100 Brave Companions

This book has a chapter on that "hollow earth" stuff that McNeil once sent me some of his infernal computer "links" about. Eco includes a letter, dated April 10, 1818, from John Cleves Symmes "Of Ohio, late captain of infantry," who wrote to every member of Congress, "I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within... I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will aid and support me in this undertaking... I ask 100 brave companions, well equipped, to start from Siberia, in the fall season, with reindeers and sleighs, on the ice of the frozen sea. I engage we find a warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men..."

This Schlumpy Fellow

I love Lorrie Moore. I haven't read her new story collection, but it was reviewed in the New York Times today and when the reviewer said, "Ms. Moore never makes Ira believable as a sad-sack guy... Would this schlumpy fellow really look at a friend’s garden and think, 'The crocuses were like bells and the Siberian violets like grape candies scattered in the grass'?" I thought, "Well, sure. I mean, why not! I mean, I bet he would ESPECIALLY." This is something I know from personal experience. So that criticism seemed crazy to me. A schlumpy fellow can think all kinds of things about flowers.

Oblique Frozen Mammoth Recollection

Theresa and I were watching a movie called SO LONG AT THE FAIR, the plot of which reminded me of something I had read in that touchstone of my tender youth, the Reader's Digest publication STRANGE STORIES, AMAZING FACTS. But never mind about SO LONG AT THE FAIR. While I was looking for the particular article, I stumbled across a section entitled "Ten-Thousand-Year-Old-Steaks," which is about some woolly mammoths found frozen in Siberia, and how delicious they are! Yes, says Reader's Digest, "In spite of the thousands of years that have passed, the meat is still good enough to eat - according to those who have tried." But those few passing words are all you hear about the people who supposedly ate millennia-old woolly mammoth meat! Not another hint about it in the article, nor anything at all about steaks, save for the title. Why am I telling you this? Well, no good reason. But remember my novel that I first turned in to my publisher over a year and half ago and it was coming out in August and got reviewed and everything, and maybe someone will bring it out someday when they're feeling better, but I don't know because nobody will tell me? Remember that? Well, I believe I refer obliquely to these frozen mammoth steaks in that novel. You'll never know because 1) it's oblique and 2) you'll never read the novel because it only exists in a mysterious land somewhere far away with coconut moonbeams and butterscotch lakes and ever so many pixies as far as the eye can see. But I thought it was funny that those frozen mammoth steaks must have been stuck in my head since childhood, and I had no idea where that image came from when I put it - or something like it - in the semi-nonexistent novel. How about that! Thanks for everything, Reader's Digest! The idea probably wouldn't have stuck in my head for so long had it been more concrete than "those who have tried," and I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere for somebody. Oh, here's the section from my book. Who cares? Maybe I should just publish it here on the "blog" one random paragraph at a time: "He thought he remembered a newspaper story about a Viking ship that had been frozen in the ice. Scientists found steaks on board, steaks from Viking times, and Burns believed that the scientists had cooked and eaten one of the steaks just for fun, although that didn’t sound like scientists, who were usually a******s."