April 17, 2007
Have you heard the news?
My feelings for the Hip Hop Wordsworth Squirrel have moved from abject pity to resigned amusement, but now I am totally in love. I love the Hip Hop Wordsworth Squirrel, and I love his beats. Come our trip to England in June, we’re totally going to Cumbria. I truly am rap’s MVP, though if I were publishing this on the Lake District’s website I’d have to call it “rap” as per their style guide, apparently.
April 17, 2007
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Suite Française is such an intriguing text. I read it in the context of Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion (upon which I’ve been marking many an essay during these last two weeks), thinking about Ondaatje’s artful blend of of history and story which foregrounds the latter. Némirovsky’s text goes beyond that, though during her writing she did have a similar blend in mind– as she remarked in her notes: “the historical, revolutionary facts etc. must be only lightly touched upon, while daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides must be described in detail.”
In fact it is only Némirovsky’s own circumstances (she died at Auschvitz in 1942) that have allowed history bear so much upon this work. Suite Française comprises two novellas, as well as two appendices, the first being notes and journal entries by the author during her composition, and the second letters and telegrams which illuminate the perilous situation for her and family between 1936 and 1945. And so what fascinates me continues to be the question of what we should make of this work in its entirety– this blend of story against history, against the history of its author, and the story of the text itself (that the novellas must have been written almost contemporaneously to the events which they describe, and that the work was saved by one of Némirovsky’s daughters in a suitcase whose contents she did not discover until the 1990s). The result is fragmented (as you might expect of the unfinished work of an unfinished life), but there manages to be something of a wholeness all the same. Story upon story compounded upon history, and it all hangs in a balance which tells us of not-so-long-ago.
But we need not examine Suite Française within so broad a context. Here I will echo what every review I’ve read of this book has said: the story stands up. Némirovsky was famed in France before her death; she’d written numerous novels as well as a biography of Chekhov. News of her talent should not be news at all.
“Storm in June” and “Dolce” are the first two of what was to be five novellas telling the story of France at war. “Storm in June” takes place against the chaotic events of June 1940 before the fall of France as residents of Paris fled the city. The range is sweeping which I resisted at first (I am not so fond of being swept) but I soon became comfortable with the many perspectives (one whole chapter from the point of view of a cat!), the contrasts between classes, the furious pace. In the beginning the characters seemed like types more than people, but I soon came to know them and their connections intimately. I also came to understand why Némirovsky might have created types consciously: in her book it is people which are the cogs in the war machine. Says one character, “What we’re going through is down to people and people alone.”
Though of course her main focus is the people who have no control over this machine, which is seen particularly with “Dolce”. The second novella takes place in a German-occupied French village during 1941. Here we see regular people operating under extraordinary circumstances: “It’s a truism that people are complicated, multifaceted, contradictory, surprising, but it takes the advent of war or other momentous events to be able to see it.” And indeed the characters are people now– even the German soldiers. Némirovsky creates a marvellous tension throughout the novella, and, as with “Storm in June”, she wraps her tale in the most wonderful prose (brilliantly translated, or so it seemed to me, by Sandra Smith). Evidence of humour, tenderness and love abounds throughout this work, rendering the author’s fate particularly tragic.
But as her daughter stated in a BBC interview: “For me, the greatest joy is knowing that the book is being read. It is an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life. It shows that the Nazis did not truly succeed in killing her. It is not vengeance, but it is a victory.”
April 17, 2007
Short Orange
Announced: the Orange shortlist. And we will be cheering for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie all the way.
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.
April 15, 2007
News of the world
I read so many interesting stories in the news this weekend! Our national paper in particular, I thought, was rife with goodness. I value preposterousity in a woman, which is why I enjoy reading Margaret Wente even when she’s wrong, but this time I thought she was right on the mark about Belinda Stronach. How brilliant were Susan Swan’s Tips for Stephen Harper, emerging writer? This wonderful interview with Michael Ondaatje. Yann Martel wants to know what is stephen harper reading? I liked Laura Penny’s column on idiot media. Across the sea, Jodi Picoult is profiled. What writers need to write (Douglas Coupland says chocolate). Most importantly India Knight on the royal break-up.
April 15, 2007
Home news
Big changes are a-coming around our house and it’s time to let the secret out: we’re expecting a new addition. This is the divide between our youth and adulthood, I suppose, and time for us to face up to our responsibilities, to begin to approach respectability. Never again, our salad days, but this change signifies a new era of possibility– aesthetically and ergonomically.
We bought a sofa. No more will our cheapest-in-the-shop futon be your sole option for asseyez-vousing when you come round. No longer will our apartment be outfitted like a college flat. A sofa: three seater, comfortable, classic. Our sofa: the most grown-up thing we’ve ever done.
And so the sofa was the point of yesterday. Luckily its purchase coincided with our need for a change of scenery, and we took the subway out to Main Street station to choose it. It is fortunate that Stuart and I have the exact same taste (good or bad, though he is less partial to tye-dye than I am) and so we picked it fast: exactly what we wanted. And then we walked the Danforth, all the way from Main Street to Chester to visit Erin-who-we-love. On the way we stopped off at the Chocolate Heaven Cafe (as heard on Metro Morning and as featured in the Globe last week).) We had dinner with Erin at Asteria Soulaki Place and it was the best Greek food we’ve ever had. Oishilicious. Today has moved at a slower pace, but highlights included She Said Boom for book purchases*, and Tealish to replenish our stock.
Book purchases: Happenstance by Carol Shields and Where I Was From by Joan Didion.
We are excited because tonight Curtis returns after two weeks of chaos in the United Kingdom. We are also excited because he might have brought us candy.
April 15, 2007
We forgot my father-in-law
I love it when I’m reading and I can pinpoint the moment a book casts its spell. Suite Francaise took a little while, but at the end of page 112 when I gasped audibly with horror and surprise (laced with the slightest dash of amusement), I was hooked. I’ve just finished “Storm in June” now, and I am looking forward to the rest.
April 13, 2007
Hip-hop Wordsworth Squirrel
See, I told you they’d hate the hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel. Of course they do. The most unremarkable thing in the world is that they hate the hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel, and so I can’t imagine why someone has to write a blog entry to that effect. Or, I suppose, why I have to write another blog entry to keep you up to date on who’s predicably hating the hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel today.
The hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel is breaking my heart.
April 13, 2007
Smart books
I don’t know how to calculate the odds that going to my bookshelf and pulling down In the Skin of a Lion to check a reference on page 106 for the paper I am marking, I will open the book right to page 106 without thinking. In fact I don’t really want to know the odds, because I like the idea of some sort of a connection between my head, my hands and the text itself. This happens often at my library job where I go to retrieve a book, I know the general area, and then reading the call number I realize that my intended book is right where my hand already rests, or that it was the first book I looked at on the shelf. Sometimes books do know us better than we know ourselves.
However Rebecca Rosenblum is experiencing the opposite phenomenon today. Much concerned is she that her Jane Eyre has disappeared!
April 13, 2007
Perfectly in time
Now reading Suite Française. Ragdoll read it last year, and I love what she had to say about it: “Written before the author died at Auschwitz in 1942, Suite Française hums along like an orchestral movement, each sentence an instrument finely tuned and perfectly in time with the one sitting before and after it.”
