Think About It 103: EDWARD O WILSON

 

To me it is remarkable that we do not live in a scientific age, as much as we might think otherwise.  We live in an age in which we are — at least people in developed countries are — benefiting from remarkable advances in science and technology, but in our thinking, in our linguistic expression, in our way in which we deal with the universe intellectually, we are still prescientific.  We might as well be agriculturalists in the Fertile Crescent, in terms of how we combine scientific knowledge with our daily idioms of thought, and I think that one of the great challenges, intellectually and in the immediate future, is to find a way of combining the best in scientific knowledge and thinking and concept and creativity, with the best of the humanities, and develop a scientific culture.

 

Interview [The Guardian, 31 August 1995]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of North American biologist, naturalist and writer EDWARD OSBORNE WILSON [1929 – 2021]: 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01680-8

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 080: DOROTHY ROWE

 

 

 

Think About It 074: DWIGHT MACDONALD

 

 

 

Think About It 057: BLAISE PASCAL

 

 

 

The Write Advice 208: BARRY HINES

 

My books are all conventional in form. They have a beginning, a middle and a sort of ending – mainly in that order – with the occasional flashback thrown in…I write about real people and show a section of their life, without the Hollywood endings which rarely happen outside Hollywood. Disney offered to make Kes, on the condition that the hawk recovered. Should we have sold out? I know which way would always be right for me.

 

Quoted in his obituary [The Guardian, 20 March 2016]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the obituary of British novelist BARRY HINES (1939–2016):

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/20/barry-hines-obituary-a-kestrel-for-a-knave-author

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 154: ALAN JUDD

 

 

The Write Advice 138: STAN BARSTOW

 

 

The Write Advice 101: KINGSLEY AMIS

 

   

Poet of the Month 096: STEPHEN DUNN

 

STEPHEN DUNN

24 June 1939 — 24 June 2021

 

 

 

 

 

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN

 

 

 

More things come to them,

and they have more to hide.

All around them: mirrors, eyes.

            In any case

they are different from other women

and like great athletes have trouble

making friends, and trusting a world

quick to praise.

 

 

I admit without shame

I'm talking about superficial beauty,

the beauty unmistakable

to the honest eye, which causes

some of us to pivot and to dream,

to tremble before we dial.

 

            

            Intelligence warmed by generosity

is inner beauty, and what's worse

some physically beautiful women have it,

and we have to be strapped or handcuffed

to the mast, or be ruined.

 

 

But I don't want to talk of inner beauty,

it's the correct way to talk

and I'd feel too good

about myself, like a parishioner.

            Now, in fact,

I feel like I'm talking

to a strange beautiful woman at a bar, I'm

animated, I'm wearing that little fixed

smile, I might say anything at all.

 

 

Still, it's better to treat a beautiful woman

as if she were normal, one of many.

She'll be impressed that you're unimpressed,

might start to lean your way.

This is especially true if she has aged

into beauty, for she will have learned

the sweet gestures one learns

in a lifetime of seeking love.

Lucky is the lover of such a woman

and lucky the woman herself. 

 

Beautiful women who've been beautiful girls

are often in some tower of themselves

waiting for us to make the long climb.

 

But let us have sympathy for the loneliness

of beautiful women.

Let us have no contempt for their

immense privilege, or for the fact

that they never can be wholly ours.

 

 

1990

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and sample the work of North American poet and academic STEPHEN DUNN (1939–2021):

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stephen-dunn

 

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Poet of the Month 029: TIM SEIBLES

 

Poet of the Month 065: DOROTHY PARKER

 

Poet of the Month 054: ROBERT POLITO

 

The Write Advice 207: CATHERINE JINKS

 

To make historical fiction compelling, you have to make it more immediate.  One way of doing this is to use the first person.  The first person is always more palatable.  In my Pagan books, I not only used a first person narrative — I even used the present tense.  You can't get more immediate than that.

      Another technique of immediacy is to ask direct questions.  I've often started first-person chapters with questions: 'Ladies, I appeal to you — what makes a man?'  This was a trick I learned from my years as a corporate communicator.  If you ask a question, the reader will at least hang around long enough to find out the answer.

      Most of all, if you want to convey excitement and immediacy, you have to feel at home.  If you've immersed yourself in the period you're covering, there won't be a sense of distance when you write about it.  That's the demanding side of historical fiction, though in many ways it's no more demanding than the mastery of any other subject.  It's simply a matter of knowing your stuff.  Like any good communicator.

 

'Advice for Business Writers From a Master Storyteller' (The Business Writer Compilation No.1) [date unspecified]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of Australian novelist and historian CATHERINE JINKS:



http://catherinejinks.com/

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 164: CATHERINE JINKS

 

 

The Write Advice 175: THEA ASTLEY

 

 

The Write Advice 181: CATHERINE JINKS