Digital Medievalist: Scéla

The thing is progressing, still, which is good. But in the meantime, I thought I'd indulge by sharing some truly wonderfully awful writing.

There's a shady-not-really-professional POD "publisher" called PublishAmerica. I've posted about them here. A number of professional writers, editors, and copy editors, mostly from the fields of fantasy and science fiction, many of them author advocates, decided to find out once and for all if PublishAmerica will truly publish anything. They will.

Each of the collaborating writers contributed a chapter, following a chapter by chapter skeleton outline of a novel (remember Naked Came the Stranger?). These writers engaged in public cacosyntheton, synchisis, acyrlogia, alleotheta, amphibologia, anacoluthon, and every vile cliché, transparent plot device, and literary offense ever to have thrived in the slush pile.

I give you Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea (say it out loud).

"He didn't seem like the kind of man who died," Irene said. "Sometimes, when were in bed, making love, at the very edge of the surf where the waves washed over us again and again, I looked at his face and saw something there that not even all the forces of erosion could ever wash away. He was a determined man, and in his position he had to be: and I knew that, too, looking up at him wanting only for him to be there forever. He was old, you know: he was around in the seventies and everything. But there was an agelessness to him, a beautiful eternal foreverness that shone from him like the light from a lighthouse, or like the sunlight from the sun. He made me feel like a child again, and I wanted to stay in bed with him, feeling him warm my world, cooled by the waves that washed over us, until the stars went out. That what I expected anyway. That's what he promised. And now he's dead. His heart's stopped."

This is hilarious stuff. As one of the collaborators, SF writer and fellow New Hampshirite James D. Macdonald, writes:

You can read the acceptance letter at ftp://ftp.sff.net/pub/people/doylemacdonald/sting/Sting_acceptance.rtf

You can read the sample contract at ftp://ftp.sff.net/pub/people/doylemacdonald/sting/Contract.pdf

Never again let it be said that PublishAmerica is "selective" in what they accept. Never again let it be said that they reject the majority of the manuscripts they receive. Never again let it be said that they are anything other than a vanity press.

PublishAmerica's offer to publish Atlanta Nights indicates that PublishAmerica is not a genuine book publisher. No reputable publisher would have accepted Atlanta Nights and no one literate in English can read it without mirth.

You can read reviews or buy your own copy of Atlanta Nights here. Once the authors received the PublishAmerica contract, thereby proving their point, they went public with the hoax. PublishAmerica subsequently withdrew their offer. The authors decided to share their art with the public via Lulu.com. Go buy a copy; the proceeds will benefit the Science Fiction Writers of America's Emergency Medical fund. Plus, it would be a shame to miss prose like this:

Yvonne poured herself a drink and melted into the chair across from Callie. She brushed a strand of moltenly hair from her eyes and proceeded to carve the ham. Callie watched intently. Juice streamed from the ham in rivulets like saliva drooling from the fierce jaws of a wild dingo poised over the dead carcass of its prey in the dingo-eat-dingo world.

posted by Lisa Spangenberg : 1/26/2005 10:24:25 PM

I'm going to cheat by starting with an excerpt from a press release sent out by a British cultural charity, the National Art Collections Fund.

The National Art Collections Fund is spearheading the campaign to save the remarkable 14th-century Macclesfield Psalter for the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

The Macclesfield Psalter is a jewel-like treasury consisting of 252 richly-illustrated pages providing a fascinating record of medieval English humour, and teeming with highly surreal and imaginative marginal illustrations. This exquisite manuscript was sold to the Getty Museum, California, at auction in June for £1,717,335. However, the Government's export system, which recognised the outstanding importance of the Psalter to this country, gave the UK the chance to match this sum.

As of today, only £96,511 more needs to be raised in order to keep the Macclesfield Psalter on view in the UK for all to see. We have until 10 February 2005 to raise the remaining funds.

Ordinarily, I'm in favor of the Getty buying manuscripts; they're in my back yard, so to speak. But this is a special case. We know a fair bit about the manuscript; it was almost certainly a local product in every sense of the phrase, created in East Anglia (likely in Goreleston) for a local landowner. There are incredible miniatures, and fascinating marginal figures. The miniatures, which are of such high quality that it's clear they're the work of a master, include images of the patron saints of Suffolk and the Gorleston church, localizing the manuscript. The marginal "border" illustrations are particularly interesting because they feature the kind of "world upside down images" that are subversive comments on the main images, or, more likely in this case, (following Dr. Ruth Mellinkoff's argument) attempts to distract or avert the devil or other evil influences.

The scribe of the Macclesfield Psalter is likely the scribe of the no longer extant Douai Psalter and the Gorelston Psalter. Some illumination by the same artist was part of the Douai Psalter (destroyed inadvertantly because of poor storage during World War I when the Douai Psalter was buried in a zinc box to hide it from enemy troops).

You can read more about the Macclesfield Psalter here, and see some images here, and donate online here. They've come very close to matching the Getty price; they've enough for 245 of the 252 leaves.

posted by Lisa Spangenberg : 1/11/2005 08:35:26 PM

Washington, DC, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- The inaugural committee for U.S. President George Bush is looking to raise more than $40 million -- a record price tag for the event.

Washington Times

And then here's what we're spending on immediate quake and tsunami relief.

WASHINGTON : Two days after being criticised for not doing enough to aid in the Asian tsunami disaster relief effort, US President George Bush has announced a major American contribution.

US$35 million will be made available immediately, with more to follow in the days and months ahead.

Channel News Asia

If President Bush had any class, or any true decency, he would minimize the inauguration expenses and redirect the funds, and additional charitable donations from those who would have attended, to emergency relief funds for South East Asia.

"Compassionate conservative"—that's code for "selfish hypocrite," right?

Update 12/31/2004: According to the BBC:

The US plans to boost to $350m the funds being made available to help survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami which claimed more than 124,000 lives.

It is a ten-fold increase on an initial pledge attacked by critics as meagre. It is also the largest pledge so far.

That's more like it, especially if most of it is in real goods and money, and if it's not just a loan, and if we actually do what we say, since we haven't always been as good on delivering as promising.

posted by Lisa Spangenberg : 12/29/2004 09:37:52 PM

As best I can determine, any money you donate will go entirely to quake/tsumani relief. If you'd rather, you can donate to the Red Cross/Red Crescent via Amazon with a single click. The British Red Cross page, with a direct donation link is here. Oxfam UK is here. CNN has a list of sites from agencies accepting donations here. If you're thinking of buying something from Amazon, do it via Crooked Timber; they're donating all their Amazon commissions to relief.

• American Red Cross International Response Fund
• AmeriCares South Asia Earthquake Relief Fund
• Direct Relief International International Assistance Fund
• Médecins Sans Frontières International Tsunami Emergency Appeal
• Oxfam Asian Earthquake & Tsunami Fund
• Sarvodaya Relief Fund for Tsunami Tragedy
• UNICEF South Asia Tsunami Relief Efforts

posted by Lisa Spangenberg : 12/29/2004 03:07:11 PM

Angelus cantat «Gloria in excelsis»; postea dicat:

A n g e l u s

920

Ryse, hyrd-men heynd,
For now is he borne
That shall take fro the feynd
That Adam had lorne;
That warloo to sheynd,

925

This nyght is he borne.
God is made youre freynd
Now at this morne,
He behestys.
At Bedlem go se

930

Ther lygys that fre
In a cryb full poorely,
Betwyx two bestys.

ll. 920–932. Secunda Pastorum. The Wakefield Master.
MS. HM 1, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. c. 1450.

Image f. 91 The Sforza Hours. British Library

posted by Lisa Spangenberg : 12/25/2004 01:40:03 PM