Get the book.

The Aubrey-Maturin books are finally available as eBooks, which is very convenient on cold winter nights when one finds oneself in a foul, foul mood. The Surprise sails from the penal colony of New South Wales to address Franco-American schemes in the Friendly Isles. Clarissa Oakes, a remarkable convict woman, has been smuggled aboard. She is much admired. This is not entirely a good thing.

Since day one, I've written, built, and managed the site using Tinderbox. It's rather remarkable that I'm still using the same tool a decade later, and almost astonishing that I'm using the same Tinderbox file (document), considering that I started with Tinderbox 1.0 on Mac OS 9. Tinderbox has continued to grow and evolve, and Mac OS has been radically transformed, but here I am with the same file I created so long ago.

For an optimistic and adventurous vision of our near future, this book is unmatched. We are presented with a world where war has ended, a country where NASA actually sends people into space, and a town in Florida where a man can take a woman to Red Lobster on their first date, and still take her to bed.

When I start reading, the form of the book quickly disappears. Just as I don’t notice the individual letters in each word, I stop noticing the layout, the font, the paper, the binding, and every other physical artifact because I’m focused on the writing.

By its own definition, electronic literature ‘lives’ within electronic media. But have we, as an academic community, realized what electronic devices are doing to the environment? Do we know where the minerals that are necessary to manufacture computers come from, and under what conditions they are extracted? What about the slave labor involved in the manufacturing process? Have we deeply studied the economic implications of using computers as literary tools, in a time in which all our economic systems are collapsing? In one word, are we being responsible? I have seriously asked these questions to myself.

Tisselli’s CV explains that Tisselli is pursuing a doctorate at The Zurich Node of the Planetary Collegium. Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Applied Arts. In recent years, Tisselli has given talks about electronic poetry in New York, Addis Ababa, Barcelona, Córdoba, Málaga, Santiago (Chile), Paris, Montevideo, Providence, Beijing, Helsinki, Salamanca, Porto, Goa, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City.

That’s a lot of kerosene turned into carbon dioxide, and lots of avionics.

Suppose we all abjured the use of electronic devices right away. Would we get more work done? We would not. We would raise fewer crops, make less stuff. People would be hungry. People would die.

Have we studied the economic implications of using computers as literary tools in a time in which all our economic systems are collapsing? Well, some of of us have been trying.

Folks: this is not news. Ask Augustine. Go to Greece with Lord Byron, or take a swim with Robert Byron, or ride shotgun in Ernest’s ambulance. Have a talk with William Morris. Review your Ruskin. Take a walk in the woods with Thoreau.

Get the book.

LeCarré’s first novel. This fine mystery-thriller prefigures much of what is to come, especially the wonderful Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. This encounter encounter with George Smiley, Peter Guillam, and Inspector Mendel is a terrific little story, a fine little mechanism of deception. Part of the mechanism has rusted because the book’s original audience, in 1961, was less immersed in feminism than we are. Nonetheless, a terrific little book.

For a change, I actually managed to make (and remembered to serve) all the planned dishes, and prep went about as well as it could. Some of the dishes took a surprising time, mostly because my stock reserves are low. The mushroom sauce entailed a chicken double stock, the lentils needed a vegetable stock, and those caramelized onions in the bread pudding took the better part of five hours. Once that was out of the way, I could get down to business. All’s well that ends before dinner time, broadly construed.

The huge Colorado leg of lamb (the checkout clerk at the store asked if it was a goat) worked really well.

We used just about every spoon and fork we possess, and could have used more.