April 20, 2008
A pleasure
“I think a young poet, or an old poet for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he’s written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading. But if it doesn’t, he shouldn’t be discouraged. I mean, in the seventeenth century every educated man could turn a verse and play the lute. Supposing no one played tennis because they wouldn’t make Wimbledon? First and foremost, writing poems should be a pleasure. So should reading them, by God.” –Philip Larkin, The Paris Reviews Interviews, II
April 9, 2008
Rational Conscience
When a poet told me he knew suffering
because he suffered from ‘imposter syndrome,’
a psychoanalytic term assigned
to those who feel unworthy of any praise,
I never suggested to the poet
in his case, perhaps ‘imposter syndrome’
was better called ‘rational conscience.’
–from David McGimpsey’s “Irresistible”
March 7, 2008
I don't want money
“By temperament I’m a vagabond and a tramp. I don’t want money badly enough to have to work for it. In my opinion it’s a shame that there is so much work in the world. One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours– all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.” –William Faulkner, Paris Review Interviews Volume II
February 28, 2008
And then I wrote to Jean
“The letter was from me. When I wrote it I was on a train with Gwenny on my way to Paris… Outside there was nothing but rocks and dust. A man with stormy edges was telling me the story of his life. He was only six when I interrupted him.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I must write a letter. Do you have any paper?’
‘And he turned out to be a paper merchant with suitcases filled with paper, papyrus, root paper, paper made from crushed beetles, moist paper, blotting, thin parchment, petal notelets, envelopes made from industrial waste, fried and boiled paper. He displayed his wares on the train seat and I picked a strange mottled shade of handmade parchment which was the most expensive of the range.
And then I wrote to Jean…” –Julia Darling, Crocodile Soup
February 26, 2008
I danced with a girl
“The room was wooden, like a ship, and once in it we were trapped and couldn’t escape. I danced with a girl who had no fingers. Her hand kept slipping out of my grasp.” –Julia Darling, Crocodile Soup.
This happened to me, during a short-lived career as a ballerina during late 1984. It was the sole remarkable feature of this experience, and I can’t quite believe I’m not the only one. Fictional or otherwise. Books are so amazing.
February 7, 2008
If we can awaken
“If we can awaken sympathetic comprehension in our readers, not only for our most evil characters (that is easy: there is a cord there, fastened to all hearts that we can twitch at will), but of our smug, complacent, successful characters, we have surely succeeded…” –Graham Greene, London 1948 from A Life in Letters
January 27, 2008
Teach us to adapt
“I think that novels tend to fail not when the characters are not vivid or “deep” enough, but when the novel in question has failed to teach us how to adapt to its conventions, has failed to manage a specific hunger for its own characters, its own reality level.” –James Wood, “A Life of Their Own”
January 24, 2008
Always Carry a Book with You
“7. ALWAYS CARRY A BOOK WITH YOU.
This is a very important rule and easy to slip up on. Here is how. You say to yourself, I have carried that book with me every single day this week and never have I had the time to pull it out and read it. It is making a big fat unseemly bulge in my pocket, it is bumping up against my hip when I walk, it is weighing me down. Today I am not taking it, goddamnit. That is the day your friend is forty minutes late and you are left at the restaurant with the foot of your crossed leg swinging loose and you have studied every face and every painting in the place. That is the day your bus gets caught in a traffic jam or you end up having to take someone to the emergency room and wait four hours for the person to emerge. Always carry a book with you.” –Emma Richler, Sister Crazy
January 15, 2008
Reading was Muscle
“And it occurred to her (as next day she wrote down) that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed.” –Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
January 14, 2008
Sadness and Guilt
My weekend contained best friends at brunches and lunches, perfect chocolate cake, delightful cousins, new shelving units, knitting, reading, jobs done and a bath-to-come. This weekend’s Globe and Mail was terrific. Stephanie Nolen’s “An Inuit Adventure in Timbuktu” is the most amazing piece of journalism I’ve (ever?) come across. (“I wasn’t really intending to read this,” my husband said to me, “but once I started I just couldn’t stop”.) Well-written, beautiful, fascinating, and will make you think of things you’ve never considered before.
And then the books section– G&M Books, what’s happened to you? For you’re becoming sort of wonderful, it’s true. More than an assemblage of watered-down reviews by friends of friends, and paragraph-length excerpts. The 50 Greatest Books Series is terrific, and not just because the first week’s choice is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Oh it’s been done before, I know, but don’t you find that great books can be discussed forever and ever?
And then the reviews themselves, epistolary goodness. Reviewing The Mitford Letters (which I loved), Graham Greene’s letters (which I’m reading), Eleanor Wachtel’s Carol Shields book (which is a treasure), Four Letter Word (which I can’t wait for). It was as though the Books Pages had tapped right into my heart.
I’ve also really enjoyed the latest Vanity Fair, whose lives of rich and famous feature such gems of phrase as, “Robin was an ongoing source of sadness and guilt to Lady Annabel after she allowed him to enter the tigress’s enclosure at Aspinall’s.” As they say, you really couldn’t make this up.
