April 17, 2007
Or both
Curtis is back, and man, did he ever bring candy. We are pleased. In less pleasant news I’m in a state of high-agitation regarding my thesis defense next week, the undergraduate essays which are trickling in slowly conspiring to ruin the time I have left before my full-time job begins, wondering indeed about my passport application (“up to ten weeks” they’re saying? Well, we’ve arrived), arrangements for our trip to England in June, how I’ll manage driving on the wrong side of the road. Plus the sun has yet to make an appearance this April, which is sort of rubbish. I would prescribe myself a stiff drink, or a hot bath, or both.
I’m also bothered that I can’t find Miffy books anywhere in this city. I even ventured into the mean blue bookstore that dares not speak its name, and no dice. If anyone can tell me where I can find some Bruna lit, I would love the tip because I know two babies (newborn and about-to-be) whose libraries need starting.
Good lit-news: Lionel Shriver in The Globe, CanLit in Hungary, and UofT makes its contributions to the Internet Archive.
March 25, 2007
Prairie Fiction should come with a warning label
I had book trauma this weekend. I don’t mean this lightly. As I have mentioned before, reading prairie fiction sends me into despair. Which I always forget about until I’ve nearly finished the book and am filled with deep sadness for the human condition. And I never stopped to think that Obasan is actually prairie fiction too, as well being, well, Obasan. Which, when read following my recent Burmese prison tale rendered the world pretty bleak. And the sky was the colour of paper, and I kept staring out the window pondering the meaning of it all. So in other words I was in dire need of a good slap, and around people far too kind to administer one. Luckily life got better.
First, I’m now reading Orphan Island by Rose Macaulay which is a delightful and interesting romp. You can read the 1925 review from Time Magazine here (ain’t the tinternet grand?) I’ve not read Macaulay’s novels before, though her Pleasure of Ruins is the most beautiful book I own, and I loved her essay on English “Catchwords and Claptrap” (which you can read here). I am reading this novel on the recommendation of Decca who acknowledged it in one of her letters as a favourite. It’s simply lovely.
And next up is The Post Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (who I hope to go see read at Harbourfront next week).
Second, I watched Stranger Than Fiction last night, and I can’t think of the last time I enjoyed a movie so much. And it’s a bookish film, but I watched it with two boys who are a little less bookish than I, and they liked it as much as I did. I found it purely enjoyable from start to finish, I didn’t get bored once, and part of the reason I was so engaged was I had no idea how the plot would sort itself out. But it did perfectly, and all of us were so engrossed in the story that when we feared one character would meet an untimely (or timely, in this case, I do suppose) demise, we were out of our minds with agony. And I like a movie that allows you to care so much. Lately we’ve renting movies last minute with little selection, and then yelling at the screen begging the characters to off themselves so we wouldn’t have to watch them any longer. So it was very nice to feel differently, and of course the bookishness was ace. Six thumbs up.
The sky is still the colour of paper, but my outlook has greatly improved.
March 24, 2007
Karma
The only problem with being fiction editor at echolocation is that sending out thirty rejections in an afternoon has got to bring you back some bad karma.
February 13, 2007
Self Portrait
We’re tired at our house, which is what happens when we both spend the night having dreams in which we are struggling to sleep. And so for today, in lieu of coherence, Pickle Me This brings you me waiting for the tub to fill. Turban-headed because if my Japanese life taught me anything, it was that a bath sans shower is foul. And I like this image because it incorporates four of my favourite things: books, baths, big mugs of tea and Stuart (for it is his robe after all). Happy All The Time was a splish-splash delight.
Today in the post was a letter from Bronwyn, with whom I’ve defied Laurie Colwin’s quote from Happy All The Time: “Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed”. (That said woman is Bronwyn and not me should be revelatory to nobody). And her note contained the news that she has subscribed me to the London Review of Books, which is sort of like having pennies rain from the sky. I’d say life must be mostly good, with friends like that.
And I think Lucky Beans is one of the prettiest blogs I’ve ever seen.
February 2, 2007
At the end of the words
Courage utterly opposes the bold hope that this is such fine stuff the work needs it, or the world. Courage, exhausted, stands on bare reality: this writing weakens the work. You must demolish this work and start over. You can save some of the sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some of the paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves or hard-won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now. (Are you a woman or a mouse?) – Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
November 28, 2006
Bollocky Night
I’ve had a bollocky night, and so I’ve drowned my sorrows in Dairy Milk. I’ve also abandoned Tristram Shandy in Book 4, because I think I’ve got the point by now. (My second abandoned book in just over a week! I never do that.) Now reading The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavitz. Now despairing the day I ever decided to pick up a pen. Bollocks bollocks bollocks! And 75 papers to be marked enter my life tomorrow. Sometimes I wish I lived in my bathtub like a fish.
October 20, 2006
Growing up in Las Vegas, England seemed so far away
There’s lots of good pop-music news in The Guardian today. My favourite is the review of the new Robbie Williams’ album. Apparently “Rudebox” is not very good. I quote (rather extendedly, but it’s funny): “…it’s hard to think of a song more likely to curb the listener’s generosity of spirit than Rudebox’s closing “secret” track, Dickhead. A woeful sub-Eminem rant, it features Williams gallantly threatening to set his retinue of bouncers on anyone who dares to criticise his music. By the time it concludes, puzzlingly, with the singer shouting “I’ve got a bucket of shit! I’ve got a bucket of shit!”, one feels less inclined to say the kind thing than the cruel thing: you don’t need to tell me that, pal, I’ve just spent the last hour examining it.” An excerpt on Razorlight in Japan, which is exciting, because that’s where Stuart and I first saw them, and because their wonderful “America” is predicted to be the UK number one this week. And, finally, I had no idea the Killers’ new album was a mormon rock concept album.
I’m honestly so glad the forces conspired to send me two (2!) rejection letters in one day yesterday. No sense in dragging out my failures for weeks, and to buckle down and onward then. My big project has lately developed a new cohesion and I wrote a lovely little essay yesterday, and so I am not so disheartened. I’m still reading Nixon in China, and of course a novel on the side. Penelope Lively’s Heat Wave. She really is one of my favourite authors; she’s never aloof and it’s as though she conjures her stories from my preoccupations, but perhaps that’s a sort of self-absorbed way to regard them. Next up is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which is the most beautiful new book I’ve come across since The Middle Stories or Elegance. It has the most gorgeous endpapers. I can’t wait to read it.
Another article about the blighted East Midlands, Nottingham’s urban decay and suburban gangs (big ups the Basford massive!). Interesting from an urban development point of view, but all the same, we lived there and it wasn’t so bad.
October 18, 2006
Sherrie Mitten?
The bad thing about the fictional creative writing workshops I mentioned is that on my bad days, I wonder exactly which pitiful-student-in-the-workshop-driving-my-instructor-to-suicide am I?
