Ellen Quinn
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- Ellen Quinn grew up in the north of England. During her student years studying geography and teaching, she travelled all over, loving the different cultures and ways of life she encountered as she went.
Ellen settled down as a teacher working with underprivileged children and those with special needs. She paused to have her children, which became a complete halt as her eyesight deteriorated. As a teacher she would always tell stories; some say the Irish are good storytellers. This may be where this ability came from, as Ellen has a good deal of Irish ancestry.
As teaching was no longer a viable option, Ellen turned her story telling to story writing. Picking her favourite subjects, hot, handsome heroes, loveable, reckless rogues and erotic sizzling romance, she began her new career.
Ellen also combined it with her love of all things geographical as she redesigned the coast of Scotland to house all her characters. The Queen may have something to say about this, but as Ellen isn't telling please keep her secret.
Ellen now lives with her four children, her dog Angus (named after the lead guitarist in one of her favourite rock bands), her four cats and the rabbit — oh, and not forgetting her husband, spending most of the day running round after them.
But once the sun goes down you'll find her running away on her keyboard with those gorgeous heroes and lovable rogues, spinning stories of love, romance and hot, hot, hot sex!
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Besprekingen
Statistieken
- Werken
- 16
- Leden
- 34
- Populariteit
- #413,653
- Waardering
- 3.4
- Besprekingen
- 1
- ISBNs
- 14
Well, could this be the first review written on an iPad with the Apple keyboard dock? (Bet it is. I'm writing on April 25, 2010, and the keyboard was just released.) Appropriate for this book, where all sorts of language artifacts mingle with the usual writer's voice, including the 01 attached to the whimsical, faintly dada, faintly machine-language, faintly internet-password title.
Tan Lin is a real discovery, except that I can't say I made it: the book was recommended by a student, Kristi McGuire. Lin is a combination of language poetry, concrete poetry, the insouciance of pop (after Frank O'Hara), the aleatoric collage of the legible and illegible (as in John Ashbery), and -- most unusual, most important -- passages of intense affect, which remind me more of Tsvetaeva than anyone closer in culture or space.
The book (or book-length poem, or visual composition) begins with a wonderful manifesto in verse, which is all about how language works for the eye, and how dedicated line-by-line reading isn't appropriate any more than formal scanning. "The surface is beautiful because it can be forgotten one moment at a time," he writes, and adds some throwaway lines about the pretensions of literature "and especially poetry," which "are fundamentally false forms of excitation and dread." Despite those moments, the manifesto is a wonderful piece of work, and manages to float between the conventional disavowals of abstraction and the equally tired disavowals of neo-realism. (Not to mention the extremely tired disavowals of Necronautical literature.) A footnote names several dozen writers who have influenced him, listed in a faux-English was with first names initialed: "A. Warhol, M. LacNeice, S. Tomkins, b flieschman, W. Pater," etc. It's clearly an art-world orbit we're in, but the writing goes in other directions.
So this is not a book to be read in any normal sense, but it miraculously manages not to fall into the doldrums that artists' books are so prone to, when after the first few pages, the pattern or trick or manner of the book is clear, and there is no longer a reason to keep reading. Here two things kept me going: Tan Lin's very strong grasp of larger-scale structures, so that pages and even longer units cohere and resonate; and his occasional, but intense, affective strength. It can't be quoted here because it depends on layout ("surface"), but it contains lines like this:
as white as milk 02
and not milk 02
spare me the strength to leave you 01
when you were born you looked so cute all dres
sed up in your birthday suit
as green as grass
and not grass
Passages like this, with their weird mixture of felt confessional voice, slant allusions to "Death Fugue" and Rimbaud, and random alphanumeric blips, are something genuinely new.
But in fairness, my three stars, and the sketchiness of this review, reflect my sense that there are many passages in this long book where voice of any sort -- mechanical, affective and confessional, random or aleatoric -- gives way to combinations of relatively uninteresting formal and "surface" plays, clearly written quickly, apparently in the hope or belief that white noise, static, and meaningless "surface" are, after all, part of life, and therefore invitations for the reader to fill in, do some writing or musing or theorizing. But slack, randomized, unlabored passages aren't necessarily expressive, inviting, fertile or fruitful, or even intermittently compelling, and they don't even necessarily evoke everyday wandering consciousness, the dispersed writer's voice, or semi-random acts of attention. Sketched-in passages need to be watched carefully, especially if they are intended to elicit a sense of the writer not watching his work as carefully as older senses of narrative and the novel might lead a reader to expect.
In the original version of these notes I wrote that Tan Lin has potential if he reins in the loose leash of his language. Otherwise, I thought, he will not be read, "read," or even "'read,'" except by people with an infinitely expandable sense of what reading is -- a sense that would just as likely bring them to read phone books, text dumps, and other semi-automated, collaged, or random sources of text and pattern.
I quoted some randomly generated texts from a website that produces lorem ipsum altenrates; I've put that at the end here, after three asterisks. Revisiting this review three years later, I'd put it differently: it turns out Tan Lin's readers do in fact prefer reading phone books, etc., and Tan Lin himself has said as much about himself. So these thought continue on the Writing with Images site. (writingwithimages.com)
* * *
Here's the fabulous random lorem ipsum genrator I quoted in the original version of my notes. Of course it's completely different from Tan Lin's book, as different as two texts can be -- but I prefer it to Blipsoak02:
http://www.hintplus.com/alterlorem.php
And just in case that site goes down, but not, again, to imply any symmetry, here's what the site generates:
Amarantin troughing octactinal peoplish flamineous jeel mortlake disglut. Ethenic tubuliform armipotence's pantellerite unprocreate cessor understem postlabial preexpressive circovarian unironical predismissal's steatin echeneis semibasement periaxillary bartram nicolo. Bespill besprinkler polypheme preconformity hoihere backfisch katalyzer's. Stresser hosecock's philobotanic ymolten reforget inerroneous befoaming unimpassionate vaginervose gullishness armsize hyperlipoidemia. Phasm apoplexes whitsun superdubiousness xw's quickwittednesses khakanship formel lithoglyptics biphenylene abomasusi extradict. Whimsic quiveriest untalking unwakening canonizant muscoidea stopwork shakefork enmoved phyllostomatoid postea. Rhombovate apocynthions arteriasis chiliomb gaumier kirri overmeticulousness, phalacrocoracidae perstringement oughtlins intervolution's centrobarical inshoot dihydronicotine canceleer. Territorian mottier pointrel reown bronchohemorrhagia shiggaion unexpunged inenubilable toadier omentulum hydromonoplane ilvaite astigmometer's coprostanol virginalling crewmanship paytamine interparietale.
Oxyhaloid lookahead hologastrula parapherna hedgesmith rablin purgery overcredit acraspedote undetestably interplicate demihuman. Sublaryngeally beneighbored repulpit plantarium phytotopographical preallying overaffirmation ganapati aum reencloses signetur cancion prickshot splanchnicectomy. Hyperemization grandeval harrycane glochidian workgirls charpit epiky nonrecurently, korrigum reabandoned ephyrula inconditional unpublic. Elbower dopastat unhideably bateful subwar's taoiseachs longwork, mobulidae reinvolvement's, unoffset yoky antiannexation scrowdging walkene steelwares marli ghibelline.
Cobhead semipause grager's gaslightness antergic clairseacher hypocarpium berust overelliptical urinometric wheatstalk bata radioparent sundrymen depilous dumpled namaycush. Subtribal precompilation's photohalide rita's stallment megalopterous insulize buisting ovariosalpingectomy sorose seminebulous cognosced nonfarcicality yoofs eulysite doigt outnighting, prechoroid gekkonid oblating. Abstort outbreath hysteriac circumocular antimensia contrude. Unoffensiveness luxembourger sesquisulphides unforbiddenly spintherism trichiniases prestimulus's subcontractings fantasmagorically, deuteranomalStremmas suitored globousness mebendazole dentiphone's laton oligocarpous tarepatch esiphonal antimoralism's radiodontics kette feudovassalism. Euripides pruigo poesis podogynium unanalyzing anthracoxen reamalgamation's sternbergia refallow phocidae kights actinograph's cercidiphyllum osteoplaque. Counterside anilinism tabstop precompelling muscicole. Voisinages presavagery's licham megamere peirce blennoid nondemonstrativeness comism.
Preinducement unerratic ischiorrhogic preascetic overinflationary sanjakate helmetpod befurred intermeeting mercuriate preallies uneschewed babylonian thoroughsped. Maletote rushgrass turncoatism dacninae cryptobiotic ingeners cosmosophy overnicenesses. Overobeseness's splatterdash burtree birdwoman corruptingly mastopathy's kashubian moellons encoil empoverished molluscousness westnorthwestwardly locomobilities blockheadism stroboradiograph's uncruelness especialness's koromiko burrfish's. Formicine tonnell bechatter stranglings poetryless reducent oilmongery kisswise curiescopy overdistort, lonelihood's reperform supraclavicle. Demidolmen sarcelled subfractional moloker needsome unmultiplying myxocystoma preferredness's organer guze periligamentous. Leaseman collutory dendritiform nonprospect's dacryuria concional thersites fluigramme balantidiasis unexalting polypaged pseudomorphia monodactylism's umimpeded recarved bromoiodide easternly epigaea ethine's unadaptabness's. Araneidal pulvinarian outstrutted regioide overnationalized homiliaries knapsculls vetoistic spirillaceous demethylchlortetracycline's papalty trinitro. Gorgeret inserviceable passionative enregistration underfeeling mahsur parentdom chevesne nonbelieiver schinus pezophaps cyclitis mcintosh pulvinulus, ragamuffinism incorporatedness's pyche dier.
Cocao hyperscholastically macrocephalus's severalness firstship disconform prorebate exagitate unmarbleize quinamidine nonbenevolently colpeurysis joseite polypifer cephaline bilinite mudweed undegeneracy's, konohiki noncoming. Saigon paralithodes wroaths neednt ciniphes diisatogen exomphalous unrepugnable saturnali epenla prehalter sweethearting meck's nonluminousness epinicial anaglyptics. Piperonyl unpreposterously aranein duodedenums triketone linten rheophile reducent subterfluous unproportionedness typtology superdonation, overhaughtily uncleave unwittingnesses scotal madrassa proganosaur haida predisposable. Bedcase keksyes tuberculination markery plasticly subendothelial pollyanna encyclopediacal. Apoferritin's deuteroscopies brasts misexpressive chorises pylic abscision unambulant southcottian antroscopy ventrimeson biverb sootproof lapstreaked.
Oaxaca noncoagulability treaclinesses ladner ischiocavernosus. Battutas chattererz endevil dreamage hypergalactosis scribbleable sturshum, browsier, unsmoulderingly peganite turma lyons noseburn argillomagnesian. Pickpenny nonport coinhabit eatages dilatableness tannogen servolab roratorio fiard dreamlikeness understage myringectomy perfrication capsuliferous coyan brickmason amphorous steepdowne pinnatedly. Tenostosis nonasbestine subformativeness nauger untributary.
Entirely different from Tan Lin, yes, but it's a kind of text I tend to read with pleasure. Part of the intermittent lack of pleasure in "Blipsoak01" is not knowing when the relative lack of pleasure is intended to be received as lack of pleasure. At least this text was generated by a computer.… (meer)