The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 24th September 2003
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 2
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News
Radio Gutenberg Update
3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
4) Mailing list information
Editorial
Hello,
A short little number this week. I think we must have used up all the
special material in the past few weeks. However, I know that there are
some superb books in the pipeline, and I also know that we are now
looking at the possibility of hitting that 10,000 mark by October
15th. I saw a message on a volunteer board earlier that said 'surely,
it can't be that easy'. Gentle reader, I leave it to you to decide.
Happy reading,
Alice
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2) News and Comment
Other news items this week
Music - Help with Finale and Sibelius
Joel Erickson* is trying to convert the current music files in PG from
Finale format, into Sibelius format. There's only one problem. He
could really use help from someone who has a copy of Finale 2002
(apparently, 2003 just doesn't cut the mustard) to do this. If you
think you can help Joel in any way, please mail him at Joel at
oneporpoise.com, or mail us here at the newsletter and we will pass
your message along.
-----------------------------
Project Gutenberg is interested digitized music in all forms. We
have a large-format scanner suitable for sheet music, and have
released musical scores in Finale and MusicXML formats. We would
welcome MIDI, Lilypond, and other formats (Photoscore (.opt),
NIFF(.nif), SCORE page(.mus, .pag, .pge) and Sibelius 6/7 (.s7)), as
well. Visit:
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/music
for our current sheet music offerings and files available for
processing. Contemporary scores (with copyright permission) and
older musical plays would also be of interest. As for all
Project Gutenberg items, the first step is to get copyright
clearance (http://beryl.ils.unc.edu/copy.html).
-----------------------------
Library for sale
Charles Norton, a Cincinnati resident, Mark Twain scholar and former
librarian is moving into a retirement community. His 11,000 volume
personal library (including 800 books by or about Mark Twain) is up for
sale. A URL is given below for more information, there is no
information in the article as to how many of these might be pre-1923.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/09/13/loc_twainscholar13.html
Many thanks to Ken Reeder for this item
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* Apologies to Joel for getting his name wrong last week.
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Radio Gutenberg Update
http://www.radio-gutenberg.com
Radio Gutenberg is currently off the air.
If you are interested in creating a slide-show with a soundtrack
from your favourite book, or piece of literature please mail us here
at news@pglaf.org and we will pass your message on.
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Improved Service
In a bid to make the newsletter more helpful to readers who may be
using screen reading software. We are able to offer the booklisting in
a different format to make your life a little easier. An example of
the changed listing is given below. If you would like either a daily
or weekly version of this list please email news@pglaf.org, and state
which version you require.
{Note to the unwary: this is an example.}
34 NEW ETEXTS FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG US
A Complete Grammar of Esperanto, by Ivy Kellerman Mar 2005[esperxxx.xxx]7787
The Female Gamester, by Gorges Edmond Howard Apr 2005[fmgstxxx.xxx]7840
[Subtitle: A Tragedy]
A Primary Reader, by E. Louise Smythe Apr 2005[preadxxx.xxx]7841
[Also posted: illustrated HTML, zipped only - pread10h.zip]
The Rise of Iskander, by Benjamin Disraeli Apr 2005[?riskxxx.xxx]7842
[7-bit version with non-accented characters in 7risk10.txt and 7risk10.zip]
[8-bit version with accented characters in 8risk10.txt and 8risk10.zip]
[rtf version with accented characters in 8risk10r.rtf and 8risk10r.zip]
[rtf version has numbered paragraphs; txt version has no paragraph numbers]
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3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
F Scott Fitzgerald
What happened to the Jazz-Age generation? A newspaper reporter once
asked Francis Scott Fitzgerald. He answered "Some became brokers and
threw themselves out of windows. Others became bankers and shot
themselves. Still others became newspaper reporters. And a few became
successful authors."
Nowadays he fits completely into the last category. Faulkner,
Hemingway and Fitzgerald are symbols of American Literature in the
20th Century. But in the year 1940, when he died in Hollywood from the
heart attack provoked by prolonged alcoholism, the obituaries were
mourning more about the unfulfilled promises than about the premature
death of the genius.
F. Scott Fitzgerald went to Hollywood in 1937, when his life was
already reaching its nadir. His wife Zelda was permanently in
psychiatric hospitals, his financial situation was not far from
catastrophe, he was a heavy and unhappy drinker, already buried by
critics as another gone-off talent and literature has-been. His
self-characteristic in his 1935 'Crack-Up' essays was a -cracked
plate. And the typical passage from this depression stimulated work
is "Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in
actual destitution or physical suffering. This is an all-weather
beatitude for gloom in general, but at 3 o'clock in the morning the
cure doesn't work-- and in a real dark night of the soul it is always
3 o'clock in the morning."
'Tender is the Night' published a year before the essays (and entered
to PG Australia this week) despite its calmer and more uncertain
ending, has the same air of decline, since the troubles and
unsettledness were marked his life a for long time. You can find
those black marks during 7 long years in Europe, which ended with his
wife Zelda's breakdown in 1930. Customary debts and broken friendship
were another American literature pillar of 20th century living at
that time in Old World. The Fitzgeralds sailed to Europe in 1924 in
search for new excitements and a hopefully less expensive life. They
deliberately took the unlicensed ship and on its sober boards the 30
years old Francis, yet full of energy and willpower, finished the
'The Great Gatsby'. But again it already was not a very happy time -
the debts were deep, and the failure of the play 'Vegetable' in 1923
followed the reasonable success of 'Tales of the Jazz Age' in 1922.
And even in 1920, immediately after the tremendous success of his
first big work 'This Side of Paradise', Fitzgerald was traveling along
Broadway in an open-top car. It was a warm, still night, and he was in
a heightened state of drunken exhilaration. The future seemed
infinitely inviting. Then, bafflingly, he began to cry - because "life
would never be so sweet again". Was it the self-fulfilled prophecy or
just normal reaction of sensitive nervous system to the alcoholic
intoxication, I can not say. It was hard to foretell the twillight in
1920 - he was 23 years old, praised by all critics and public as the
most promising contemporary American author and living the life as far
away from the grey surviving routine as possible. Same year he has
married Miss Zelda Sayre, daughter of Anthony D. Sayre, an Alabama
Supreme Court Justice, the girl who previously had broken their
engagement, due to fear of underfinanced life with young and poor
Francis. But strangely his words did came out true - the most
enjoyable years of his life were already over. Those were years spent
in the army (1917-1919) and before that in Princeton (1912-1917),
where he concentrated on the playwriting and having good time in
general. The constant shortness in finances was always in the air, but
the energy and talent were abundant, so the sorrows were sweet, the
nights tender and the conversations full of hidden sense and open fire
- Back there, on Christmas parties in 1914, 18-years old Francis met
and fall in love with lovely Ginevra King - future prototype for all
those witty, joyful young ladies dancing and flirting with southern
accent in his stories. He was 'handsome, insouciant and possessing
unusual gifts for story telling'.
Here I want to stop and let him stay at this moment of his life, as he
always wanted, instead of describing the childhood of a son of serial
bankrupt growing up in the wealthy neighborhood of St. Paul. Let's
leave it to the real biographers and just go and greet today the
Mollie McQuillan-Fitzgerald and Edward Fitzgerald with the birth of
their son Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, named so after the famous
ancestor from Mollie's side - Francis Scott Key, composer of "The Star
Spangled Banner. The newborn is screaming and others are smiling. And
actually they are right - the great talent was born today - on 24th of
September 1896 in the privet home at 481 Laurel Avenue, St. Paul.
Internet:
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/ - has many interesting documents,
including obituaries, voice and film clips etc. Amongst them the test
of 'Romantic Egotist' - the novel that Fitzgerald wrote during the
service in the army and which was then transformed to 'This Side of
Paradise'. It has also lovely small collection of his short stories
(follow the writings link for this
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/writings.html ), that will bring the
splash of the hot lazy wind of South on your face chilled under the
air-conditioner.
The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art
jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified the
rigor of the bath of light. The Butterworth and Larkin houses flanking
were intrenched behind great stodgy trees; only the Happer house took
the full sun, and all day long faced the dusty road-street with a
tolerant kindly patience. This was the city of Tarleton in
southernmost Georgia, September afternoon.
Up in her bedroom window Sally Carrol Happer rested her
nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched Clark
Darrow's ancient Ford turn the corner. The car was hot-- being partly
metallic it retained all the heat it absorbed or evolved -- and Clark
Darrow sitting bolt upright at the wheel wore a pained, strained
expression as though he considered himself a spare part, and rather
likely to break. He laboriously crossed two dust ruts, the wheels
squeaking indignantly at the encounter, and then with a terrifying
expression he gave the steering-gear a final wrench and deposited self
and car approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a
plaintive heaving sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence;
and then the air was rent by a startling whistle.
Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily. She started to yawn, but finding
this quite impossible unless she raised her chin from the window-sill,
changed her mind and continued silently to regard the car, whose owner
sat brilliantly if perfunctorily at attention as he waited for an
answer to his signal. After a moment the whistle once more split the
dusty air.
"Good mawnin'."
With difficulty Clark twisted his tall body round and bent a distorted
glance on the window.
"'Tain't mawnin', Sally Carrol."
"Isn't it, sure enough?"
"What you do in'?"
"Eatin' 'n apple."
"Come on go swimmin'-- want to?"
"Reckon so."
"How 'bout hurryin' up?"
"Sure enough."
Sally Carrol sighed voluminously and raised herself with profound
inertia from the floor, where she had been occupied in alternately
destroying parts of a green apple and painting paper tops for her
younger sister. She approached a mirror, regarded her expression with
a pleassd and pleasant languor, dabbed two spots of rouge on her lips
and a grain of powder on her nose, and covered her bobbed corn-colored
hair with a rose littered sun bonnet. Then she kicked over the
painting water, said, "Oh, damn!" -- but let it lay-- and left the room.
Gali Sirkis
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Credits
Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
booklists. Thierry, Gali, Greg, Michael, and Larry Wall. Entertainment
for the workers provided by the local council public meeting about
climate change.
pgweekly_2003_09_24_part_2.txt
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