Ouroboros to you!

Ouroboros kind of sounds like a greeting to me or perhaps the name of an important piece of lawnmower (as in "The ouroboros broke and I need to fix it ASAP").

However, the dictionary cleared things up for me.

As stated by the Oxford English Dictionary Ouroboros (also spelled uroborus) is:

The symbol, usu. in the form of a circle, of a snake (or dragon) eating its tail.

and may have first be written in: 1940 by H.G. Baynes in Mythol. of Soul vi. 221 "Thus the uroborus symbol represents our psychic continuity with the immemorial past."

One of the great things about being a part of IR is reading everything that comes across my desk and the opportunity to learn new words. I love to learn a new word because once I learn it, I start to see it everywhere: on the sides of buses, in poems, in prose, in shiny coupons in the Sunday paper.

I wonder if I will start seeing this word, or depictions of it, when I leave the office today.

10 points* for anyone who writes it into a poem. 15 points for anyone who finds it in a poem. 20 points for anyone who finds the word graffiti-ed on a brick wall.

---Alessandra


*Please note these points have no monetary or tangible, redeemable value, but supply a large amount of good-happy feelings (exact amount is at the digression of the winner of said points).

Favorite Words, Revisited

I recently learned that one of my favorite words, dingbat, has even more meanings than previously discussed. In addition to being found on the page, a dingbat can also be found on the street. In the world of architecture, a dingbat refers to the wood and stucco apartment buildings most often found in Southern California. They are boxy two or three story buildings built on narrow stilts with sheltered parking underneath and were popular in the 1950s and 60s.

But why the word "dingbat"? Some say it is because of their quick and shoddy construction and dingbat is used as "a general term of disparagement" (as in a dingbat is a silly or stupid person). However, others site that dingbat is actually used in its traditional typographic sense, and refers to the stylistic flourishes (metal stars, asterisks, diamonds etc) that grace those stucco facades.

* * *

Now when I come to a break in the text, instead of moving straight on through to the next scene, I'll be thinking of my far away hometown, Los Angeles, home to many a dingbat. And perhaps I'll get even more distracted and start thinking of other favorite words, like the dingbat's cousin: the googie, a.k.a the doo-wop.

--Nina

Minor obsessions: "no ideas but in things"

I love poetry. And nonfiction. And fiction. And I love the artifacts those (in many ways) bodiless entities inhabit. Oh, books. There's such a pleasure in the object. The texture of paper, whether the edges are deckled or gilded, and then down to details of typeface and layout. Then there are the things that haven't yet been designed, such as scent, which most often seems to be affected by age. Going into a used book store is like a wine tasting sometimes.

Don't look at me like that. I know you're into books, too.

These days, though, I've found myself indulging in a minor obsession: interior design. And you know what I've discovered in my recent dalliance? Designers are so much like us. Collectors, lovers of exquisite objects. And they, too--almost invariably--have a soft spot for books. Because books tell stories both on the inside and the outside.

Since yesterday, when I saw the lovelies pictured here on DesignSponge, I have been coveting them. It's a major thou-shalt-not, but you're with me, right? Too bad this ten-title set of Penguin Classics is only available in the UK right now, and only through Waterstone's. Darn the shipping.

--Jenny

The scariest Halloween costumes are meta-costumes.

In honor of Halloween's approach, I'm going to talk about a book that weirded me out a great deal several years ago.

In my first year in college, my freshman composition teacher made us read House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. Basically, the text is an academic manuscript about a movie that a photojournalist made of his house, and that academic text is footnoted by a guy named Johnny Truant, a tattoo artist that found the manuscript, who has his own narrative that runs through the footnotes of the book. Oh, and the photojournalist's house? It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Obviously, this book nearly made my little freshman mind explode. Multiple levels of narration, crazy typography, and a severely creepy premise. I, of course, couldn't put it down, but was nervous to look in my closet for the next week.

Danielewski's certainly an author that pushes boundaries, and I admire that. I can't even try to explain his book Only Revolutions, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2006.

But what made me think of House of Leaves? This webcomic: http://www.xkcd.com/472/

It's hilarious if you've read the book. If you haven't, it makes absolutely no sense.

So this Halloween, don't just go as a pirate--go as a costume maker who makes pirate costumes. You'll blow people's minds.

--Ryan

On widows, orphans and dingbats...

Over the course of assembling the physical book that is the Indiana Review, I've come across a few production terms that seem to fall in a particular category: typesetting personified. You may have already heard of typeface but here are some others:

widow - a single line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page or column

orphan - a single line of a paragraph at the top of a page or column

(According to Wikipedia, "One easy way to remember the difference between an orphan and a widow is to remember that orphans 'have a future but no past,' while widows 'have a past but no future' just as an orphan or widow in life." Eep!)

There are also type families and superfamilies, which are groupings and categories of typefaces and fonts. (Perhaps there is hope for our poor widows and orphans after all!)

My all time favorite though is the term "dingbat." A dingbat is the small decorative mark, bullet, or symbol that usually marks a section break. While I would love for this term to also be a personification, it is actually onomatopoeic. In old style metal-type print shops, they would ding an ornament into the space then bat it tight to be ready for inking.

Typically IR sticks with a series of three diamonds for our dingbats but sometimes we get something a little more fun, like the jolly roger in Maureen Seaton's poem "Fractal Pirates (Five Iterations)" in issue 30.1, Summer 2008.

Yar.

--Nina

The Big Simile

So this past weekend I watched The Big Sleep, which made me think back to this summer, when I enjoyed reading Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. In the Philadelphia heat, there's nothing more refreshing than a hard-boiled detective story set in the frozen reaches of Alaska.

As a poet, I love similes and metaphors, and Raymond Chandler's writing was laced with figurative language that waltzed into unexpected realms:

"The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings." --The Big Sleep

Chabon takes Chandler's lead. He pushes his metaphors to their limits in his reimagining of the classic detective story. And he lays his similes on thick and heavy, like jam on a piece of crusty bread. (See, now I'm even in on it.)

Here are two examples (out of many) from Chabon's novel (both from page 107):

"His full ashy beard flutters in the wind like bird fluff caught on a barbed-wire fence."

And:

"Standing next to Zimbalist, in front of the arched stone door of the shop, a beardless young bachelor holds an umbrella to keep snow off the old fart's head. The black cake of the kid's hat is already dusted with a quarter inch of frosting. Zimbalist gives him the attention you give a tree in a pot."

I've never thought of a snow-covered hat being like a frosted cake, but I'm right there with Chabon (and I'm suddenly hungry for dessert). I've always been at a loss for explaining the fine line between making a wonderful, unexpected metaphor, and one that's just too weird to be understood. A successful one seems to gesture toward something fundamental, an unspeakable connection that's written in our blood.

My favorite simile, by the way, is from Jeffrey McDaniel's poem, "D":

"[You were] seductive, like watching an archer
untie her bow."

That's what similes can do: perfectly describe the indescribable. And if McDaniel's lines aren't a spot-on vision of the seductive, I don't know what is.

--Ryan

Spoiler Alert!

Now that Labor Day has come and gone and school is back in session, summer is officially over. To celebrate the end of the season I present to you, dear readers, the 100 Best Last Lines from Novels compiled by the American Book Review. (You can also check out the entire, alphabetized list of nominated last lines.)

The final 100 covers everything from classics, modernists, post-modernists, experimentalists, traditionalists, and everything in between. My favorite is #22 from William H. Gass' Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife: YOU HAVE FALLEN INTO ART - RETURN TO LIFE.

--Nina

-ette, -ella, -el

In my most recent internet wanderings, I came across a listing of the Nebula Award winners from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. What I found most interesting about these awards were the categories. There were the usual suspects: novel, short story, script. There was even a novella prize. But what's this? A novelette? What in Asimov's universe is a novelette?

As you might have guessed, it's shorter than a novella and longer than a short story. But how much longer, you ask? Here's the nitty gritty: A short story is 1,000-7,500 words. A novelette is 7,500-17,500 words. A novella is 17,500-40,000 words. And a novel --well, you get the idea. Following these numbers, IR does indeed publish novelettes (on the shorter end of the spectrum). I've even written a novelette! (Again, on the shorter side...) Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's was a novelette!

The World Science Fiction Convention also has a novelette category for the Hugo Award. I haven't come across any other novelette prizes. Do science fiction writers just like to categorize?

-Nina

Cutie teeny-weeny thingies

Tiny things have always fascinated me. When I was little myself, a tiny thing was, relatively, hard to come by. Baby kittens, they were tinier than I was. Colleen Moore's fairy castle was probably a little bigger than me, but filled with precious teeny-tinies that weren't. Now that I'm bigger, and so much is tinier than I am, the fascination hasn't yet totally worn off. And I can't wait to see what the people at Vestal Review compile in an anthology that's (currently) titled Short on Sugar, High on Honey: Bittersweet Lovestories. It'll be composed of love stories no shorter than seven words, and no longer than 13. They've got a call for submisssions open right now, so send 'em your sweetish itsy-bitsies.

--Jenny