January 14, 2008
Baby feet
Oh, for booties and wee feet. Aren’t these adorable? And I was lucky enough to have a friend with an upcoming bebe for whom to whip up these ickle shoes. Which are a bit wonky, naturally, as they were knit by me, and hopefully the bebe’s feet will be the same size, unlike his/her shoes, but alas. Made with love. I am terribly superstitious that a babe might come into the world for whom I’ve not created a knitted item, and be cursed for life. Cursed not to own a wonky knit thing, I suppose, but then these booties will forever stand as evidence that someone was thinking of their tiny feet even before they were born, and that is nice I think. Should fit them for all of about a week. And if it’s twins they can have one each, I guess.
January 11, 2008
Wonderful Things
There is turmoil at our house, as a new computer arrived (not for me). Therefore boxes of boxes are everywhere, and no one’s washed up from dinner. Also the phone was just fixed after three days of deadness, so there was catching up to do. The wind outside is blowing, and I’m afraid the house might fall down. But still, there are links.
Some wonderful DGR posts of late: discovering Grace Paley, on the Reading Cure. At the Guardian Books Blog, on enjoying arcane how-to books (which reminded me that I still have to-be-read my copy of How To Run Your Home Without Help). Jeffrey Eugenides on his new book (the anthology of love stories My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, which I cannot wait to read). And please, Chelsea C. vs. D. Huckabee.
And today’s G&M Facts and Arguments essay was amazing: “Nearly Lost at Sea”. About a love letter, returned to sender. “Inside the envelope was a typewritten note from the Returned Letter Section: ‘It is regretted that the enclosed air letter has been damaged by water in transit.” Handwritten across the note in blue ink was the explanation: “Salvaged mail from Comet crash off Elba.’ The love letter John had written had sunk to the bottom of the sea.”
Speaking of love letters: how brilliant is this, Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters. And of course, I knew as soon I glimpsed it: designed by Kelly Hill.
January 10, 2008
The History of Love
And just when I was talking about the strange ways some books sort themselves, I get inspired by Steph at Crooked House to sort the books myself. (Her inspiration via The Sorted Books Project). I started out with near-haiku, but then things got out of hand. For it seems that with book titles, one can write the entire history of love (and is it ever epic).
January 9, 2008
We all prefer the magical explanation
Have been reading/catching up. Penelope’s Way by Blanche Howard. Am just about to start What is the What by Dave Eggers, which I’ve been putting off for too long. Put off by prospect of the headiness, perhaps. Though Dave Eggers has never let me down before, and certainly the book has been buzzed about by many people I respect. I suspect I will be incredibly impressed.
And speaking of fictional autobiographies, I’ve just finished reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion. “Speaking of…” I say, for Joan Didion’s fiction similarly seems to challenge the fic/non-fic divide. Now I am such a fan of Joan Didion, and partly because she’s a bit preposterous. I don’t enjoy preposterousity universally, but I adore any woman who can embody the trait and still come off as brilliant. (This caveat thus explaining why I don’t love that Coulter person). I love Didion’s migraines, and that she went to the supermarket in a bikini and wanted a baby, and cried in Chinese laundries. And if one more person tells me that although they like her non-fiction, her fiction is disappointing, I will yawn.
Not because they’re entirely wrong– I’m not sure about that. Certainly I’ve never read a Joan Didion novel that stirred in me anything like what I felt for Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but that to me is beside the point. Which it might not be. It is distinctly possible instead that I am just feeling awfully protective of Didion, but still, I think, to dismiss her fiction is tiresome.
Whether or not her fiction is enjoyable (and it can be, but in a slightly uncomfortable way) something fascinating is going on with it. Joan Didion is the one writer who completely defies my theories of fiction’s truth having more bearing on reality than that of non-fiction. I am not sure I fully understand it, but it’s something in her coldness, her acuity. In her non-fiction Joan Didion assembles the world and lets it speak for itself and it’s in this speaking that the life creeps in. Whereas in her fiction when she attempts the very same thing (for this is what she does), the made-upness is pervasive. When she assembles these made-up things, whatever speaks is more an echo than a voice. An echo of what, I don’t know. All of which is really odd. And doesn’t necessarily mean that her fiction is unsuccessful; Didion is too smart for that. Rather I think of her as treating fiction as a project I’ve still not got my head around.
January 9, 2008
Mystified
Today I’m mystified about not only the very weird fact of B. Spears singing autobiographical songs, but moreover that other people write these songs for her.
January 9, 2008
In for the night
Apart from the inevitable phone bill (which was smaller than we thought) and two (2) rejections (which, though of course are nothing like acceptances, I try to tell myself are better than nothing [except in those rare circumstances in which no news is good news]), the post delivered me a cheque from Ye Olde Governmente, another cheque for writing (!!), AND a big fat London Review of Books, with Alan Bennett inside.
January 8, 2008
On reading
“I enjoyed the reading classes, and the opportunity to function as a sort of cheerleader. I liked my students, who were often so eager, bright, and enthusiastic that it took me years to notice how much trouble they had in reading a fairly simple short story. Almost simultaneously, I was struck by how little attention they had been taught to pay to language, to the actual words and sentences that a writer had used. Instead, they had been encouraged to form strong, critical and often negative opinions of geniuses who had been read with delight for centuries before they were born. They had been instructed to prosecute or defend these authors, as if in a court of law, on charges having to do with the writers’ origins, their racial, cultural and class backgrounds. They had been encouraged to rewrite the classics into the more acceptable forms that the author might have discovered had they only shared their young critics’ level of insight, tolerance, and awareness.
No wonder my students found it so stressful to read! And possibly because of the harsh judgments they felt required to make about fictional characters and their creators, they didn’t seem to like reading, which also made me worry for them, and wonder why they wanted to become writers. I asked myself how they planned to learn to write, since I had always thought that others learned, as I had, from reading.” — Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer
January 6, 2008
Reasons to be happy
Reasons to be happy– even if one’s holiday is rapidly drawing to a close– include cotton tights, sleep-filled nights, baths with bubbles, legs sans stubbles, magazines, movie screens, new bedclothes, h-nut cheerios, to-do lists done, friends and fun, books in the post, and he whom I like the very most. Plus California in thirty-four days. And….
…having just partaken in that “hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea”, of which, under ALL circumstances, “there are few hours in life more agreeable than .”
January 6, 2008
Books out of doors
Up at the Descant Blog “Encounters with Books: In the Natural World” .
January 4, 2008
Abookaday
During my holiday, I’ve managed to read a book a day (though this was accomplished by reading books that were primarily quite short and/or excellent), which has been tremendously satisfying, fun, stimulating and rich. I’ve got a lot of my new books read, and my focus is now on the older books I’ve picked up at sales over the past year and which have been lingering on my shelf. Now reading Perfect Happiness by Penelope Lively (who I love). But I’ll also be starting the new collection Graham Greene: A Life in Letters. I’ve loved Graham Greene’s work for a long time, including The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American. Though it is Travels With My Aunt that stands out, actually. And I’ll be reading Brighton Rock shortly. It will be interesting though, as I know almost nothing about Graham Greene. Except for the Catholic stuff, which always gets a bit lost on me in his fiction (and I’ve had a similar problem with Muriel Spark). Perhaps this will help?
