P.S. Surely it is also time to announce that the postmodern novel passed away some time ago?
Saturday Linkage
Last night I went into the kitchen and announced: "I really like Tanzania." My poor, deluded brain had been locked into dream-space whilst I had been battling it out on Puzzle Quest. While my fingers had been busy pairing up gems and fighting wyverns, another part of me had been in Tanzania on a veranda, er, playing Puzzle Quest. Needless to say, I was ordered to bed and slept until 1pm today. But I still really like Tanzania.
Saturday linkage:
Not All Men of the Future Wear Polyester Jumpsuits: "In The Antineutral Suit: Futurist Manifesto (1914), Balla railed against "neutral, 'nice,' [and] faded" colors, not to mention "stripes, checks, and diplomatic little dots." Instead, Futurist attire would be "Dynamic, with textiles of dynamic patterns and colors (triangles, cones, spirals . . .) that inspire the love of danger, speed, and assault, and loathing of peace and immobility.""
Speaking of fashion, do you have $8,901 to spare? If so, you might want to bid on an Elsa Schiraparelli item designed for and worn by Marlene Dietrich. I like the idea of a Schiraparelli gown - particularly one associated with Dietrich - it cannot get more arty decadence circa 1930 than that, surely?
Via my Other Half: Neil Gaiman on why books have genders. I could take or leave Gaiman, but it is an interesting idea. I might revisit that in a later entry.
Finally, Pictures of Walls. This site feeds into my preoccupation with public lettering/writing, of course. And funnily enough you also get pictures of walls there - which in turn have pictures on them. Gosh.
Words, Language and Politics, oh my!
The other day I was watching an interview with Peter Carey on BBC News following the Australian apology to Aborigines. I suspect BBC anticipated an in-depth interview about Australian identity and a smart post-colonial take on Australian history. Instead they got themselves a cagey author who was possibly the worst interviewee I have seen in a long time. Carey didn't answer his questions, he rejected the interviewer's research, he contradicted himself constantly and, let's be frank, he came across as insufferable and self-indulgent. An absolute train-wreck of an interview.
In the wake of Peter Carey being interviewed, I sat wondering about writers and language. I always thought that if you were the Peter Carey sort of writer - i.e. acclaimed, award-winning, Booker darling, taught in universities - you would have a natural affinity for language whether spoken or written. You would effortlessly construct arguments using precise, yet beautiful language. Or am I sorely mistaken? Are writers like Peter Carey (and Martin Amis and Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst etc) like me? When speaking, I am still an able communicator but I feel most at ease with language when I am typing away.
Gosh, maybe writers are really just like you and me! But with an agent and a publishing deal and a NYC penthouse, of course.
In unrelated news: I do not miss living in a country which expels people without a trial. I have been asked to highlight a Facebook group for Danes protesting the lack of trial. Go join. Or write indignant letters to your local MP.
The Evening Before the Day
Having just finished Scarlett Thomas' "PopCo", I find myself longing for non-contemporary novels. I have been reading many books recently but all have all been written within the last thirty years. I long for a different sort of prose, a different perspective. And so I have been looking at my book shelves, thought about the books I have had to abandoned earlier in my life, and then I finally uncovered James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". The choice was between "Portrait", "Ulysses" and Sterne's "Tristram Shandy". Clearly I'm going for the easy option because, well, I'm like that.
But I have a credit card and access to amazon.co.uk. I also have ideas (some borrowed from Harold Bloom, others from Clifton Fadiman and finally a few picked up along the way) about what to buy. But I want to ask you for a recommendation.
- The criteria:
Feel free to add as many slightly left-field recommendations as you'd like and, if you want, your reason for recommending the novel.
In other news, I foolishly thought I would take tea with some good friends today (it is my birthday tomorrow). This led to a collapse in public and a subsequent three-hour nap. Sometimes I forget how little energy I actually do have and that I cannot just dismiss the lack of energy. Unfortunately every little action has a consequence.
Currently Reading..
Heard sung outside on the street at around 9am: I do, I do, I do believe in faeries...
I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's excellent The Road yesterday. Its sparse, exquisite prose reminded me of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead as did the preoccupation with love and tenderness. However, while Gilead is about a place and staying there, The Road travels through nameless towns, through woods and across mountains. It deals with a world where there are no places or localities - insofar as 'place' is situated in time (cf. Foucault and the discussion of space/place) or in memory. McCarthy's book is bleak, austere and shockingly beautiful. It is also a strong contender for Best Read of 2008.
Speaking of which, one of the best reads I had last year was the flawed but absolutely fascinating The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas. I just picked up her PopCo and I am somewhat reassured by reviewers insisting that despite the ghastly cover, it is 'intelligent and witty'.
Finally, astute readers with stalkerishly attention to blog-details may note that I have re-designed Fourth Edition and that it now bears an astonishing resemblance to a certain blogspot blog I kept years and years ago. What can I say? I'm retro.
The Scandal of the Season
I am currently reading Sophie Gee's "The Scandal of the Season" and it is a bewildering read.
The plot outline: 18th century Britain. Catholics and Protestants live side by side uneasily. The young poet Alexander Pope is heading to London to make his name. He encounters a situation he'll later immortalise in the wonderful mock epic The Rape of the Lock. So, by all accounts you get literary history in the making, the (in)famous flirt between Lord Petre and Arabella Fermor (as immortalised in the poem), religious troubles and a look at the early 18th century landscape. Ms Gee knows a helluva lot about the period and therein lies the real problem of this book.
I cannot enjoy it as fiction. The characters speak wonderfully witty early 18th century English but they all speak in the same manner. There is no distinct turn of phrase, no subtle nuances to their voices and after a few pages it begins to grate. The characters are not fleshed out, they never leap off the page and the plot drags. Furthermore, because Sophie Gee has her characters repartee so beautifully, the more modern phrases she occasionally employs spring out and annoy. As an expert writing on the literary and political landscape of early 18th century London, Gee convinces, though. I wish she had written a nice, witty treatise on that subject - she has apparently written academic articles on the matter - but it's not very likely that little book would have made it to my little secondhand bookstore.
I did find Read for Pleasure through googling for Sophie Gee, so not all's lost.