The Wide White Page

[snappydresser]

What... no Lovecraft?!

At the Mountains of Madness is da BOMB, yo!

Cheers!
YOPJ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Monroe" <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 4:39 PM
Subject: The Wide White Page


> Review: The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine
> Antarctica
> 11 November 2004
> Reviewed by KIM GRIGGS
> 
> Antarctica has long existed in the imagination. The
> ancient Greeks decided that there had to be a
> counterweight to the Arctic, and so its opposite was
> named the Antarctic.
> 
> Nowadays, the Antarctic is not quite so imaginary:
> Lonely Planet has produced a guidebook. But the
> remoteness of the coldest, driest and windiest place
> on Earth means that Antarctica has mostly been the
> preserve of scientists, heroic explorers and the
> occasional travel writer.
> 
> Bill Manhire, in editing the anthology The Wide White
> Page, offers another Antarctica: the Antarctic that
> writers imagine. 
> 
> His selection eschews, in the main, non-fiction and
> the work of writers who have been to Antarctica.
> Rather, we are offered a journey through centuries and
> genres, from Dante's account of Ulysses' last ocean
> voyage, to Ursula Le Guin's story of South American
> women who made it to the Pole first, to Monty Python's
> skit about Scott of the Sahara.
> 
> We are also treated to the mysterious end of Edgar
> Allan Poe's first book-length work of prose fiction,
> The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The
> next entry, An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne,
> provides one possible solution to Poe's mystery.
> Another gem is the story by German poet and short
> story writer Georg Heym, translated especially for
> this anthology, of a trio of South Pole explorers who,
> unlike Ernest Shackleton, decide to carry on to the
> Pole when they know they have no hope of making it
> back.
> 
> Manhire does include some writers who know Antarctica
> through experience, but avoids the obvious choices.
> The diary entry of Robert Falcon Scott is one that
> evokes small details of Antarctic life rather than the
> drama and sadness of the Englishman's better-known
> final entries. Modern-day visitors are also included:
> Manhire has selected two works by local poet Chris
> Orsman, one of New Zealand's first Artists to
> Antarctica. 
> 
> Manhire ends the anthology with his own Visiting Mr
> Shackleton, a hilarious collection of comments he
> found in the visitors' book at Shackleton's hut at
> Cape Royds.
> 
> Tempting those uninitiated into the fascinations of
> Antarctica is the stunning cover, the pale blue edge
> of the Barne Glacier. Inside, though, the images are
> again those of the imagination. 
> 
> A Gawrey Extended for Flight portrays a flying woman
> who appears in a 1751 novel by Robert Paltock.
> Paltock's hero, sailor Peter Wilkins, meets and
> marries his Gawrey, a woman whose wings can also be
> handily reconfigured to enable her to float. Equably
> fanciful is The Creation of Antarctic Light by "Ern
> Malley", a collage that was, in fact, by Harold
> Stewart - Malley being the creation of Stewart and
> James McAuley, in one of Australia's most infamous
> literary hoaxes (and the inspiration for Peter Carey's
> novel My Life as a Fake).
> 
> Each entry Manhire has chosen is complemented by
> explanatory notes that often include interesting
> asides about Antarctica, a mark of Manhire's lifelong
> interest in the continent. Everyone, according to
> Thomas Pynchon, has an Antarctica; The Wide White Page
> puts on offer an elegant choice.
> 
> http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3092427a4501,00.html
> 
> 
> 
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