Thursday, October 23, 2008

intercostal clavicle

My mother is visiting Berlin. I've been preparing my apartment to sublet. Much running about. The second day of my mother's visit I was putting coal in the stove when the doorbell rang. It was the Post. A Pakett. I sign for it, tear it open - it's my intercostal clavicle! Well, OK, not really. It's Deepayan Sarkar's Lattice: Multivariate Data Visualization with R! I did not have the nerve to try to blag a review copy off Springer, given my bad habit of putting reviews in the drafts folder, so I ordered one online and now it is here. Have been getting my mother up to speed with e-mail and downloading new packages for R. Was reading Andrew Gelman's splendid Red State Blue State Rich State Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do before I went to Oxford and then got caught up in preparations to sublet / see mother and suddenly realised I was unlikely to write about it before the election, which is appalling but can't be helped, so I point readers shamefacedly to AG's blog...

5 comments:

Joseph Edward Ryan said...

I had to look this up, to tell what it is (R etc.). But I still cannot figure it out. I guess you use this for statistics.

Your new novel looks really good. From what I have read. Cannot wait for it to hit the stores.

Ian Brown said...

Hello Ms. DeWitt,

I saw your novel on the "new books" rack at my local library in San Angelo, Texas in 2002. I was 19 years old and my head exploded on impact.

I can't tell you how big that novel is to me. The Last Samurai made me open up to a world. Thank you and good luck with everything.

Clay said...

What Ian said.

Can't remember, however, if I was 19 or 20.

Trying to order the events of that winter, 2007, I was indeed probably 19 years old.

Could be just the desire to make myself younger.

"Done" of course means "not done."

And also the complicit reader has "signed" a contract.

Taught me, perhaps, that it is always too late. "Carpe diem"?

The greatest pleasure comes from the subtlety of the "psychological" elaboration.

Complicated yet noble heros.

Anonymous said...

Helen, are you still here?

Helen DeWitt said...

JER, yes, R is a statistical graphics program. Ian, Clay, I'm so glad you liked The Last Samurai. Lucie, where is here? I'm in Berlin.