee that anyone can forge a safer path for us, not even those we love. The random, sensless, violence of Anton Chigurh rules the roost.
But in The Road, end times or no end times, I felt that there was hope. In taking the offered help, the boy’s denial of his papa’s death became a kind of acceptance of his own place in the scheme of things, and I personally took that ending as a comment on how fathers leave their sons alone in this world to make their own path, forward. I guess the cast iron certainty of that circularity can be either positive or negative depending on your view. Life can be cruel or can be kind.
Anton, after all, does prefer to toss a coin ….
Hey Melissa. Yes, I’m on Twitter and I’m doing well. Thanks.
Cormac McCarthy is a well respected writer but sometimes I think he is only a writers writer. Not everybody has a command of the English language like writers do, and pushing his prose on the lesser ones such as me; Reminds me of a great guitarist (Steve Vai) once saying that he was going to release a record soon but that he thought it would only be for guitarists. I have not seen or read The Road, but have seen and not read Old Country for old Men. Old Country was awesome but the book made me want to punch him in the face! Sometimes less is more and I’m out.
I’m on Twitter, Betsy Boo.
C’mon Betsy. Everybody is doing it.
Grasking – I don’t think I’m following you yet. @melissa_lucas_ Find me
@dparkernc
Hi guys…I’m there. I haven’t found you Grasking. You use the same name? Gonna look for you dparkernc.
Damien…I like your take on McCarthy and like you I didn’t like the movie adaptation of THE ROAD as much as I liked the book. And I agree that as bleak as THE ROAD was, it was more hopeful than most of his stories.
Thanks for bringing up the coin toss in NO COUNTRY…I didn’t really look beyond the surface on that but it really makes me think. You’re very perceptive!
Yeah Betsy, it’s grasking.
Gotcha!
Any news on the next issue of L&K?
Woah WTH? Everyones giving out their twitters and I missed it? going to find you all