{"id":1233,"date":"2007-08-24T07:21:08","date_gmt":"2007-08-24T12:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1233"},"modified":"2007-08-24T07:21:08","modified_gmt":"2007-08-24T12:21:08","slug":"all-memes-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1233","title":{"rendered":"All Memes Necessary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/archives\/008634.html\">Another one from Red<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>List some of your favorite words:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dulcid<\/li>\n<li>Numbnuts (gotta go with Red on that one)<\/li>\n<li>Strumpet<\/li>\n<li>Hoedown<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s your favorite maxim or proverb?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll do two:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Who Dares Wins&#8221;.\u00a0 I know, it&#8217;s more of a motto (the British SAS), but I love it.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are&#8221;.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a Hungarian saying (I learned it in a bio of photographer Robert Capa), and it doesn&#8217;t just apply to wealth; change it to happiness, or love, or so many other desirable but elusive things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s your favorite quotation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just one?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As if.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Madam, tomorrow I will be sober, and\u00a0 you will still be ugly&#8221; (attributed to Winston Churchill)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Tear Down This Wall&#8221;.\u00a0 Reagan, of course.\u00a0 Yes, a favorite.\u00a0 You had to be there (and by &#8220;there&#8221;, I mean &#8220;growing up 20 miles from a missile silo&#8221;).\u00a0 Still chokes me up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s your favorite first line of a novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember first lines!.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Give an example of a piece of description that\u2019s really pleased you in your reading lately:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have the book handy, so I can&#8217;t transcribe the quote, but many of Rybakov&#8217;s descriptions in <em>Children of the Arbat<\/em> &#8211; an evening in a remote Siberian village, a night out in Moscow in the &#8217;30s, and especially the mundane inner workings of Stalin&#8217;s mind &#8211; were riveting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Which five writers do you particularly admire for their use of language?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tolstoy.\u00a0 Wrong language, but big whoop.<\/li>\n<li>Hemingway.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t care what anyone\u00a0says.<\/li>\n<li>PJ O&#8217;Rourke.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0\u00a0 I mean it.<\/li>\n<li>Dickens.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>James Joyce.\u00a0 Joyce is like Steve Vai to me; I don&#8217;t always &#8220;get&#8221; (or care for) either, but I&#8217;m amazed at what they do with their &#8220;instrument&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>And are there writers whose style you really dislike?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I used to work in a Waldenbooks.\u00a0 I have forgotten more horrible writing than most people will ever read.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s the key to really fine writing, in your opinion?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Say it, don&#8217;t write it.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t like reading someone who is trying to show you what an <em>artiste <\/em>he or she is at wordcraft.\u00a0 Good writing should be unobtrusive.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Great writing, on the other hand, should sneak up on you; you shouldn&#8217;t realize it&#8217;s great until you&#8217;ve gotten past it &#8211; and then it should smack you over the head.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Great writing doesn&#8217;t condescend.\u00a0 Which leaves out a <em>lot<\/em> of modern fiction writers.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Basically, any writing that makes you forget you&#8217;re reading.\u00a0 That can be all over the place, as Red notes; <em>Oliver Twist <\/em>qualifies, and so does <em>The Hunt for Red October<\/em>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Wow.\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a while!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another one from Red: List some of your favorite words: Dulcid Numbnuts (gotta go with Red on that one) Strumpet Hoedown What\u2019s your favorite maxim or proverb? I&#8217;ll do two: &#8220;Who Dares Wins&#8221;.\u00a0 I know, it&#8217;s more of a motto (the British SAS), but I love it.\u00a0 &#8220;The best way to become wealthy is to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}