Words of the Month: Apocalyptic Post

         I’m not usually a fan of the post-apocalyptic, but I just finished a draft of a short story featuring a cataclysm, so naturally it’s on my mind that our words for enormous disasters come from some interestingly diverse roots.

        The cataclysm of my new story is a flood, and that’s really where all cataclysms originated.  Coming to English from French (which got it from Latin, which got it from Greek) in the sixteenth century, the word originally meant “flood, deluge” and referred especially to Noah’s flood in the Bible.  A deluge, therefore, is the truest sort of cataclysm, and rising sea levels would also certainly count.

        Disaster itself means literally “ill-starred,” coming from the astrological belief that the stars affect events on Earth.  (Previously mentioned in my post From the Stars.)  Thus the truest sort of disaster might be an asteroid collision.

        Apocalypse also comes from the Bible, but unlike a giant flood, it wasn’t originally a disaster at all.  Its roots literally mean “revelation, disclosure, insight.”  This should be a good thing, right?  But the prevalence of end-of-the-world visions in Christian apocalyptic writings eventually meant that when people think of the word “apocalypse,” they think of the end of the world.  However, the general meaning of “any huge disaster” is very recent indeed: not until the 1980s or 90s.  The truest sort of apocalypse would be any sort of “end times” scenario, including perhaps World War III.

        The catastrophe of a Greek drama is the turning point, at which expectations are overturned, and events wind up to their end.  Classical Greek drama being what it is, the roots of the word mean literally a “down-turn,” so it’s not unexpected that the sense of “catastrophe” should have extended between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries into a sudden disaster.  The truest sort of a catastrophe might be something that reads like the tragic irony of Greek drama, so I’m going with climate catastrophe: we’ve known it’s coming but can’t seem to turn ourselves aside from it.  On the other hand, if we really want a turning point, I think pulling back from the brink for a happy ending would certainly qualify!

        Another turning point is the crisis, but this one comes from medicine and its root in Greek means “the decisive point in the progress of a disease.”  Its meaning had broadened by around 1620 to any “decisive moment at which change must come, for better or worse.”  It’s important to note that a crisis is a climax moment that is just as likely to turn towards triumph as towards failure, and yet in our modern pessimistic way, we just about always use the word “crisis” to denote a purely negative disaster.  In the disastrous sense, therefore, the truest crisis should be a pandemic.

        Calamity entered English by the 1550s, from a Latin word for “damage, loss, failure” and also “disaster, misfortune.”  Interestingly, no one knows where the Latin word came from, which means I can’t tell you what the truest sort of calamity might be.

        Of course the English language includes dozens of synonyms for tragic events of suffering and destruction, but I think this relatively short list covers all those that seem to imply a truly epic or even global scale.

        You probably know by now that I’m unwilling or unable to write anything too dark, and this short story I’ve been working on is poignant rather than harrowing.  No doubt some would accuse it of being “cozy catastrophe.”  At any rate, I chose today’s block print illustration to go with my story, rather than depicting a dystopian nightmare scene.  Perhaps someday the story will be ready to share, but for now all I have to share is apocalyptic etymology.

[Picture: Misty Marsh, wood block print by Lynita Shimizu (Image from shimizuwoodcuts.com).]

Davidson's Magic

         Andrew Davidson is a British artist who has done lots of really wonderful wood engravings as cover designs for books including quite a few sci fi and fantasy classics.  You can see some for Harry Potter and others in my prior post Davidson’s Fantastic Covers.  Today I have for you two more amazing fantasy wood engravings by Davidson.

        I’m assuming that these are illustrations of particular stories, although I don’t actually know that, let alone knowing what book they are intended to illustrate.  So I’m looking at them as individual free-standing glimpses that hint at wonderful stories I get to imagine for myself.  The first one seems like a classic fairy tale, in which some enterprising youngest son captures the sun itself, to be let out as part of the plan to win a princess…  The magnificent swoosh of light as the sun gets sucked into a bottle divides the sky into a world with light below and a sunless night sky above.  Davidson’s careful and detailed fine lines of engraving work perfectly to capture the nuance of light and shadow.

        The second piece is entitled “The Woman who Befriended Ghosts,” but if I didn’t know that title I think I would interpret this woman as encountering the characters from books.  Again, I don’t know the actual story behind the image, but I love the way the ghosts actually look transparent, but also rounded and active.  I love the details of the books, and how they turn to birds as they fly out the window.  The shadow of another specter outside the window may be a ghost that has yet to befriend our silhouetted woman - it’s a bit ominous.

        This sort of detail is simply not possible with rubber block printing, and I don’t have any ambitions of ever achieving this sort of look in my own work.  But I certainly admire it very much when Davidson does it!

[Pictures: The Man Who Bottled the Sun, wood engraving by Andrew Davidson, ca. 2018;

The Woman Who Befriended Ghosts, wood engraving by Davidson, ca. 2018 (Images from Society of Wood Engravers).]

36 More Views

         Last week I introduced Hokusai’s famous series of wood block prints “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji,” and today I’m going to share a few projects inspired by it.  The first and most obvious was another “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” by Utagawa Hiroshige (Japan, 1797-1858).  In fact, Hiroshige made not one but two sets of 36 views of Mount Fuji.  The series in 1852 was landscape (horizontal) format like Hokusai’s version about twenty years earlier.  Then in 1858 Hiroshige did another set in portrait (vertical) format.  These are my favorite of all!  Before Hokusai’s series, landscape had been a relatively uncommon theme for ukiyo-e wood block prints, but Hiroshige was so inspired that, in addition to his views of Mount Fuji, he’s even more famous for his “Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō” and “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.”

        I could do a whole post on Hiroshige’s Mount Fujis, no doubt, but I’ve restrained myself and selected just a few to share.  (If you want to see more, Wikipedia has a nice list of all 36 of the second set, although only about a third of the first set.)  Generally speaking their coloration is somewhat more subtle than Hokusai’s, and the compositions show a wider range of beautiful scenery, with less emphasis on people in the foreground.  I have included one here with a focus on people, and you can see the level of detail on the cherry blossoms.  I’ve also included just one of Hiroshige’s first series.  In my other examples you can see the emphasis on beautiful landscapes, and I’ve included the one to the left here because it’s particularly different  from most of Hiroshige’s and all of Hokusai’s.  The focus on natural details in the foreground makes for a very different kind of picture.

        Hokusai’s “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” reached Europe some time around 1856, and his wood block prints made a sensation among European artists.  Monet, Renoir, Degas, Klimt, Manet, and van Gogh were among those who collected his work and were influenced by it.  (To be fair, van Gogh was even more influenced by Hiroshige, even painting his own versions of two of Hiroshige’s views of Edo.)  But one artist who took his inspiration one step farther is Henri Rivière (France 1864-1951).  Rivière encountered Japanese wood block prints in 1888 and taught himself how to make woodcuts in the Japanese style.  In 1902 he published Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, which was begun as wood block prints but completed and printed for publication by lithography.  From Hokusai Rivière took the idea of using a single famous landmark as a central theme around which to anchor a wide variety of views of the entire surrounding area.  His views range from scenes set on the structure of the Eiffel Tower itself, to scenes in which the Tower is just a small vertical line on the horizon.  Like Hokusai, he covers a range of weather, seasons, and times of day, as well as both pretty landscapes and scenes of everyday labor and industry.  Perhaps most interesting of all, some of his views show the Eiffel Tower while it was under construction between 1887-89.  (You can see one of these, along with my own block print of the Eiffel Tower at my prior post on the Eiffel Tower in block prints.)

        Although these are lithographs and some look more like drawings than others, still, Rivière was clearly coming at this project with a block print aesthetic.  He has a much more limited color palette than Hokusai, which makes all his scenes look a little autumnal, even though the fourth could well be full summer, and the fifth early spring.  For the most part I’ve chosen my favorites from the series, as opposed to demonstrating the full variety of Rivière’s scenes, but you can see them all at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  I do want to point out how subtle the Eiffel Tower is in the park with the ducks.  I like the relatively high level of detail in the Tower's lattice in the final piece.  As for pieces 2 and 4 shared here, they make an excellent transition to my final featured inspiration…

        While taking a walk in 2020 it occurred to me that there’s practically no place in my town from which you can’t see a radio tower.  This reminded me at once of Hokusai’s views of Mount Fuji, and I decided to take a series of photographs of “Thirty-Six Views of the Radio Towers.”  Unlike Mount Fuji or the Eiffel Tower, there are actually a number of radio towers by us, mostly in two areas, but other than that particular, my mission was the same.  I would go through exactly one year, taking pictures of radio towers from all different vantage points in town.  I had fun looking for interesting locations, as well as different weather and time of day… and not surprisingly I soon had far more than 36 pictures.  Indeed, I took hundreds, and even after trying my best to cull them down, I still have about 100.  (But after all, Hokusai did end up doing One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, too, so I guess I’m still following in his footsteps.)

        Today I’m sharing just a selection from the four seasons, as well as demonstrating a small taste of the variety.  Interestingly, my views in some ways have more in common with Rivière’s — his view from the train tracks especially reminds me of some of mine, as does the way the Eiffel Tower is sometimes so subtly present that it’s actually difficult to spot.  One thing that’s quite different about my “36 Views” is that there are almost never any people at all.  Partly this is because (as I mentioned last week) I tend not to want people in my landscapes, but it’s also because I started this project during the covid lockdown, when I just wasn’t around people at all for an entire year!  In fact, the view of the radio towers from North Hill was one I particularly wanted to include in my series, but it wasn’t until July of 2022 that I was once again able to go inside to take a picture.  Indeed, although I envisioned this project as a one-year activity, I have added a few more pictures to the series now and then, when I see something particularly interesting.  Of course, I have no plans of actually doing anything with all these photos.  Since I don’t bill myself as a photographer, I don’t plan to try to exhibit them, or make calendars, or do anything else.  But I did very much enjoy the exercise.

        So I open the invitation to you: is there any landmark, natural or human-made that is particularly meaningful or present in the landscape of your daily life?  Try noticing how it interacts with your environment.  Do you see it as an eyesore or a thing of beauty?  Can you get creative with how you view it?  And what would you come up with if you were to capture 36 iconic views of it?

[Pictures: Aoyama in the Eastern Capital, wood block print by Hiroshige, 1852;

The Sumida Embankment in the Eastern Capital, wood block print by Hiroshige, 1858 (Images from Wikimedia Commons);

View of Fuji san from the Mountains in the Province of Izu, wood block print by Hiroshige, 1858 (Image from The Met);

The Ōtsuki Plain in Kai Province, wood block print by Hiroshige, 1858;

Twilight Hill at Meguro in the Eastern Capital, wood block print by Hiroshige, 1858 (Images from Wikimedia Commons);

De Notre-Dame, color lithograph by Henri Rivière from Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, 1902;

Frontispiece, color lithograph by Rivière from Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, 1902;

Du Point-du-Jour, color lithograph by Rivière from Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, 1902;

From the Quai de Javel, color lithograph by Rivière from Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, 1902;

Du bois de Boulogne, color lithograph by Rivière from Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, 1902;

Des Jardins du Trocadéro, l’autumn, color lithograph by Rivière from Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, 1902 (Images from Cleveland Museum of Art);

Blossoms, photograph by AEGNydam, 2021;

Bees in May, photograph by AEGNydam, 2021;

Arch, photograph by AEGNydam, 2020;

From North Hill, photograph by AEGNydam, 2022;

Old Boat, photograph by AEGNydam, 2020;

Echo Bridge, photograph by AEGNydam, 2020;

Crosswalk, photograph by AEGNydam, 2020;

Winter Cemetary, photograph by AEGNydam, 2020;

Two Points, photograph by AEGNydam, 2021;

February Moonrise, photograph by AEGNydam, 2021;

Up, photograph by AEGNydam, 2021.

36 Views of Mount Fuji

         It has come to my attention that I’ve never actually done a post on the famous series of wood block prints “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” by Hokusai (Japan, 1760-1849).  I did do a deep dive into the “Great Wave off Kanagawa,” which is the most famous of the series (and arguably the most famous wood block print in the world), so you can read about that at Under the Wave.  But I think the time has come to look at the series.

        Mount Fuji has probably always been a popular subject in Japanese art, given its dominance in the landscape, as well as its dominance in cultural and religious beliefs.  As far as the internet tells me, though, Hokusai seems to be the one who came up with the concept of a series centered around views of the mountain.  What makes the series interesting is the wide variety of ways Mount Fuji is portrayed, from scenes in which it dominates the entire view to scenes in which it is a mere pimple on the horizon.  The foregrounds include beautiful landscapes, scenes of agriculture and industry, different seasons, different weather and times of day…  Often the mountain is framed in interesting ways, such as under that great wave or a bridge, or between trees.

        As for the nitty-gritty of printing the series, the publisher started out with relatively few colors, until it became clear that the series was going to be a smashing success.  Then the prints were made with a full range of colors.  The series was also expanded, and there are actually 46 views. Hokusai also went on to publish One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, a set of illustrated books with monochrome images that were more imaginative.  (You can see one at my post on Hokusai and Fantasy.)  As mentioned in the post about “Under the Wave,” these wood block prints were printed by the hundreds if not thousands for a mass market, and were not considered particularly precious.  Fewer than 10 complete sets are assembled in the world now, and the most recent complete set to go on auction in March 2024 sold for over three and a half million dollars.  Wikipedia has a nice list of the 36 + 10, with thumbnails, where you can see them all.

        As for the block prints themselves, I’ve included a few of my favorites.  First are two somewhat similar landscapes in which Fuji is definitely a focal point.  The first is a lovely scene but it seems slightly odd to me because the reflection doesn’t quite match the mountain as pictured.  Indeed, the reflection looks more like the snow-capped version of Fuji pictured in the second piece.

        Next I have two of the views that frame the mountain in interesting ways.  In the view under the bridge, however, Fuji is not centered, making it a little more interesting.  In the view between the trees, the people in the foreground are much more prominent.  Hokusai was noted for including all sorts of scenes of ordinary daily life in the foregrounds of his views of Mount Fuji.  I confess that although the “rules” of landscape painting (and photography) say always to put some people in for scale, I much prefer my landscapes to be people-free!  I don’t object to architecture, though.

        This scene of a waterwheel makes an interesting contrast between the extremely simple depiction of the mountain with flat blocks of color, and the much more complicated and detailed foreground with all the struts of the waterwheel and the texture of the water itself.

        I include this next one, often called “Red Fuji,” because it’s probably the second-most famous of Hokusai’s “Views.”  Its proper name is “South Wind, Clear Sky,” although the sky doesn’t look exactly clear to me.  It’s much clearer in the view above!

        And a final piece, in which I like the general view and the people crossing the sandbar, but I also like the way the triangle made by the mast and lines of the sailboat echoes the triangle of Mount Fuji.

        Okay, so today I’ve shared a few that I like, but I’m far from the only person to have been influenced by Hokusai’s series.  Tune in next time for a few more examples of “Views” inspired by these famous and iconic wood block prints.

[Pictures: Reflection in Lake at Misaka in Kai Province;

The Inume Pass in Kai Province;

Under the Mannen Bridge at Fukugawa;

Hodogaya on the Tōkaidō;

The Waterwheel at Onden;

South Wind, Clear Sky (Red Fuji);

Enoshima in Sagami Province, all wood block prints by Katsushika Hokusai, ca. 1830-32 (Images from The Met).

Writing Wednesdays

        On Instagram I’ve been participating in #WritingWednesdays, in which I post stuff about my books each Wednesday, according to particular themes.  This was started by a couple of authors as a way to prompt themselves to get out more information about their books, in a fun, entertaining way, and I started joining in because I tend not to mention my books without an “excuse.”

        I don’t participate every week, since sometimes the particular theme doesn’t really apply to my work, or doesn’t seem like as much fun; and of course sometimes I’ve got something else of higher priority to do.  But most weeks it’s fun to think about the prompt and come up with a little graphic about it, which I can post on Instagram.  And having gone through the work of putting these things together, I thought I might as well share them here, too.  I’ve taken some of those graphics and arranged them not in the order they came, but instead grouping together all the posts about each book or series.

        Starting with a couple of posts about my Kate and Sam Adventures, these two are self-explanatory.  The only note to emphasize is that the single most effective thing you can do to support a

book you love is to talk about it.  Whether that’s suggesting to your cousin that they might like it, or leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads or some other on-line site, or filling out a request slip for your local library to buy a copy, small-time and indie authors can’t survive without reviews from our readers.

        My other series is the Otherworld “hexalogy” (yes, that’s a real word technically, but not a real word in the sense that anybody actually uses it!)  I’ve done three Writing Wednesdays posts about these books, obviously focussed on characters.  When you’ve spent six whole novels imagining people, you tend to have a very

strong sense of what they look like, as well as many of their various likes and dislikes.  I’ll admit, though, that until filling out the squares for the “Introduce your Main Character” theme, I’d never actually given any thought to Svarnil’s favorite season or color.  Still, they didn’t take much reflection to know!  (Another reminder that if you want to see all these graphics big enough to read them, just click on them.)

        I had so much fun with the “What Are They Wearing” theme that I did it twice.  I had to do it for Chen and Polly in The Extraordinary Book of Doors because Polly’s crazy bright outfits (and Chen’s reaction to them) are a running motif throughout the book.  When the weekly theme was “What is the Setting of your Book?” it was another one that called out to be about The Extraordinary Book of Doors.  After all, that book is set in some of my favorite places of historical and magical interest, and the book was practically a love letter to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  This was also an opportunity to share the pictures of myself at a couple of the doors that actually feature in the book.

        Today’s theme was “If your character were to win Olympic gold,” and I decided to feature the special talents of magical creatures from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination.  I made two pages worth for Instagram, and could easily have come up with more.  After all, these are truly exceptional beasts!

The other theme for which I featured On the Virtues of Beasts was “5 Things You’ll Find in This Book.”

        All my other singleton books have gotten less attention on #WritingWednesdays.  Maybe some of them will be featured if one of the future themes seems to call for it.  Or, of course, maybe not.  It’s hard to try to promote 16 books in 9 separate and sometimes very different categories.  In fact, for all I know that’s a bad idea that will just confuse and muddy the marketing waters or something.  None of this sales and marketing stuff has ever been my strong suit, which is exactly why playing along with #WritingWednesdays seemed like it might bring a little fun to the part of being a writer that is usually no fun at all.

        And on that note, I have used these #WritingWednesdays posts to start already promoting Bittersweetness & Light, which will be released in January 2025.  I’m going to try to allow pre-orders starting in December, (as well as the advanced copies in November for all my Kickstarter backers), and I’ll see whether I can’t actually do this whole “book

promotion” thing right for once!  Who knows; it’s not inconceivable.  But whether or not I manage to nail the promotion, and whether or not any of this gains me any readers, at the very least I appreciate getting to play along with

#WritingWednesdays - it makes the painful necessity of promoting my books slightly less of a slog.  So if any of these little graphics were actually appealing, by all means let me know!  (And of course, I wouldn't be playing the promotional game if I didn't remind you that you can always find out more about all these books on my web page.)

        If you're on Instagram and you want to see what other authors have tagged for #WritingWednesdays, head over and check out @shameezwrites and @nuhaamakes, who come up with the themes each month.

[Pictures: all images by AEGNydam, 2024.]