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.
August 24, 2008
Unqualified belief
“Once knowledge is recognised as conditional, it becomes harder to use as an apology for violence. Unqualified belief in one’s own truth system is deadly. It is not from uncertainty about one’s own judgements, but from unswerving forms of conviction, unamenable to any flicker of doubt, that the world has most to fear.” –Jacqueline Rose, “The Iron Rule” (LRB 31.07.08)
August 19, 2008
Shape and boundary
“The main part, though, is sensation and touch; the understanding, too, of beginning and end. Shape and boundary. Of one stitch, one row after another: how a scarf, a life, a person proceeds. For the time being she is still practicing the arts of casting on, holding a steady tension, attempting to purl and not losing or gaining stitches row by row. She likes the need for paying attention. ‘Then there is how to end well,’ she has mentioned. ‘Cast off, it is called.'” –Joan Barfoot, Exit Lines
August 12, 2008
The Moment is Stayed
“Harriet is sure she can smell the books burning in the library. She thinks she can smell the pages turning to ash, all the pages she has pored through, the paper thick and slightly damp, the edges of the pages brown with foxing and sometimes sticky to the touch. She used to pride herself on all the information she knew. For some reason it was a comfort, all this knowledge she could unravel with a breath. Now that still contemplation she had in the library seems completely unreal.
Maybe reading was just to make Harriet feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your actual life.
A bomb falls nearby and they duck down further behind the wall. Jeremy holds his hands over Harriet’s head, as if he is holding an umbrella for her, as if what falls is simply rain.”
–Helen Humphreys, Coventry (August 22)
August 8, 2008
No difference between stories and real life
“I am a writer and I have been accused of merely writing autobiography in my stories, as if that were somehow easier to do than making everything up. Before I went to meet Lawrence, agitated as I was, it crossed my mind that I would find some way of writing about seeing him after so many years– the things we say to each other, what has become of us– some peripheral telling of lies maybe, or an extension of the fact that will take the encounter from the banal to the cosmic, that will find a universal chord, because that is what good writers do, the ones who know there is no difference among autobiography, biography, fiction or non-fiction, between stories and real life.” –Sharon Butala, “Postmodernism”
July 3, 2008
Isn't it splendid…
“Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me glad to be alive– it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn’t talk? If you say so I’ll stop. I can stop when I make up my mind to do it, although it’s difficult.” –L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
June 27, 2008
Hunger eats civilization
“[It’s] the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war. Hunger eats civilization. The West is not hungry; that’s why they can say they’re so civilized. Civilization is the biggest bluff!” –Marjane Satrapi, The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
June 24, 2008
The world is more wonderful
“The world is more wonderful than any of us have dared to guess, as all great poets have been telling us since the invention of poetry. To discover these truths, we don’t need to scale Mount Everest or white-water raft the Colorado or take up skydiving. We need only to go for walks.” –Sharon Butala, The Perfection of the Morning
