Think of a Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Now think of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (no, not that David Mitchell) is not their secret love child, but I have a sneaking suspicion that those two books are its crazy aunts (at opposite ends of the family tree) at least.

It takes the experimentation with different forms of narrative and different forms of language from the one, and the overarching idea of travelling souls as a way of holding together a (set of) narrative(s) spanning a long period of history from the other. The combination, of course, makes something new and very different from both (do you look like your crazy aunts?), and it is a strange thing to read. In a nice way.

I don't feel that I am giving away anything important in pointing out the travelling souls concept. In part because it is so blatantly obvious from early on, in part because it is mentioned whenever and wherever the book is reviewed elsewhere (everyone else does it!), but mainly because it is something the book sets up only to puncture enthusiastically in its sequence of narratives; at last one character comment on it as a preposterously clichéd device.

It is an odd book, but I keep thinking it wasn't quite odd enough. It seemed to restrain itself from going off into crazy land. And its main problem are ...

Lord Dunsany is one of those names that hover over the fantasy genre, in more ethereal heights than Tolkien or Lovecraft, and not even visible from the murky depths of Goodkind or Jordan. It is my impression that he is not read as much as he perhaps should be.

Penguin Classics has an (as usual) very good annotated collection of his short fiction, edited by S.T. Joshi. It is this one I am taking as my starting point for this review, although I know Dunsany can be approached in all manner of ways other than that. That being said, Penguin editions are all very safe and unthreatening, so there is that (although the annotation in this one is a little disappointing in its sparsity and fact-centeredness).

But to begin.

Now, first a word of warning. People kept telling me Dunsany was one of the great influences on Tolkien, and sometimes it sounded like he had pretty much had every idea Tolkien was later to have. I suspect that if you approach Dunsany from that angle, certainly in this collection, you will be surprised. He does not remind me so much of Tolkien as he does of Borges and Lovecraft. Certainly not in the obvious way. Allow me to explain.

Dunsany wrote The Gods of Pegana in 1905 and Time and the Gods in 1906, and these, with the innovation of a fictional mythology, is frequently brought up when Tolkien and Dunsany are discussed. But whereas the idea of a ...

So. Tor has written a fancy page and it is really quite impressive. I can do all kinds of things and have already spent altogether too much time tagging things and retagging them and then changing the tags about. Still, all good.

Except, deep in my heart I know the page is ORANGE to all newcomers, and while a splash of orange can be a delightful thing, an entirely orange page is disturbing at best. Our colourblind readers may not care about any of this, but since I am the type of person who chooses operating systems based on what they look like ....

On Tor's request I have therefore spent a couple of days now, suffering through the unexpectedness of the random colour scheme, all to find pretty colour combinations for your benefit. I hope you appreciate it.

1. This one is the one I am currently using (background CC1100; columns FAFAFA):

2. I am thinking about changing it to this (background 80100D; columns FAFAFA):

3. For the more mellowly inclined (background 9DA963; columns FAFAFA):

4. For the slightly less mellow (background 559012; columns FAFAFA):

5. For the blue (background 237492; columns FAFAFA):

6. For the bluer (background 234868; columns FAFAFA):

7. For the blue, but mellow (background 45748E; columns FAFAFA):

8. For the bluest (background 234868; columns 45748E):

9. For Mary? (background 562C55; columns FAFAFA):

10. For the yellow (background E9CF40; columns FAFAFA):

11. For the grounded (background 794524; columns FAFAFA):

12. For the somewhat insane (background 559012 ...

In line with the new tradition, the jazz festival provided us with a free concert early in the morning on Saturday. Tor and I headed off about half an hour before the rest of my family (we got up at half past five). If you have freakishly good memory, you will notice that that is about the same time we got up last year, when we were all alone, excepting two sleepy (sleeping?) people on the fringes, for ages and vowed we would get up at a more sensible time next time. But last year we used a car to get there (we had reasons), and this time we had bikes. And I haven't used one of these contraptions in about two years.

It turned out our planning was justified, as the slight incline up from the Catholic Church to the park almost killed me. But that is a side point.

The concert is, and always was, an excellent idea. Especially on a day like yesterday (and all the Saturdays of the Jazz Festival have been days much like it during the three years of this tradition). The weather was wonderful, the surroundings were suggestive. But.

I don't mind these morning concerts starting soft. I think we might all have died from the shock of it if Red Baraat (whose cd I fully intend to purchase) had pounced on us this early in the morning. But at least we would have been awake. Molvær's concert did not ...

The fact is, both Tor and I have a strong aversion to Alexandraparken as a concert venue. You cannot sit by the stage, because there the volume is too high for those of us who are still not deaf (I have theories about why that area is always primarily peopled by the over-50s); and you cannot sit in most of the rest of the park because the sound either has to pass through bushes and trees, or even tents, getting more and more distorted along the way, not to mention the modest desire many might have of seeing the stage. The remainder are a couple of unsociable tables with unpleasant chairs.

We were therefore fairly surprised to find ourselves, not only in Alexandraparken, grasping our tickets at 200 a piece, but also there an hour and a half before the concert actually started. It was all down to all those people telling us Farmers Market was something we shouldn't miss. I decided to disregard the missing apostrophe (is it the market of one farmer or several farmers? The suspense is killing me) and pretend it is just a random constellation of words, convinced my self that the festival was sure to have changed the stupid stage arrangements of last year and dragged Tor along to get tickets earlier in the day.

Unfortunately, the park looked exactly as it did last year, and we decided on seats away from the stage, but still in view of it (albeit far away ...

The 50th Molde International Jazz Festival is officially up and running ... in bright read underpants!

It all started grandiosely, but soberly and official-like, in the beautiful surroundings of the outdoor museum (brilliant idea, that; I hope they repeat it next year) with speeches from the usual suspects:

Mayor Jan Petter Hammerø's speech was pleasantly and unusually short and not packed full of figures for a change. He may have been touched by the moment. He referred to the history of the festival, plugged the new book on the festival and the new Theatre and Jazz House, and shortly after left the stage to the infinitely more deserving Jan Ole Otnæs (the festival director).

His credentials are indisputable, having hitch hiked here from the dark depths of Northern Norway at the tender age of 15, and having spent the last 10 years leading the festival to ever greater fame and fortune. Strangely, he was the one to mention money, but that is allowable when he does so in order to inform us that the very first festival, on 3 August 1961 had at their disposal the astronomical sum of 15.000 NOK. He also spent some time demonstrating the centrality of this festival in the development of key international musicians, including (but not limited to: I started taking down the names half-way through the list) Nils Petter Molvær, Daniel Herskedal, Hayden Powell, Ola Kvernberg, Ytre Suløen and Jan Garbarek.

The third speaker, who officially declared the festival opened ...

Siden ingen (utenom Tor og Silje og jeg) benyttet seg av den handy duppedingsen har jeg nå skjært gjennom og tatt en avgjørelse.

Fest + launch av nye Calcuttagutta (available for your viewing pleasure her) blir
torsdag 22. juli 2010 fra 18:00 og utover.

Dere kan altså herved anse dere for inviterte (men jeg kunne godt tenke meg å vite hvem som kommer litt i forveien slik at jeg vet hvor mange jeg skal regne med hvis jeg skulle finne det for godt å lage kake eller noe slikt). Ta gjerne med vin og/eller noe annet dere har lyst på.

Hvis vi føler oss spesielt eventyrlystne kan det hende vi tar oss en midnattstur på fjellet eller noe i den dur.

Ta med vin og/eller snacks. Tor baker boller.

So, a while back Tor and I bought the new version of Aperture (Aperture 3), a little because Tor drooled a lot when curves were mentioned, and a little because we couldn't find any of our old e-mails containing the codes for various updates. There should be a simple database where any Apple customer could find information on what they have purchased over more than the last year. But that is another rant.

Aperture is great. I love Aperture. And usually a new version is an improvement. This has generally been a concept that Apple has understood (unlike, say, certain other massively big software companies that shall remain nameless here). I have therefore been quite baffled to run into one new problem (well, "problem" is the wrong word -- "annoying quirk" might be a better one) after another. Hence this post.

Let me first say, Tor is right. Curves is a good tool, and I am sure that once I master it it will make my pictures immensely better. Yes. Thank you, Apple people.

BUT.

Why oh WHY does Aperture have to leave full screen in order to export an image? It is driving me crazy. I never (never ever? well, hardly ever) open Aperture to edit and export only one image, and images really have to be in full screen while you edit them (that goes without saying, I feel). More importantly, the old version of Aperture DIDN'T leave full screen when you pressed the keys for export ...

A.S. Byatt knows literary studies. Possession is possibly the best description of the best and worst of the discipline that I have ever come across. She accurately captures the thrill of holding in your hands an old edition with a particular history, the uncovering of that piece which not everyone has already seen. The whole book is an exploration of that slow uncovering which historical research is all about, the story that changes and shifts as new information is introduced; and the active creation of an interpretation. Together they make up the best of this discipline.

And then there is the scathing parody of both extremes of authorial focus: the biographically oriented, and the sexual/psychoanalytical, both of which plague the discipline in their attempts to capture and speak for the author.

Strangely, this was never how the book was presented to me whenever people tried to get me to read it. The emphasis was always on the developing relationship between the academics in parallel with that of the authors they study. This to me was a side point. I read the book as more of a love letter to a discipline than as a love story.

But it is both, of course. The story starts with the discovery of a love letter, and continues as two academics search out clues as to the development of it in the various texts produced around the 100 year-old love story. All the while surrounded by helpers and opponents in a configuration ...

Såh. For et par-tre år siden møttes flere av oss for vin på terrassen i Øverlandsveien en dag i jazzen. Siden jeg så sjelden ser folk i Norge er det noe jeg godt kunne tenke meg å gjenta.

Jeg vet at jazzen er et dårlig tidspunkt for denslags fordi det er så mye som skjer hele tiden, men det er altså den eneste gangen jeg er i Norge før jul. Nettopp fordi så mange nok har planer om både det ene og det andre har Tor opprettet denne handy duppedingsen som finner ut av det beste tidspunktet for oss.

Siden Tor er godt i gang med å lage en ny versjon av Calcuttagutta med all den funksjonalitet vi måtte ønske, tenkte vi at vi kunne slå to små fugler eller andre bevingede dyr i én smekk, og kalle terrassevinmøtet for en LAUNCH.

Det innebærer at vi ideelt burde drikke noe som sprudler og kle oss i fancy klær, men jeg har ikke så store krav. Vi kan frolicke i hagen eller sitte rolig på trappen og stirre på fjellene og fjorden, alt etter hva vi føler for. Hvis det blir kaldt trekker vi inn.