It is time for another narrative poem! And what says Christmas more than a Grinch? (AmIright, Karoline?) Certainly it seems like an excellent antidote to the "toys are all you need" moral of the L. Frank Baum's book earlier this week.

It was written in 1957 by Dr Seuss. If, like Tor, your first reaction to that name is to wonder what he was a Dr in, I can inform you that he was not. He did start out on the road to a PhD in English Literature, but he got sidetracked and ended up one of the most successful children's literature writers in the world. As you do. He did get an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth, though, eventually.

The book was wildly successful, but the Grinch has possibly been made more famous through the cartoon adaptation from 1966 (where the Grinch IS green; and it is all read by Boris Karloff). If you haven't already, you can watch it here. For now, though, let's have a look at the actual poem. Here is how it begins:

Every Who
Down in Who-ville
Liked Christmas a lot...

But the Grinch,
Who lived just north of Who-ville,
Did NOT!

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.
It ...

Dylan Thomas, to most people, is the man telling us to "rage, rage against the dying of the light" and to not under any circumstances go quietly into the night. All sound advice, in general (especially, I would say, after the Lovecraft entry two days ago). You may also know of his strong dipsomaniac streak, or that he was Welsh. But you may not be aware that he is also the author of a sweet little prose poem about Christmas.

You can listen to the 1952 recording (made the year before he died) here, or you can read it here (though I do not recommend it because I suspect that horrible custardy yellow background can put anyone off literature). It is well worth listening to Dylan Thomas read, though. I don't care what he reads; pretty much anything will sound like poetry; and when he reads poetry it all gets rather spectacular.

I called "A Child's Christmas in Wales" a prose poem because it has that rhythmic aspect which makes it somehow other than a short story; and where you would expect a short story to have a clearer structure, this collection of memories is much looser and more associative. There are people who insist on presenting it as a cloyingly nostalgic piece about the innocence of childhood (seeing this, apparently, as a good thing). I am not sure I agree. It contains enough funny twists and turns to undermine the nostalgia. If anything, the children are the ...

As today is the the feast of St. Nicholas (or Sinterklaas, if you are of the Dutch persuasion), I thought it only right and proper to make today's story one about Santa Claus. You may have heard all sorts of strange stories about Greek bishops from Turkey and showing up at the council of Nicea and handing out gifts to people in secret. That is one version, but not the one we are dealing with here.

Instead, I direct your attention to The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum. (You may recognize the name as that of the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and damn everything, I will now be humming that song for the rest of the day), which was published only two years earlier.)

This Santa Claus is a human child, abandoned by his parents, who gets an unexpectedly good start in life by being raised by a Nymph in a magical forest.

Nature peopled it in the beginning with Fairies, Knooks, Ryls and Nymphs. As long as the Forest stands it will be a home, a refuge and a playground to these sweet immortals, who revel undisturbed in its depths.

You get the idea: Baum has made up his own Fairyland. In this forest, the wood-nymph Necile gets weirdly discontented, going so far as to almost dream of going off in search of adventure. Thankfully, a baby shows up to distract her (after she has ...

I suspect your first thought as Christmas approaches is not Lovecraftian horror, though it is not as incongruous as you might think.

There is a long tradition tying the winter solstice to dark happenings (think the Asgaardsrei, for example), and people like M. R. James have had a lot of fun scaring their friends silly over the holidays. I am generally not of this persuasion (being the scaree more often than the scarer), but it is hard to bypass H. P. Lovecraft's "The Festival" in this context of Christmas stories.

It was originally published in Weird Tales, but you can read it here (not for the faint-hearted -- in fact, if you dislike horror, you may reconsider reading this particular entry; go watch this kitten instead. There is no shame in this).

I have not, however, chosen a scary tale just for the sake of tradition. "The Festival" IS a Christmas story, after a fashion. And it is set in New England. Now, that sounds innocent enough, doesn't it?

It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons ...

The letter arrived on the morning of the sixteenth. I was pushing a bit of breakfast into the Wooster face at the moment and, feeling fairly well-fortified with coffee and kippers, I decided to break the news to Jeeves without delay. As Shakespeare says, if you are going to do a thing, you might as well just pop right at it and get it over.

Thus begins this glorious Wodehousian Christmas story, with a daring plan and a touch of paraphrased wisdom. It was originally published in The Strand Magazine (generally more famous as the place where Sherlock Holmes was published) in December 1927 (incidentally also the year of the last Sherlock Holmes story). If you do not happen to have the December 1927 issue of The Strand on hand, you can also find the story in the collection Very Good, Jeeves (not to be confused with Right-ho, Jeeves; Carry on, Jeeves; My Man Jeeves or The Inimitable Jeeves).
Bertie Wooster's news is that rather than go to Monte Carlo for the holidays (something Jeeves has rather been looking forward to, in an understated way), they will be spending it with Lady Wickham at Skeldings. He is promptly punished by Jeeves (who fails to shield him from a telephone conversation with the dreaded Aunt Agatha) and by fate ...

I must admit, if you mention Truman Capote, Christmas is not the first thing that comes to mind for me. I think of him as a brilliant writer, a New York intellectual, an openly gay man in a society which saw that as a crime, a man of idiosyncrasies, and the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Other Voices, Other Rooms and In Cold Blood. Also, he was barely taller than me (which is something I always make a note of when possible).

I also think of him as Harper Lee's childhood friend, echoed in some respect in her To Kill A Mockingbird as Dill (just as he probably drew on her in the creation of Idabel in Other Voices, Other Rooms -- I would definitely recommend reading the two novels together; all the more so because they do not tell the same story, but both still manage to portray the coming of age in a world of irrational prejudice). Today's story is in fact based on memories from the same period and the same place as Harper Lee's book (the great depression and Monroeville, Alabama, respectively).

But be that as it may, Capote is a Christmas writer (more than once, in fact: there is also the later and somewhat less heartwarming "One Christmas"). "A Christmas Memory" is nostalgic, detailing the child's memory of Christmas preparation and Christmas celebration on the margins of ...

Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels might seem like a surprising leap from yesterday's entry, but you should not be fooled by 600-odd years' having passed: Christmas is still around.

The great and wonderful thing about Hogfather, however, is that it takes Christmas, shakes it, turns it upside down and twirls it around, and then places it before you sprinkled with teeth. In a good way, of course.

Pratchett writes what you might call ludic parody (from Latin ludere: to play). It is playful; not mocking, but a friendly kind of poking at familiar patterns. What makes it all so wonderfully textured is precisely the fact that it is not a parody of one pattern, but that it draws together a variety of texts in order to create something new.

Having constructed the Discworld universe, Pratchett can then in turn use it as a backdrop for a series of shakings, turning-upside-downings and sundry similar treatments of other cultural patterns. This includes narrative conventions (the Disc's characters are well aware, for example, that an unarmed man facing an army has an unfair advantage; or that a one-in-a-million chance is the best shot at success); but it also serves as a backdrop for the historical and the political (with occasionally scathing social satire).

There are 40 novels set in the Discworld universe, and they make up a motley crew, which can ...

Following Tor's excellent example from a few years back, I've decided to give you a Calcuttagutta countdown to presents and family dinners. And because it is me doing it, I am doing it with books and short stories. CHRISTMAS books and short stories. And nothing says Christmas quite like a headless green man.

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a 14th century poem, written by a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer (in either Edward III's or Richard II's reign, depending on who you ask). It opens on New Year's Day, but don't be fooled: it seems to me a classic midwinter tale, with the connotations of death and renewal which midwinter festivals like Christmas are all about; the middle part IS set at Christmas, and in addition the first line of the stanza below (from the opening of the poem) tells us that "this king [Arthur] lay at Camelot upon Christmas".

Þis kyng lay at Camylot vpon Krystmasse
With mony luflych lorde, ledez of þe best,
Rekenly of þe Rounde Table alle þo rich breþer,
With rych reuel oryȝt and rechles merþes.
Þer tournayed tulkes by tymez ful mony,
Justed ful jolilé þise gentyle kniȝtes,
Syþen kayred to þe court caroles to make.
For þer þe fest watz ilyche ful fiften dayes,
With alle þe mete and þe mirþe þat ...

I have a dream, possibly even a vision, of a truly interdisciplinary course. It would not be feasible, certainly not in a system where universities are not so much about learning as passing exams, and where interdisciplinarity is much talked about but generally only carried out when there are business interests at stake (or some nebulous idea of "teamwork"). Not, say, for learning things (other than playing nicely with the other kids).

But I still dream about it. Especially after a couple of glasses of wine in geeky company.

This course would draw on lecturers from a variety of disciplines, ranging from history, via literature, film studies, linguistics and philosophy, to sociology, psychology, and of course biology, computing and physics. Sometimes more than one from each. If they could draw on their specialities, we could attempt to tie it all together in the exploration of a series of science fictional texts.

Imagine all the things we could learn, all the new perspectives we could get not only on literature and films, but on the world around us. Humanities students would get a better grasp of the sciences, and the science students would learn about the perspectives opened up by the humanities and the social sciences.

Imagine, if the course could be open to all students with an interest in the subject: we would potentially end up with people who not only learnt something about their own field, but who could approach fields very different from their own in an academic ...

Jeg må tilstå at jeg mange ganger har akket meg over momsfritaksgrensen på 200 kroner. Spesielt har jeg ergret meg de gangene jeg har bestilt ting til under 200 kroner for så å oppdage at porto brakte det over, og at tollbehandlingsgebyret koster mer enn momsen faktisk gjør. Det hender at jeg da har latt falle ord om en utdatert momsfritaksgrense.

Men.

Som vanlig når jeg tror jeg er enig med Høyre og FrP viser det seg at jeg ved nærmere ettertanke nok tar feil. Jeg har jo visst det en stund, som gammel frihandelsmoststander: Det er for eksempel en (forkledd) miljøsak, da toll og moms i større grad oppfordrer til å handle mer lokalt og dermed kutte ned på transport av varer. Dette blir desto viktigere i en verden hvor vi har så stor tilgang til internasjonal netthandel. Jeg vet det, for jeg er en kjempesynder i så måte: Det er ikke moms og tollbehandlingsgebyr på bøker, og ViaLibri spenner den vide verden.

Jeg leste i tillegg en artikkel på NRK i dag om hvordan vi risikerer at nisjebutikkene vil forsvinne, og det er jo enda en av mine kjepphester. Gud forby at vi blir sittende igjen med valget mellom Amazon og Hennes og Mauritz (skjønt jeg tviler ikke på at det er en FrPers drømmeverden). Og her kommer vi endelig til grunnen til at jeg sitter og skriver et blogginnlegg før jeg i det hele tatt er ferdig med frokosten.

Svaret til Forbrukerrådet irriterer meg grusomt:

– Det er ...