Skip to main content

The Platypus in 2017

As Counting Crows tells us it's been one long December, but there's reason to believe maybe next year will be better than the last. I suppose by now I can say that I successfully got out of the canyon, Hollywood, and all that. So, aside from surviving Harvey, what occurred here at Platypus of Truth?

Well, for starters, this year has been the least productive of posts since I started blogging. There are some outside reasons for that: new job, shorter summer, travel to see relatives, Harvey. There are also internal reasons. Unlike previous years, 2017 wasn't given over to reviewing books so much as to learning how to watch film. A new discipline means more time spent on organizing my thoughts and less time spent on writing. 2017 also saw an uptick in artwork on the blog as I began attempting to work in new mediums, particularly digital ones. Finally, I spent the year barfing out a lot of bad Eliot as free verse seemed the best way to get my thoughts out. There were other kinds of writing too (Powerpoints, Greek study, notes on Rome and Egypt), but they all went into the job rather than the blog.

At face value, 2018 isn't promising to be any different from 2017. We all know that doesn't mean much. This blog has always been about whatever happens to be on my mind at a given time. It is in that sense truly a "web log"; a sort of public journal. That may make it eclectic, but it also keeps things fresh. After all, who can tell where thought may take us? So as we close down 2017, here's looking forward to new adventures in the next year at Platypus of Truth!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane: The Platypus Reads Part CCLII

I needed a break from A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (too many authors and too many styles coming in too fast) so I decided to turn back to an author whose work I've enjoyed exploring: Robert E. Howard.  This time, however, I decided to skip over Howard's famous Conan yarns and instead take a look at one of his earlier creations, Solomon Kane.  The idea of a puritan occult detective was too intriguing to pass up.  I have the whole collection of Kane's tales and I do intend to blog them all.  Right now, my little literary detour has only encompassed the first two short stories so I'm going to record my thoughts on them right away and get back to the rest as I have time. Skulls in the Stars Solomon Kane makes his debut with this classic bit of English Gothic including a haunted moor, a vengeful ghost, and a solitary miser.   Howard's Kane fits the portrait of the archetypal puritan: grim, principled, metaphysical, with an iron sense of right and wrong.  I h...

A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (Cont.): The Platypus Reads Part CCLI

Wow, it's hard to read anthologies at anything other than a slow crawl.  The change from author to author and style to style is exhausting.  Slowing down is a good thing, though, if it makes time for reflection.  That seems like one good reason to create an anthology: to force readers to slow down and reflect. With that as a preamble, let's move on to today's selections. The Black Ferris by Ray Badbury I didn't expect to see this Sci-Fi heavy hitter in a Fantasy collection, but there you go.  I've tried to get into Bradbury once or twice and failed.  His Martian Chronicles , in particular, resisted all my best efforts.  This short story, however, worked like a charm.  The sense of atmosphere in particular is masterfully done (a sort of Tom Sawyer strays into Edgar Allan Poe).  My only complaint is that there isn't more of it, but apparently Bradbury already fixed that by expanding the story into Something Wicked This Way Comes. This raise...

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...