MAPPING

Narrative method, mythical shapes, hysterical realism, literary maximalism, codified things, unauthentic representation.

The Vallard Atlas

Image | | Paul Greer
'Terra Java' (east coast of Australia?)
‘Terra Java’ (east coast of Australia?)

From BibliOdyssey:

  •  “It was (anonymously) produced by the Dieppe school (France) in 1547 and was either copied from Portuguese maps or was completed with the input of (a) Portuguese cartographer(s)
  • The maps are known as portolan (navigational) charts [previously]
  • Unusually, north is shown at the bottom of the maps in the style of Muslim cartographers (very rare in European Christian mapping)
  • Allegedly, this atlas shows the first ever European record of Australian coastline — some 250 years ahead of Capt. Cook and 60-odd years before the earliest official European discovery/sighting/mapping of any Australian coastline by William Janszoon in 1606 [see: Landing List].<
  • The miniatures and marginalia depict 16th century native and colonisation scenes
  • The first[?] use of the name “Canada” in a map “

 

North America, East Coast
North America, East Coast

 

 

Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea

See lots more at BibliOdyssey.

 

Make Your Kid A Writer

Quote | | Paul Greer

“Let her be bored. Let her have long afternoons with absolutely nothing to do. Limit her TV-watching time and her internet-playing time and take away her cell phone. Give her a whole summer of lazy mornings and dreamy afternoons. Make sure she has a library card and a comfy corner where she can curl up with a book.

Give her a notebook and five bucks so she can pick out a great pen. Insist she spend time with the family. It’s even better if this time is spent in another state, a cabin in the woods, a cottage on the lake, far from her friends and people her own age. Give her some tedious chores to do. Make her mow the lawn, do the dishes by hand, paint the garage. Make her go on long walks with you and tell her you just want to listen to the sounds of the neighborhood.

Let her be lonely. Let her believe that no one in the world truly understands her. Give her the freedom to fall in love with the wrong person, to lose her heart, to have it smashed and abused and broken. Occasionally be too busy to listen, be distracted by other things, have your nose in a great book, be gone with your own friends. Let her have secrets”

— M. Molly Backes

via kateoplis

Zeeatlas. Frankrijk, 1538. Perkament, 39 folia, 440 x 312 mm. – 129 A 24, fol. 16r

Image | | Paul Greer


HTML tutorial

“In the south of Brazil, in the centre of the picture, two opponent Tupi-tribes are fighting against each other. Further southward a Native American lumberjack is felling a tree for a European merchant. In the north tree-trunks are transported and a second group of natives is moving westward, accompanied by two Europeans. The Europeans are probably Frenchmen, although Brazil had been held by the Portuguese since 1500. As neither gold nor silver was found, Portuguese interest rapidly decreased, and for many years only French privateers came there after Brazilian wood.”

“This chart, displaying part of the Atlantic coast of South America, with Uruguay and the mouth of the Rio de la Plata at the top as the most southern point, and the area around Pernambuco as the most northern region, is one of the charts in an atlas that was made in Dieppe about 1538. The Dieppe cartographers were known for their reliable cartographic material, which they also presented in a very artistic way. They had excellent contacts with Portuguese cartographers, the experts *par excellence *of maritime cartography at the time. No wonder that the basic material for this atlas also came from the Portuguese: the geographical representation, the windroses indicating the points of the compass, and the spelling of the plotted place-names, all point to this origin.”

— Koninklijke Bibliotheek [NL]

via

“First he tells, then he shows.”

| Paul Greer
Harold Pinterby Dmitri Kasterine modern bromide print from original negative, 2009, based on a work of 1977
Harold Pinter by Dmitri Kasterine. Modern bromide print from original negative, 2009, based on a work of 1977

 

“Pinter did what Auden said a poet should do. He cleaned the gutters of the English language, so that it ever afterwards flowed more easily and more cleanly. We can also say that over his work and over his person hovers a sort of leonine, predatory spirit which is all the more powerful for being held under in a rigid discipline of form, or in a black suit…The essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play he writes in certain expectation of the unexpected. In sum, this tribute from one writer to another: you never know what the hell’s coming next.”

— David Hare in Harold Pinter:A Celebration Faber and Faber 2000 p 21

“How many times have we heard the tired injunction, “Show, don’t tell”? Of all the specious screenwriting rules peddled by gurus fleecing the young, this is the most annoying of the lot, because it’s plain to anyone who’s ever bothered to watch a play or a film carefully that the best writers invariably achieve their effects by mixing showing and telling. It’s how you configure showing and telling that makes you great. In fact, it’s the amount of one you mix with the other to which we give the name “personal style”. Read one page of Shakespeare, a writer fond of interior monologue. First he tells, then he shows. And that’s how Pinter does it as well.”

 – Adultery, alcohol and menace,

via i12bent

American Vampire

Quote | | Paul Greer

“Here’s what vampires shouldn’t be: pallid detectives who drink Bloody Marys and work only at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes.
What should they be? Killers, honey. Stone killers who never get enough of that tasty Type-A. Bad boys and girls. Hunters. In other words, Midnight America. Red, white and blue, accent on the red. Those vamps got hijacked by a lot of soft-focus romance.”

— Stephen King

This Is England ’86

Video | | Paul Greer

I posted last night after the last episode went out that I thought this was one of the best things I had ever seen on TV, then I took it down because I thought I was being a bit previous.

But I slept on it now, and yes, it definitely is.

Wherever you live, wherever you are, try to see this series, it’s harrowing in places, but you won’t regret it.