Real Surrealism: 1955 Documentary, Night & Fog,

Directed by Alain Resnais, Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard, 1955) is a 31-minute film that ponders the Holocaust at the sites of abandoned concentration camps.

While an unseen narrator answers what he can and gives words to the questions that have more questions, the film moves between footage of camps during their activity and present-day (1955) footage of the camps.

The film is elegy whose poetic brevity and honesty make it an extremely respectful film, though the footage is, of course, utterly the opposite, utterly surreal. A camera slowly panning out on all that hair, so much hair, just hair taken away. Stored. Spun into cloth. By someone. Someone's hair spun by someone. So many someones.

A trillion eyelashes to wish on.

Mini-Review: A Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic by Michael Stewart

She ordered this book a year ago; it came in the mail a year ago; she began to write a post about how splendid it was to come home and find it in her mailbox in its small envelope. Then, she never hit "publish". Instead, she read the little book that fit so well in her hand that she can't find it now. She carried it around with her, read passages aloud to people. Like this one:

Trick eggs. There are so many trick eggs. A partial list could include: eggs from which full grown pigeons emerge; hollow eggs with silks hidden inside; eggs so heavy two men would be needed to lift them; eggs so light they float an inch over the table; unbreakable eggs; eggs which can wobble and walk on their own; eggs which when broken scream out.

Then she would look up, and they would be smiling. Maybe they would laugh.

She would frown and reread to herself what she had read to them. But isn't it sad? she would say. Well, sort of--but it's humorous, it's also supposed to be funny, they would insist.

Oh. I think it's just tragic and beautiful.

--a Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic, Cupboard Pamphlet, 32 pages, $5.00

Review of Nightmares: Hiroshima by John Hersey

She had a nightmare that took place in San Marcos, TX, where she lived at the time. It was one of a series of nightmares in which sudden explosions occurred, huge fiery blasts that lit up and burned up everything--including her. In this particular nightmare, she was downtown, walking down the sidewalk along Hopkins Street. She was across from the courthouse. It was a blue sky day. Then everything exploded, and went orange and black.

Maybe that dream ended there, her thinking, Why can't I feel myself burning? And then the pain so intense it wasn't even pain. Or maybe the dream continued, or this was another nightmare in the series, after an explosion, and she's running down the sidewalk toward the river, and there are all these people jumping in, and she's trying to tell them not to, that jumping in water will only make their burning skin worse, and then the river is filled with death instead of the usual people floating down on their inner tubes--lazily, under the bridge, under the train trestle, gliding away where the water curves against the curving earth.

seed toss, kick it over: new make-it book by w. craghead

w. craghead w. craghead, the artist who turned her story "The Only Child" into an award-winning work, has a new make-it book: "seed toss, kick it over". The book is available and free oncraghead's website where readers can print out and fold the 12-page book into place.

"seed toss, kick it over" is a love letter out of craghead's signature style that collides the childlike with the somber-serious.

--To return (or turn) subject matters to the startling that, for one reason or another, had gone numb.

He's an artist to thank, she thinks.

Man Reads a Short Story Every Day for a Year

http://www.caseyumc.org/

And then he makes a list of his top fourteen favorite stories. One of her stories makes the cut. Congratulations to the story "Sanctuary" from The Floating Order.

Read an excerpt of "Sanctuary" as part of a 2009 interview at Romancing the Book.

To Win: The Floating Order on St. Patrick's Day, 2011

James Joyce in St. Stephen's Green,
Dublin, Ireland 2011

She has physically returned from Dublin and the Phoenix Convention.  Mentally, she has yet to leave it.  Thus, to celebrate her simply wonderful (and too short) trip and her meeting very lovely people, she is giving away a copy of The Floating Order.

How to enter: Answer one of the following:

Your favorite Irish writer and why he or she is your favorite The Irish writer you've heard of but, ashamedly, have not yet read and why that is (or why you want to read him or her)A literary detail you've always wanted to know about Dublin and why.
Deadline to leave comment: March 17, 2011
Comments closed.

"The Vanished Hitchhiker" @ Girls With Insurance

*Photograph by Daina, CC license

She sleeps in a glass room in the backyard. Back here, behind the house, she can't hear the knocks on the door and so can wake on her own time, though time is not hers anymore. She has thought of her bed as a coffin enough times that it is one, her bed a sun-baked rectangle of earth surrounded by planters. Every night, she leaves the glass room and threads through the yard, car keys in hand. And she drives.

Read the rest of "The Vanished Hitchhiker" by Erin Pringle-Toungate at Girls With Insurance

Seven Days To Dublin

In seven days, she'll be departing from Spokane and flying her way with strangers toward Dublin.  A few connecting flights, a few conveyor belts, a few drinks and sighs and general-interest magazine articles later, and she'll be in . . . Amsterdam, and will get to visit with an old college chum, and then back to the airport and to. . . Dublin and the Eighth Annual Phoenix Convention (March 4-6 @ The Central Hotel).  A reading will be involved as well as sitting in on a few interesting panels, such as perspective in writing.

P-Con Guests include C. E. Murphy, Cheryl Morgan,  Bob Neilson, Derek Gunn,  John Kenny, Juliet E. McKenna,  Peadar O'Guilín, R.F.Long, and many more. The guest of honor is Ian McDonald.

Pringle on Spokane's KYRS

She recently dropped into the KYRS studio and read a few stories and talked with the host of Open Poetry, about writing, the Midwest, and more.

Spokane listeners can tune in to 92.3 or 89.9 FM on March 6, 5:30-6:30 P.M. 

2011 Ghost Story Contest: Scare the Dickens Out of Us, $1000 to Winner

The 2011 Edition of the Scare the Dickens Out of Us Fiction Contest runs between July 1, 2011 and October 1st, 20011.
Contest has closed for 2011. Results will be announced before December 2011.
Results Announced on library webpage. 

Length Limit: 5,000 words
Entry Fee: $20 (used to benefit the Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas

For an entry form, Junior Division Information, or a list of previous winners, see www.clarklibraryfriends.com

Scare the Dickens 2012 deadlines will likely be posted in early 2012.

The 2012 Deadlines are Posted here.

Organized and held by The Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library, to promote reading, writing, and the love of the page.