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AGAVE PRESS

On the Blog

THE PELICAN FLIES AGAIN

27/4/2014
PictureThe bird's new look
By Deb A.

Thirty years ago, the pelican became extinct. Hardly a peep was heard from the Audubon.

This May, in what is more a miracle of modern readership than Jurassic Park-style DNA revival, it will soar the proverbial skies once more.

Begotten of penguins –more specifically, Penguin Books – the Pelican imprint, like its parent, helped make good literature that was previously the preserve of the upper classes available to the mass market. Pelican Books was hatched in 1937, just two years after Penguin had been founded to offer titles such as A Farewell To Arms and The Great Gatsby at irresistibly reasonable prices.

Its goal was to leave the entertainment to Penguin and instead focus on educating readers on contemporary issues. The distinct Penguin colour block style in Pelican-only light blue and white flew (apologies) off the shelves starting with the very first title, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism by George Bernard Shaw. Sigmund Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life sold out completely within a week in 1938. The trend continued for nearly a half-century, but Pelican books eventually fell out of fashion and, subsequently, out of existence.

Pelican books – whether sticking haphazardly out of a back pocket or casually lining a living room wall – were a signifier of (real or projected) intelligence and a willingness to engage with new ideas, much as, decades later, the first white earbuds indicated a passion for music and technology (and a sizable disposable income). As the pelican mimics the phoenix and rises from the ashes of its predecessor, it will be interesting to see whether it will once again become an icon in homes, residence rooms and back pockets around the world.

The first title of the new Pelican series, an original work called Economics: A User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang, will be released next month. Five books are set to be published each year.

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THE MAGIC OF GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

20/4/2014
PictureGabriel García Márquez
image: Miguel Tovar/AP via The Guardian
By Deb A.

It is rare for an author to win both critical acclaim and the love–fleeting or otherwise– of an international audience. As a pioneer of magical realism and an enchanting storyteller whose works came to define a continent, Gabriel García Márquez was able to reach even deeper: as news spread of his death, individuals around the world gathered to mourn the man whose books changed their lives.

What could follow now is a long list of public figures and their social media tributes, a touching collection of the proclamations made by regular lovers of literature, or a standard synopsis of Mr. García Márquez's life... but there can be no words more moving than those of the man himself. This, after all, is a man who brought magic to reality, and helped us all believe.

On behalf of Agave Magazine: Thank-you, Gabriel García Márquez.


She had just begun when Amaranta noticed that Remedios the Beauty was covered all over by an intense paleness.

"Don't you feel well?" she asked her.

Remedios the Beauty, who was clutching the sheet by the other end, gave a pitying smile.

"Quite the opposite," she said, "I never felt better."

She had just finished saying it when Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace on her petticoats and she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant in which Remedios the Beauty began to rise. Úrsula, almost blind at the time, was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving good-bye in the midst of the flapping sheets that rose up with her, abandoning with her the environment of beetles and dahlias and passing through the air with her as four o'clock in the afternoon came to an end, and they were lost forever with her in the upper atmosphere where not even the highest-flying birds of memory could reach her.

From One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez (1926-2014).

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WRITER'S BLOCK

13/4/2014
By Deb A.
PicturePen and Paper Club
"To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write."
                                                                                                                                   —Gertrude Stein


Most people who have found themselves slowly growing desperate as the cursor gently flashes on an empty white screen, or crumpling yet another sheet of paper, blank but for a scrawl of doodles in a corner, are familiar with the phenomenon of writer's block. Throughout the years, professional writers have been asked about how they deal with the sensation of having nothing to say. Some give advice, some share their personal experiences, some offer only contempt. Whose side are you on?

Sympathy

Margaret Atwood
"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."

Neil Gaiman
“Put it aside for a few days, or longer, do other things, try not to think about it. Then sit down and read it (printouts are best I find, but that’s just me) as if you’ve never seen it before. Start at the beginning. Scribble on the manuscript as you go if you see anything you want to change. And often, when you get to the end you’ll be both enthusiastic about it and know what the next few words are. And you do it all one word at a time.”

Ernest Hemingway
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”

Mark Twain
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

Scorn

Norman Mailer
“Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.”

Alexander McCall Smith
“Writer’s block is a load of nonsense – I’ve always been a bit suspicious of it. It’s more likely to be a symptom of depression or maybe they’ve just got nothing interesting to say. Using your imagination to create a work of fiction involves exercising the mind and the more you do it, the more adept you become. I go to Botswana for a couple of weeks a year and I just open my eyes to the opportunities in everyday life. Most of my writing is what I have in the bank of memories I’ve accumulated.”

Terry Pratchett
“There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.”

Philip Pullman
"Writer’s block is a condition that affects amateurs and people who aren’t serious about writing. So is the opposite, namely inspiration, which amateurs are also very fond of. Putting it another way: a professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they’re not inspired as when they are.”

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PETER MATTHIESSEN, 1927-2014

6/4/2014
By Deb A.
“There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier,
that's deteriorating before our eyes. I feel a deep sorrow that my kids will never get to see what I've seen,
and their kids will see nothing; there's a deep sadness whenever I look at nature now.” 
― Peter Matthiessen, "Wildlife in America"
It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
― Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2013
PicturePeter Matthiessen
viaThe Guardian

Award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction. Environmentalist. World traveler. Political activist. Zen Buddhist. Spy. Very few individuals can lay claim to even half of these titles; Peter Matthiessen held them all.


The author of over 30 books, including "The Snow Leopard" and "At Play in the Fields of the Lord", died yesterday of leukemia at the age of 86. His literary legacy is a winding one that includes The Paris Review – he co-founded the legendary literature review as a cover during his brief stint with the CIA – and National Book Awards in both fiction (for "Shadow Country") and nonfiction ("The Snow Leopard").

Fiction remained Matthiessen's true love, yet, despite his rejection of the title of 'nature writer', he was just as widely celebrated for his lyrical nonfiction, which was firmly anchored in the theme of nature and the havoc wreaked upon it by human beings. 

Peter Matthiessen's final novel, "In Paradise", will be published April 8th.

“The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not.
The mountains have no "meaning," they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life,
and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this,
not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed,
knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.” 
― Peter Matthiessen, "The Snow Leopard"
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"chatroom by the light of the real moon" BY TIM JURNEY

4/4/2014
By Deb A.

Dear Readers.

It's here! We are proud to premiere "chatroom by the light of the real moon" by Agave Magazine contributor Tim Jurney.  Enjoy!


chatroom by the light of the real moon

hey,
said the cemetery which is where i was
which is not facebook but i treat it like the internet anyway
         talk about myself to an audience of slackjaws
which is also where i heard this voice that was like

hey,
and i was like hi, who is it,
and it was like hey so try again,
and it was you
         but also the graveyard which is like language, really
         words but also –
and so i was like nope, thanks, we tried,
and it was like k but you buried that body a while ago,

hey,
here is the body come look, come see your fingers,
         how they sink into the loam,
and i was like
         stillness,
         because the space bar gives you time to pause
         if you keep hitting it then something is happening
         you can’t see it but like breaths are taken
and i was like

hey,
ok, my lungs do quicken at the sight of thee,
         is that Bardlike, do you want Bardlike,
let’s be real i was crushing hard again
lungs
crushing out again in again,
babbling on again,
dead people dancing around again,
         or was that the movie
         in my brain again,

hey,
i said to the cemetery which is where i was,
put it on facebook and tag yourself too because then you might see that
while you were dreaming you were also there talking,
         through unlit screens of stone gravemarkers,

hey,
i said to the cemetery which was you,
i think we should try again, and you were like
         stillness, because you were mostly just sleeping
         in a bed far away and you were mostly unconscious,
         and only your lungs were speaking and they were like

hey,


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