it seems to be a day for memes

[fahye]

1. My username is fahye because a long, long time ago in a high school not very far away, I was just starting to befriend a group of people who watched Buffy and anime, and read manga, and all had something called a livejournal. When I persuaded them to give me an invite code (yeah, remember the days of invite codes?) I had to come up with a name on short notice. I'd been watching some Cowboy Bebop and liked the name Faye (and it started with the same letter as my real name, handily) but needed something to set it apart as a pseudonym. So I added a silent 'h'. SILENT. PLEASE NOTE. YOU PRONOUNCE IT EXACTLY LIKE 'FAYE'. JUST CLEARING THAT UP.

2. My journal is titled kicking at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight because it's in keeping with the PILOTS!!! theme of my LJ - it's a mutated line of lyrics from the Barenaked Ladies song 'Lovers In A Dangerous Time', which is a very piloty song indeed.

3. My subtitle is ancient and naïve astronomies because I came across this phrase in a book, years ago, and really, really loved it. The book was Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo, which is one of the most challenging and breathtaking books I've ever made my way through. It's....um...here, have a review:

In an attempt to save the world by communicating with aliens, an adolescent mathematical prodigy from the Bronx is enlisted by a group of mad scientists to decode a message from outer space--a planet known as Ratner's star. DeLillo's comic novel, influenced by Lewis Carroll's ALICE books, is infused with concepts from science, mathematics, and technology. DeLillo commented in an interview, "It seems to me that RATNER'S STAR is a book which is almost all structure. The structure of the book is the book. The characters are intentionally flattened and cartoonlike. I was trying to build a novel which was not only about mathematics to some extent but which itself would become a piece of mathematics."

DeLillo is such a freak. But as a scientist and a writer myself, this was...awe-inspiring.

4. My friends page is called Beautiful enemies because once again, I found it in a book! This time it was (I think; I'm not absolutely certain, though) from an essay/review called 'Kith' written by Robert Dessaix, my secret hero, and tucked away in a collection of stories, essays and reviews called (and so forth), which you should all buy immediately. It's a review of a Graham Little book, but also an essay about the power and joy of 'communicating friendships', friendships which are based on "adventurous, playful, dangerous talk over many hours or weeks or years between two people". He quotes the phrase 'beautiful enemies', originally from Ralph Waldo Emerson, as a flippant way of describing friends. I like it.

5. My default userpic is this one because it matches my layout. And come on, it's kinda clever :)

Comments

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Cowboy Bebop! Whee! Nice story. I would have guessed it was said like 'Faye' but it's good to be sure.

My journal is titled kicking at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight because it's in keeping with the PILOTS!!! theme of my LJ - it's a mutated line of lyrics from the Barenaked Ladies song 'Lovers In A Dangerous Time', which is a very piloty song indeed.
Ohhh, very piloty indeed!

Robert Dessaix is your secret hero?! Yay! He is so elegantly erudite. I have not read all his works but have greatly enjoyed the ones I have.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Yes! I adore his writing - sometime's he's a little too self-aware of his own cleverness, but I read Night Letters and immediately set out to track down more of his stuff. Which have you read? I liked Corfu a lot, but my favourite book of his is the memoir, A Mother's Disgrace.

Eeeee. I hardly EVER meet anyone who has heard of Dessaix :D

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

I've read Corfu (which I loved) and Night Letters (which has faded from my memory but I remember liking it a lot at the time. I haven't read his memoir.

I hardly EVER meet anyone who has heard of Dessaix :D
Hee! It helps that I'm Australian. :-)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

It helps that I'm Australian

Even so! I keep seeing copies of Night Letters at secondhand book stalls and wanting to buy them simply on principle. Actually, it is one of the great indignantcies of my life that four of my absolute favourite books seem to appear ubiquitously at secondhand places.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

It's true. It's everywhere. *lol* If it makes you feel any better it was always on the holds shelf when I worked at the university library. *g* That's where I read it--I used to read the stuff on the holds shelf while waiting for people to come to the desk.

And now I'm dying to know what your other three favourite books are!

[fahye.livejournal.com]

The other three are Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow by Peter Hoeg, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes and The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.

I have a handful of other favourite books, but these are the ones that I keep seeing. And feeling affronted on behalf of.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Ohh, interesting! Those are all books I enjoyed but wasn't wildly crazy over. The English Patient would probably be my favourite out of all three. But they are definitely books I'd recommend to people. And yes, they crop up on secondhand stalls A LOT. *pats them*

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I also see Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck sometimes, but whenever I do I buy it and send it to someone as a gift :D

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Ooh, also! I'm coming down to Melbourne with my mother & brother in August, to see Anthony Warlow's Phantom, and my mother and I are planning in doing some shopping. We're both serious secondhand-bookstore nuts - do you have any recommendations?

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, most definitely! I will lookie out a list for you. (Off the top of my head is no good because I think of them as 'that little one on the corner of Rathdowne near the gelati shop', etc. *g*)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Centralish would be good? Or at least around Prahran, as we always seem to end up fashion-hunting on Chapel St.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

OK! I work on Chapel--not the best place for secondhand books, alas. But there's a great one in St Kilda? Otherwise I'll stick to CBD-ish ones.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

My knowledge of Melbourne geography is disgraceful (I was born there, but never lived there past the age of 2), but I think St Kilda should be fine - easily accessible by public transport, at least!

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Yup! It's one suburb further than Prahran basically. It is a very good shop. Although small, it chooses its books very well and I invariably find something I want there.

[proggrrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this...I love hearing our "origin stories"...*g*

(Oh and btw I LOVE DON DELILLO! Pattern Recognition and Americana are two of my faves...)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I haven't read those two! I read Ratner's Star and then The Body Artist, and then attempted to read Underworld but got distracted a couple of chapters in and forgot to read the rest before I had to return it to the library. IT'S SO HUGE. Intimidating.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Ironically, Dessaix himself could be a real battleground for us if I had criticism more constructive than "Sometimes I really, really wish someone would tie him up and whip him until all the préciosité bled out."

Notwithstanding you should post more Dessaix quotes because there are SO MANY good ones!

Did I tell you I got away with quoting Dessaix in my 40/40 "Thank you for getting so much out of my class!" final Politics & Memory paper?

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Srsly? What did you quote?

I would love an excuse to reread all of my Dessaix and sprinkle quotes liberally across the blogosphere. Holiday project?

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

It's not very exciting. Also I put lots of ellipses in it to keep it relevant to my paper.

"When you flew into Moscow airport in the old days – way back in the sixties and seventies . . . it was like arriving in a fairyland . . . Just hours before, you'd been in London or Helsinki where everyone had agreed that the sky was blue, that two plus two made four and that the newspapers were full of lies. Here, starting at Sheremetyevo airport, people looked you straight in the eye and assured you that the sky was purple, two plus two made five and the newspapers told the truth . . . The textbooks were full of fairytales, too, television broadcast nothing but fairytales, the cinema showed one fairytale after another and . . . We were living in a make-believe kingdom of heaven on earth . . . the truth about it was still hidden under a thick layer of myth and burnished lies, not all of them made up by Russians."

Holiday project indeed!