November 25, 2008
Shed Skins of a Snake
“It is interesting, but only in a sociological way, to see the sympathy two of my narrators have for men who have just lost their virginity. It is odd, but only to me, to read of the bitterness that exists between female friends, when my own girlfriends are so generous and important to me. These stories are not written by the person who has lived my life and made the best of it, but by people I might have been but decided against. They are written by women who take a different turn in the road. They are the shed skins of a snake.” –Anne Enright, “Introduction” to Yesterday’s Weather
November 16, 2008
Oh, I do love me a good literary mystery
“Ok, I’m sorry, there are a lot of librarians in this story, and libraries as well (which maybe doesn’t bode so well for originality). People are often dismissive of librarians and libraries– as if the words are synonymous with boredom or timidity. But isn’t that where the best stories are kept? Hidden away on the library bookshelves, lost and forgotten, waiting, waiting, until someone like me comes along and wants to borrow them.” –from Justine Picardie’s Daphne
November 5, 2008
The only character who really gets to talk
(Via The Pop Triad) Lionel Shriver on quotation marks and why their absence is off-putting: “The appearance of authorial self-involvement in much modern literary fiction puts off what might otherwise comprise a larger audience. By stifling the action of speech, by burying characters’ verbal conflicts within a blurred, all-encompassing über-voice, the author does not seem to believe in action — and many readers are already frustrated with literary fiction’s paucity of plot. When dialogue makes no sound, the only character who really gets to talk is the writer.”
October 24, 2008
Killing the Keyboard
“Had the instant message come first, and the telephone conversation second, what a triumphant technological breakthrough the phone call would now seem! How proudly the papers would unveil it, how breathlessly the business pages and Wired magazine would celebrate the innovation. Real-time conversation! Actual voices! Effortless dial-up-and-speak communication! No need to wear your fingers out just to say hello, how are you! At least, the realm of the real voice; hear your sweetheart’s breathing! Listen to your best friend’s cough. Enjoy! You are there, really there, at last. Steve Jobs would hold a press conference, holding the phone up high, with amazement. And the next day the back page of the business pages would have one of those defiant, declarative full-page ads: “Real speech! Real Time! The Real You.” It would be on the cover of all the newsmagazines the following week. (And there would be contrarian op-ed pieces in the Times:”Why I Will Never Make a ‘Phone’ Call”; “The ‘Phone Call’– Is It Killing the Keyboard?”)” — Adam Gopnik, “Last Thanksgiving: Immensities” from Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York
October 21, 2008
Slacks for Ella Funt
I am very excited, as this weekend I get to discover if my new sewing machine works. I picked it up at a yard sale about a month ago for $10, but have no clue how to use it, so am not sure if I wasted my money or not (credit crunch). However, a sewing savvy friend is going to give me lessons Saturday, and then after we’re going out to our local Hungarian to commemorate the 52nd anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution. An exciting Saturday is destined then, though I am still not sure what kind of useless cloth item it is I am going to (dare I dream?) create.
What I really want to do make is slacks for Ella Funt:
Ramona tugged and tugged at Ella Funt’s slacks, but no matter how hard she tugged she could not make them come up to the elephant’s waist, or to what she guessed was the elephant’s waist. Ella Funt’s bottom was too big, or the slacks were too small. At the same time, the front of the slacks seemed way too big. They bunched under Ella Funt’s paunch. Ramona scowled.
Mrs. Quimby considered Ella Funt and her slacks. “Well,” she said after a moment. Slacks for an elephant are very hard to make. I’m sure I couldn’t do it.”
Ramona could not scowl any harder. “I like to do hard things.”
October 3, 2008
The real English class
You begin the real English class:
O, Lolita, The Happy Hooker.
Even a few pages from Danielle Steele,
copied, folded and ready
for customers to put in their backpacks,
take-home tests. Taken to beds.
No muss, no fuss. Just the best
sexy scenes literature has to offer.
There are those who
find you ridiculous
or disgusting. But you know
they’re afraid. You don’t blame them– just feel sorry
they don’t recognize
your skills.
Thirteen is young and old, depending
on who you know.
–Jennica Harper, from “Burning Up” in What It Feels Like For a Girl
September 24, 2008
A place before stories start
“I suspect, as I search the room for the hunger by the fireplace, or the hunger in her cry, that I have found a place before stories start. How else can I explain the shift from language that has happened in my brain? This is why mothers do not write, because motherhood happens in the body, as much as the mind. I thought childbirth was a sort of journey that you could send dispatches home from, but of course it is not– it is home. Everywhere else now, is ‘abroad’.” –Anne Enright, “Milk” from Making Babies
September 18, 2008
Like a treasure
“I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded and spread out before my eyes, in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the post the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence… Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a children crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark… I hoard all these letters like a treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship./ It will keep the vultures at bay.” –Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (trans. Jeremy Leggatt).
September 1, 2008
Her reading aloud had killed
“When Lydia was alive, my grandmother seemed content with her reading; either she and Lydia took turns reading to each other, or they forced Germaine to read aloud to them– while they rested their eyes and exercised their acute interest in educating Germaine. But after Lydia died, Germaine refused to read aloud to my grandmother; Germaine was convinced that her reading aloud to Lydia had either killed Lydia or had hastened her death, and Germaine was resolute in not wanting to murder Grandmother in a similar fashion.For a while, my grandmother read aloud to Germaine; but this afforded no opportunity for Grandmother to rest her eyes, and she would often interrupt her reading to make sure that Germaine was paying proper attention. Germaine could not possibly pay attention to the subject– she was so intent on keeping herself alive for the duration of the reading.” –John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
September 1, 2008
Readers Reading
I’m the reader reading today over at Julie Wilson’s marvelous Seen Reading. Click through to hear me reading from my favourite novel Unless, stumbling over the words only minimally with the sound of a waterfall in the background.
