Naming a book The [Whatever] of [Planet] seems to be a fairly popular practice for fiction writers, often with very good results. Nobel Prize winner W.G. Sebald wrote the very good novel The Rings of Saturn. Alice Munro, respected Canadian, wrote The Moons of Jupiter. I've only read these two, but a search yields many more books based on our solar system.
The Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson.
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard, winner of the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, an Oprah pick.
The Gods of Mars by Edgar Burroughs, a work of science fiction from he who introduced to us Tarzan.
The Fountains of Neptune by Rikki Ducornet.
In fact, all the planets are represented except Uranus (Pluto isn't a planet anymore.) I shall fill this cavity by writing a book called The Pimples of Uranus.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
The Books of Planets
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Today at www.nytimes.com/books they are reviewing "The Book of Other People" as well as "People of the Book." You can loop these titles together: "The Book of Other People of the Book of Other People of the Book of..."
You have a love of this loopy stuff. I remember your "land before time cop land" infinite loop.
I think I've asked you this before, but have you read John Barth's collection of short stories, Lost in the Funhouse? The first one is a story called "Frame Tale," and it is printed on two sides of a strip of paper, one side saying "once upon a time" and the reverse side saying "there was a story that began," and it is meant to be cut out and taped to form a moebius strip for: "once upon a time there was a story that began once upon a time there was a story that began ..."
In the introduction, Barth, clearly quite pleased with himself, said something like "It is the shortest story ever written, but goes on forever."
Hahahahaha, The Pimples of Uranus. You make me laugh.
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