atlas(t)

after sesshu foster

sad America, who will hold your Entropy Hand?

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Old World Simulacrum nestling your Adolescent Limbs.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Airport Plaque sacred on your Haunted Asphalt.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Jeepney Triumph remaking your Guilty Garbage.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Crisp Canal Map logging your Lovely Bleeds.

 

I will hold your Entropy Hand with New World Simulacrum, spice for your Sand Foundation.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Dried Tears Windshield for your Mourning Horizons.

your entropy hand

i think I've found my new favorite blog (sorry Pruned!):

I've been working with Kaya Press (I'm doing publicity for them, freelance) an awesome, high-quality indie book press for Asian/Pacific Islander/API diaspora books. They published poet/novelist Sesshu Foster's first collection of poems, City Terrace Field Manual, an amazing work of landscape writing about the people and stories that inhabit a particular piece of L.A.

Sesshu's also been on my hit list for a long time because his second book was the novel Atomik Aztex, an alternate history which switched a Latino L.A. meatpacker back and forth between two parallel universes: this one, and one in which he was an Aztec prince in a world in which the Aztecs had beaten the conquistadores and ended up an atomic power. So up my alley.

Anyway, I didn't know Sesshu had a blog, but someone pointed it out to me recently. There I found this wonderful photo-poem of infrastructure entropy and imagination, titled "Sad America, who will hold your Entropy Hand?" Lovely.

I supposed someone could make a book or zine out of this, but then you'd have to fuss with permissions, and expenses, and stuff. I think this is exactly the sort of art/writing that blogs enable, and I want to see more more more! I kiss it!

Enjoy.

History of the Ordnance Survey

i'm genuinely uncertain of the purpose of the article, but the BBC News reported recently on a nonfiction prize given to a Brit research fellow for a book she's writing on the history of the UK's Ordnance Survey, the body that mapped the Isles. The article is actually the fellow's (Rachel Hewitt's) thoughts on the book and why she wrote it.

Founded in 1791, it was the product of a very different type of revolution: the French Revolution and its threat to English's south coast.

A military survey became essential, and the Ordnance Survey was born.

It was also a revolution in itself. The OS was the very first complete, accurate map of the British Isles conducted on a uniform scale. The story of its birth and progress is therefore a story of the history and identity of the United Kingdom and its landscape.

... British writers found themselves enamoured with Ordnance Survey maps from the start. William Wordsworth befriended the early surveyors; Jane Austen adored the sense of order that the maps gave to the nation in an otherwise disorderly, revolutionary period; and, more recently, Brian Friel has considered the OS's Irish map to encapsulate the brutal, imperial nature of England's rule.

I am writing a 'biography' of this iconic national institution.

Her whole article is weirdly fragmented and nonlinear, and it's hard to figure out why they asked her to publish the piece, rather than just interviewing her and writing a more coherent -- and cohesive -- article.

But I'm still interested in the book, and may request a review copy when it comes out next year.

Speaking of reviews, up next is a review of Experimental Geography as soon as I get some room in my schedule to breathe.

today's diagrams

a flow chart guide to understanding flow charts. Via.

Writer Diana Peterfreund's plotboard for her latest novel. Via

austin kleon's maps of fictional worlds

austin Kleon has a nifty post about maps of fictional worlds ... primarily made by the authors themselves.

My undergrad thesis argued that world-building wasn’t just for fantasy and sci-fi writers—every tale has a setting, every tale creates a world in the reader’s mind—and it explored ways that drawing that world (visual thinking!) can lead to better fiction.

Some of my favorite “lit’ry” books are accompanied by maps.

I've talked before on this subject and have nothing new to say at this time, but check out the post for images and links to other maps, especially in Kleon's previous posts, and in the comments section.

Via Gwenda.

promises, promises

i'm back, but I'm bad. Tired, fighting off a bug, catching up on work, etc.

What's coming up: I've finished (finally) The Death and Life of Great American Cities and plan on putting a cap on that, blogging-wise.

Also, the Princeton Architectural Press was silly enough to send me some free books (dere beeyootiful!) and I need to do right by them. (I started getting sent a few books over a year ago by folks and never got around to posting about those and I feel extra guilty, so I'm correcting the error. I think ...) They asked me if I wanted the two below and I said yes, and they threw in another one gratuitously, which I reviewed here. (Bet they're regretting that now, huh?)

Right now I'm in the middle of Hyper-Border: The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and its Future by Fernando Romero/LAR. "LAR" is not a verbal ejaculation, much as I would like to do that to my name ("Claire Light/Arrrhhh!"), but rather the architectural firm he founded. And yes, the book required a design firm as co-author; if they offer you a review copy, say yes, is all I'm sayin'.

This book review will be followed by a couple of posts on the theme of the Mexico/US border and art, which have been waiting for me to get my azz in gear.

Next up will be The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World by Thomas J. Campanella. Very exciting. I haven't been to China since 1993 so I've missed pretty much the whole thing. I'm about due for a visit, and reading this book will be the first step.

After that, dunno. I have some aging ideas about transportation I finally want to get to, but I might get distracted by shiny baubles. Plus, I never keep my blogging promises.

steven johnson on the ghost map

a book I really need to read:

"... and he evenutally created this map, which is where the title of the book comes from, that showed, in a sense, all the deaths in this neighborhood radiating out from this single point on the map ... and so at this moment of great terror and death and destruction, a new clarity emerges ..."

Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser

I know this isn't mappy, but this is one of the reasons I've been a little too preoccupied to post lately.

Come shake off the winter blues and get inspired this Sunday with a terrific reading event supporting a great cause! I'm co-organizing this with Charlie Anders and it's gonna be a great time. Check it out.

The Carl Brandon Society presents an

Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser

with readings by

Nalo Hopkinson
Jewelle Gomez
Susie Bright
Marta Acosta
Jennifer de Guzman
and
Guillermo Gomez-Peña

A fundraiser reading to benefit the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship.
Fabulous fabulists honor one of our great writers and raise funds for the next generation.

Sunday, March 4, 5 - 7 pm

The Starry Plough
3101 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA.
510-841-2082
http://www.starryploughpub.com/

$5-20 sliding scale.

The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship will enable writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops, where Octavia got her start. It is meant to cement Octavia's legacy by providing the same experience/opportunity that Octavia had to future generations of new writers of color. In addition to her stint as a student at the original Clarion Writers Workshop in Pennsylvania in 1970, Octavia taught several times for Clarion West in Seattle, Washington, and Clarion in East Lansing, Michigan, giving generously of her time to a cause she believed in.

writing and other distractions from blogging

so sorry for the disappeary!

I know I keep doing it, but my life is in flux and I cain't get regular (and no, I'm not talking about my bowel movements!) Well, maybe I am talking about bowel movements of a sort, because, you see, I've started a new novel.

I'd been wanting to do National Novel Writing Month, which is in November, for years, but never managed. In fact, I'm not really doing it now, because you have to start on Nov. 1 and register and everything, and I didn't get it together in time. However, I thought, why not just do an Individual Novel Writing Month? Which means: I write a novel in a month, by hacking out (and I do mean "hack") 1500 to 2000 words a day for thirty days (for a total of 50,000 words, which in itself constitutes novel length.)

So as not to shoot myself in the foot, I chose a Young Adult fantasy novel idea to pursue in my crazy month's pursuit of publishy goodness. Being a YA fantasy, it involves a hero's journey, which is manifested in a literal journey across the fantasy landscape. Today is my fourth day writing (I already have ten thousand words and am on Chapter Four), and I'm already getting confused as to where we are, and whether we are traveling east or west ... or what.

So I drew myself a map (above). Yay! My first map! This will not be the definitive map. This is just by way of notetaking so that I can keep track of my landscape. Ain't it cool? No?

In other news, I have several posts coming up (they've been coming up for awhile) whenever I can find the time away from my 2000 words a day:

1. a review of Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson's Torture Taxi
2. a further omnibus posting about the class hierarchy of transit vehicle types
3. a final omnibus posting about how I was attacked on MUNI (yes! again!)

Don't hold your breath, though.

gawker's taxonomies of the publishing world

only of interest to those in the publishing industry and those, like me, who wannabe ... oh, and New Yorkers who think they're urbane, but anyhoo, here's Gawker's taxonomy of literary agents.

Also, of editors.

And, of course, a very brief taxonomy of bad blurbing.