Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, March 27, 2022
through
Saturday, April 2, 2022
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It’s Saturday, April 2, 2022
Welcome to the 1,400th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Shakespeare
Depiction of a scene from Shakespeare's play Richard III
John Leech - Image taken from BibliOdyssey: The Comic History of England. The drawing was first published in the The Comic History of England (1847–48).[1]
The Battle of Bosworth Field - A Scene from the Great Drama of History: John Leech's illustration of Gilbert Abbott à Beckett's parodical criticism of the Victorian attitude towards history.
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Commentary
I ordered take out for tomorrow.
That makes it two in the last three days.
I ordered it from Hen Chicken Rice @ 190 High St.
Will report on it.
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Reading and Writing
I am finishing Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
And enjoying it for the third time.
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Screen time
Am watching Madame Secretary
It’s fun.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
I was Caesarean born.
Can’t really tell, although
whenever I leave a house I go through the window.
~Steven Wright
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
The Chinese duck that I bought from Ming’s Supermarket was good.
It was much less fatty than our American versions, more chewy, more tasty, perhaps.
Can’t be sure.
Will buy a different duck next time.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Duck from China slow-roasted
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Short Essay*
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.
The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy.
In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word play or game was the standard term for dramas until William Shakespeare's time—just as its creator was a play-maker rather than a dramatist and the building was a play-house rather than a theatre.
The use of "drama" in a more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. "Drama" in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). It is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted to describe "drama" as a genre within their respective media. The term ”radio drama“ has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance. May also refer to the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of radio.
The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.
Mime is a form of drama where the action of a story is told only through the movement of the body. Drama can be combined with music: the dramatic text in opera is generally sung throughout; as for in some ballets dance "expresses or imitates emotion, character, and narrative action".
Musicals include both spoken dialogue and songs; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue (melodrama and Japanese Nō, for example).
Closet drama is a form that is intended to be read, rather than performed.
In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Friday, April 1, 2022
Welcome to the 1,399th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Contractwithgod
Will Eisner's A Contract with God (1978).
Eisner is often credited with having popularized the term "graphic novel".
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Commentary
It would be great if Russia’s recently stated intent of reducing its attacks on certain towns in the Ukraine is a sign of total withdrawal.
Total withdrawal.
But intelligent sources think that it’s just a tactic to shift Russia’s military might to pieces of the Ukraine that Russia intends to assimilate.
Very sad if true.
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Reading and Writing
April 1 is only two days away.
That’s the date that months ago I predicted I would finish my manuscript.
Ready for submission.
I might make it.
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Screen time
After seeing some great Celtic basketball and getting revved up for the playoffs, Robert Williams goes and injures himself. How selfish of him. I really don’t have much of an interest in watching an undermanned team face off against excellent, fully-staffed teams and come up just short.
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Wellness
At their request, I sent a picture of the very small growth that popped up on my temple.
I’ll wait their response.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
I went to a place to eat.
It said 'breakfast at any time.'
So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.
~Stephen Wright
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from Sally C re: the picture published a day or two ago. You can find it by scrolling down.
Dear Dom,
I do suffer an internal conflict when I encounter food that looks too lovely to eat! (Adrienne’s fruit tart!) It is a work of art. Of course, it won’t keep for posterity, but still …
Sally
Blog meister responds: And it tasted great, as well.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
As my manuscript nears completion, I will be submitting it to agents and publishers. It’s a time-consuming process.
I must reduce the time I spend planning, shopping, cooking, and eating my dinners. Takeout here I come.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Paul Bocuse
A Three-Star Guide Michelin restaurant in France, from the past
One of the great meals of my life
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Short Essay*
A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word "novel" normally refers to long fictional works, the term "graphic novel" is applied broadly and includes fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term "comic book", which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks (see American comic book).
Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term "graphic novel" in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha. The term gained popularity in the comics community after the publication of Will Eisner's A Contract with God (1978) and the start of Marvel's Graphic Novel line (1982) and became familiar to the public in the late 1980s after the commercial successes of the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1986, the collected editions of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen in 1987. The Book Industry Study Group began using "graphic novel" as a category in book stores in 2001.
The term is not strictly defined, though Merriam-Webster's dictionary definition is "a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and published as a book". Collections of comic books that do not form a continuous story, anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces, and even non-fiction are stocked by libraries and bookstores as "graphic novels" (similar to the manner in which dramatic stories are included in "comic" books).[citation needed] The term is also sometimes used to distinguish between works created as standalone stories, in contrast to collections or compilations of a story arc from a comic book series published in book form.
In continental Europe, both original book-length stories such as Una ballata del mare salato (1967) by Hugo Pratt or La rivolta dei racchi (1967) by Guido Buzzelli,[citation needed] and collections of comics have been commonly published in hardcover volumes, often called "albums", since the end of the 19th century (including such later Franco-Belgian comics series as The Adventures of Tintin in the 1930s).
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Thursday, March 31, 2022
Welcome to the 1,398th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
An illustration from Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, depicting the fictional protagonist, Alice, playing a fantastical game of croquet.
John Tenniel - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
original illustration (1865) by John Tenniel (28 February 1820 - 25 February 1914), of the novel by Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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Commentary
My daughter has a new job as press secretary for an influential New York State Senator.
My grandson, Dylan, (he is the same age as my daughter) has a job as campaign manager for an idealistic woman running for her first elective office.
It's grand that their generation sees public service as an honorable calling.
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Reading and Writing
I edited thirty pages on Tuesday.
I’ll be ready for submission in less than a week.
Pretty close to my April 1 prediction.
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Wellness
A growth on my temple.
Sent a message to through to my health care providers via an online system they have.
It's efficient.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
I've written several children's books
... Not on purpose.
~Stephen Wright
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from Sally C:
Dear Dom,
RE: your friend’s Russian invasion essay: It is important – and courageous – to make available different points of view or different angles on a situation. (And there’s ALWAYS at least one different angle from the one that suits us.) We become too complacent when nothing challenges us, and our ability to think critically atrophies. We aren’t obligated to condemn other points of view, angles or opinions, or to ostracize those who present them; we don’t have to agree with them, but we should allow them to educate us.
Thanks for the posting!
Sally
Blog meister responds: It’s easy to listen to people who speak softly and engage in an exchange of ideas.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I had Lobster, Mac and Cheese on Tuesday.
It was very good.
Getting closer to a recipe.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Attending a fantasy convention
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Short Essay*
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying people, events, or places in ways that are imaginary, or not strictly based on history or fact.
In its most narrow usage, fiction applies to written narratives in prose and often specifically novels, as well as novellas and short stories.
More broadly, however, fiction has come to encompass imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.
The creation of a work of fiction implies the construction of an imaginary world. Typically, the fictionality of the work is publicly acknowledged and the audience expects the work to deviate in some ways from the real world rather than presenting only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people.
Because fiction is generally understood to not fully adhere to the real world, the themes and context of a work, such as if and how it relates to real-world issues or events, are open to interpretation.
Characters and events within some fictional works may even exist in their own context entirely separate from the known physical universe: an independent fictional universe.
In contrast to fiction, creators of non-fiction works assume responsibility for presenting only the historical and factual truth. Despite the traditional distinction between fiction and non-fiction, some modern works blur this boundary, particularly ones that fall under certain experimental storytelling genres—including some postmodern fiction, autofiction, or creative nonfiction like non-fiction novels and docudramas—as well as the deliberate literary fraud of falsely marketing fiction as nonfiction.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Welcome to the 1,397th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
The 39 Steps
British quad poster for The 39 Steps.
Unknown author - https://www.flickr.com/photos/alfredhitchcock/4692578701/
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Commentary
One of the options in our trip to Washington DC is a private birding tour.
We will be in town for three full days.
My preference is arranging three early morning trips to three different trails.
Optimally, the guide would pick me up at 6.00 am and drive to the trail.
We would bird for 1.5 hours, finishing at 8.00 am, returning to the hotel at 830 am.
At that time I would join up with family breakfast.
It’s possible another in the family will join me in one of the excursions.
My daughter and her boyfriend have both expressed interest.
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Reading and Writing
I am editing 30 pages a day.
Because this section of the manuscript is much smoother than it was when I last edited it.
I might be ready for submission in a week.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
When we were driving over the border back into the United States,
they asked me if I had any firearms.
I said what do you need?
~Stephen Wright
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This is a response from the friend who had a view on the Russian invasion that we printed because it was well written. We distanced ourselves from the article.
Next day he wrote his surprise that we printed it. And then he made a noteworthy adjustment.
Here it is:
“Could you add a note that my assessment is not to be taken as an endorsement of the Russian invasion. I agree with your response: Russia has no right to dictate; diplomacy is the answer; invasion is no solution.”
Blog meister responds: This we agree with.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I had a cold cut sandwich for dinner tonight.
It wasn’t wonderful.
But I sandwiched it between a red meat the night before, and Lobster Mac and Cheese the night after. A lighter meal between two richer meals
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Lagoon at Public Garden before the spring fill up
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Short Essay*
Thriller is a genre of fiction, having numerous, often overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. Successful examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
Thrillers generally keep the audience on the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The cover-up of important information is a common element. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is often a villain-driven plot, whereby they present obstacles that the protagonist must overcome.
Writer Vladimir Nabokov, in his lectures at Cornell University, said:
“In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally wins the weak babbling girl, but there is no governmental law in Western countries to ban a story that does not comply with a fond tradition, so that we always hope that the wicked but romantic fellow will escape scot-free and the good but dull chap will be finally snubbed by the moody heroine.”
Thrillers may be defined by the primary mood that they elicit: suspenseful excitement. In short, if it "thrills", it is a thriller. As the introduction to a major anthology says:
Thrillers provide such a rich literary feast. There are all kinds. The legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller. The list goes on and on, with new variations constantly being invented. In fact, this openness to expansion is one of the genre's most enduring characteristics.
But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill. By definition, if a thriller doesn't thrill, it's not doing its job.
~ James Patterson, June 2006, "Introduction," Thriller
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Welcome to the 1,396th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Hardboiled Detective Stories
The cover of seminal hardboiled magazine Black Mask, September 1929, featuring part 1 of its serialization of The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. Illustration of private eye Sam Spade by Henry C. Murphy, Jr.
Copyright holder: Popular Publications Inc. (or assignee) Artist: Henry C. Murphy, Jr. - Collection of author Robert Weinberg
Cover of hardboiled magazine Black Mask, September 1929, featuring part 1 of The Maltese Falcon, by hardboiled pioneer Dashiell Hammett
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Commentary
The Boston Celtics.
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Reading and Writing
What a shot in the arm.
On Saturday, I edited pp 80 to 90 and made the happy discovery that these pages need no further editing.
On Sunday, I forged ahead of schedule and edited pages 90 to 100 and then 100-110 and found that these pages need no further editing, either.
It’s exciting; no, exhilarating.
So I went back to the beginning, pp 1-80, pages that I thought were going to need more editing.
But they needed a gentle touch up. Pages 1-10 are now fully edited. I could be done, done in the next ten days.
And I am totally pleased with the resulting manuscript.
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Screen time
Am enjoying Sanditon but loving My Brilliant Friend and the Boston Celtics.
As of Monday morning, the Celtics are infirst place.
How unlikely that would have sound three months ago.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
I used spot remover on my dog;
now I can’t find him.
~Stephen Wright
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
We do not agree with this analysis of the war in Europe but it deserves airing.
The contributor’s name is not published:
I want to clarify that the only way for Russia to accept peace is to simply do what Putin has been asking since his speech in Munich in 2007: do not militarize Ukraine against Russia. If we had not militarized the Ukraine, Putin would not have invaded. In my view NATO and the US started this war. There is a Rand Policy report from 2019 that lays out the policy.
The US and NATO did not expect Putin to call them and then up the ante. We made a big mistake and the ones who are paying for it the most are the Ukrainian people who we suckered in then left out to dry….or should I say die.
The Russians never said they were going to waltz through Ukraine. They had no intention to conquer and occupy it. As the Russians have stated all along, they intended to ‘demilitarize and denazify’ the Ukraine. This is what the Russians are doing. They are destroying the NATO trained Ukrainian Army and they are killing the members of the Ukrainian Nazi units. The Russians are doing this successfully. This is what the media is lying about. It is so amazing how they lie.
I have been following this matter since Putin made that Munich speech in 2007. Remember, Obama was against expanding NATO. Remember, too that Obama was the one who told us to ‘never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to f____k things up.’
This is the sad truth….
Blog meister responds: I don’t believe that Russia has the right to dictate the foreign policy of the independent state of Ukraine, even if it shares a border. Diplomacy is the way to understand each other. Invasion, war, death, disease, torture, vengeance, the ugly side of humanity, must, MUST be kept in check.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Thinking Cup Dinner
3 26 2022
From left: Adrienne, (she made the tart,) Sid, Dom, Cal, Bella
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I’ve been maintaining a calendar of preferred menus.
One of the great benefits has been a more balanced diet.
So I had a pasta dinner on Saturday. A Gravy.
Sunday I opted for a slow-roasted rack of lamb, no gravy and an
accompaniment o lentils, great for keeping fiber in my diet.
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Short Essay*
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction).
The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself.
Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.
From its earliest days, hardboiled fiction was published in and closely associated with so-called pulp magazines. Pulp historian Robert Sampson argues that Gordon Young's "Don Everhard" stories (which appeared in Adventure magazine from 1917 onwards), about an "extremely tough, unsentimental, and lethal" gun-toting urban gambler, anticipated the hardboiled detective stories. In its earliest uses in the late 1920s, "hardboiled" did not refer to a type of crime fiction; it meant the tough (cynical) attitude towards emotions triggered by violence.
The hardboiled crime story became a staple of several pulp magazines in the 1930s; most famously Black Mask under the editorship of Joseph T. Shaw, but also in other pulps such as Dime Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly. Consequently, "pulp fiction" is often used as a synonym for hardboiled crime fiction or gangster fiction; some would distinguish within it the private-eye story from the crime novel itself.
In the United States, the original hardboiled style has been emulated by innumerable writers, including James Ellroy, Paul Cain, Sue Grafton, Chester Himes, Paul Levine, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, and Mickey Spillane. Later, many hardboiled novels were published by houses specializing in paperback originals, most notably Gold Medal, and in later decades republished by houses such as Black Lizard.
Hardboiled writing is also associated with "noir fiction". Eddie Duggan discusses the similarities and differences between the two related forms in his 1999 article on pulp writer Cornell Woolrich. In his full-length study of David Goodis, Jay Gertzman notes: "The best definition of hard boiled I know is that of critic Eddie Duggan. In noir, the primary focus is interior: psychic imbalance leading to self-hatred, aggression, sociopathy, or a compulsion to control those with whom one shares experiences. By contrast, hard boiled 'paints a backdrop of institutionalized social corruption'
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Monday, March 28, 2022
Welcome to the 1,395th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Sherlock Holmes, 1891
Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes examines a suspect's boots in an illustration to the 1891 story "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"
Sidney Paget - https://archive.org/details/adventuresofsher00doylrich
Illustration of the Sherlock Holmes short story The Boscombe Valley Mystery. Published in the 1892 in the 1892 book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
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Commentary
March leads us into spring.
But we in the Northeast must continue to dress for winter because winter hangs on.
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Reading and Writing
In my editing of my manuscript, I’ve struck a segment with which I am highly pleased as is, without further rewrites. Am looking forward to tomorrow’s work, to see if this streak of few to zero edits continues.
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Screen time
The best of current television are the Celtics and Bruins games.
And, of course, My Brilliant Friend.
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Wellness
After using the sauna for several weeks, I am convinced that it’s played a significant role in my improved sleep. I sleep for 90 minutes and wake. Every day. What I do in this moment determines whether I am going to sleep well or abort after two or three hours. My best rhythm has me taking a second shower, soapless, to relieve any itching. That part is good, but the water in my apartment never gets hot enough to make me drowsy.
So, the sauna. I take my book and step into the cold sauna. Quickly enough the sauna heats and before ten minutes pass I am drowsy enough to get me back to sleep. Sweet.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
I’m writing a book.
I have the page numbers done;
now I just have to fill in the rest.
~Stephen Wright
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
A friend who prefers to keep his name out of print enthusiastically agrees with my assertion that now that it’s been proven that Russia is not going to waltz through the Ukraine, now is the time to present to Russia a way to return its troops home and to leave the Ukraine alone. It’s not a time to talk about ‘more sanctions’ or more ‘weapons’.
Blog meister responds: Unnecessary talk of more war is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
The traditional dinner menu I presented to my five guests on Saturday worked very well.
The most outstanding of the courses, a fruit tart, was made and brought by Adrienne. See a picture of it mmediately below. Beautiful to look at; delicious to eat.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Fruit tart by Adrienne
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Short Essay*
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—either professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder.
The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels.
Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot.
Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Detective fiction in the English-speaking world is considered to have begun in 1841 with the publication of Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", featuring "the first fictional detective, the eccentric and brilliant C. Auguste Dupin".
When the character first appeared, the word detective had not yet been used in English; however, the character's name, "Dupin", originated from the English word dupe or deception.
Poe devised a "plot formula that's been successful ever since, give or take a few shifting variables."
Poe followed with further Auguste Dupin tales: "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" in 1842 and "The Purloined Letter" in 1844.
Poe referred to his stories as "tales of ratiocination".
In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference.
"Early detective stories tended to follow an investigating protagonist from the first scene to the last, making the unravelling a practical rather than emotional matter."
"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" is particularly interesting because it is a barely fictionalized account based on Poe's theory of what happened to the real-life Mary Cecilia Rogers.
William Russell (1806–1876) was among the first English authors to write fictitious 'police memoirs',[18] contributing an irregular series of stories (under the pseudonym 'Waters') to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal between 1849 and 1852. Unauthorised collections of his stories were published in New York City in 1852 and 1853, entitled The Recollections of a Policeman.[19] Twelve stories were then collated into a volume entitled Recollections of a Detective Police-Officer, published in London in 1856.[20]
Literary critic Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Louisa May Alcott with creating the second-oldest work of modern detective fiction, after only Poe's Dupin stories themselves, with the 1865 thriller "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots." A short story published anonymously by Alcott, the story concerns a Scottish aristocrat who tries to prove that a mysterious woman has killed his fiancée and cousin. The detective on the case, Antoine Dupres, is a parody of Auguste Dupin who is less concerned with solving the crime as he is in setting up a way to reveal the solution with a dramatic flourish. Ross Nickerson notes that many of the American writers
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Sunday, March 27, 2022
Welcome to the 1,394th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Dark Fantasy
Artwork from the Open Movie Workshop 'Chaos&Evolutions'. A DVD training about digital painting, concept art, Gimp-painter 2.6 and Mypaint 0.7 .
David Revoy / Blender Foundation - Own work
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Commentary
The war is not going according to script.
But I must admit to a certain trepidation when I hear of more sanctions being planned.
That’s more talk of war.
We should be focusing on finding a way for Russia to recall its young men and women back to the Motherland and leave Ukraine alone.
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Reading and Writing
My editing is on target: 10 pages a day; 6 minutes per page.
When I finish, two more weeks, I plan to edit another round.
And I will keep editing until there are no more corrections to be made.
But it’s hard not to call it ‘done’ and get on with it.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
When I get real real bored I like to drive downtown and
get a great parking spot then sit in my car and
count how many people ask me if I’m leaving.
~Stephen Wright
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Wellness
Thursday night I didn’t sleep well enough to lift . So I skipped the club on Friday.
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
The bulk of today’s communications had to do with the dinner party I’m hosting Saturday.
What’s the address? What should I bring? What’s the menu?
Blog meister responds: This is the first dinner party I’m hosting in a very long time. Since I don’t remember when. My guests are new friends I’ve made at the Thinking Cup. With me, we’ll have six people.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I selected a traditional Italian menu for my dinner party.
We’ll start with an antipasto: seafood salad, roasted peppers, mushrooms, olives.
Next will come ravioli from Eataly with my Gravy.
Then an assortment of meat: Spare ribs, chuck roast, meatballs, and pieces of chicken and pigs feet.
One of the guess is bringing dessert.
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Community Photos**
Dom and Alba, a café buddy from Blue Bottle
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Short Essay*
Dark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporate disturbing and frightening themes of fantasy. It often combines fantasy with elements of horror or has a gloomy dark tone or a sense of horror and dread.
A strict definition for dark fantasy is difficult to pin down. Gertrude Barrows Bennett has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy". Both Charles L. Grant and Karl Edward Wagner are credited with having coined the term "dark fantasy"—although both authors were describing different styles of fiction. Brian Stableford argues "dark fantasy" can be usefully defined as subgenre of stories that attempt to "incorporate elements of horror fiction" into the standard formulae of fantasy stories. Stableford also suggests that supernatural horror set primarily in the real world is a form of "contemporary fantasy", whereas supernatural horror set partly or wholly in "secondary worlds" should be described as "dark fantasy".
Additionally, other authors, critics, and publishers have adopted dark fantasy to describe various other works. However, these stories rarely share universal similarities beyond supernatural occurrences and a dark, often brooding, tone. As a result, dark fantasy cannot be solidly connected to a defining set of tropes. The term itself may refer collectively to tales that are either horror-based or fantasy-based.
Some writers also use "dark fantasy" (or "Gothic fantasy") as an alternative description to "horror", because they feel the latter term is too lurid or vivid.
*The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Community Pictures with Captions are sent in by our followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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