O’Yawn moment II: Writers revealing their favourite books this year

O’Yawn and alas, this is the time of year when writers are surveyed on their favourite ”books of the year” or some such spiel. The remarkable thing is how many of them liked the same book, so the reader hoping to pick up hot, angsty, insightful titles could leave the paragraphs with the view the only man who ever wrote a book was called Edmund.

There should be a ban therefore on repetition.  A phonecall should be placed with the message: sorry find another that’s ones been nabbed.

The truth is it’s more likely some manual on the operation of a fifteenth century plough that truly sent them into orbit but because no one can find it at the library or on Amazon .. maybe they don’t want to fess up.

The library and I maintain a fruitful, but bewildering relationship with each other. They sometimes send me these brisk emails “Sorry we will not be buying this book” or I shake my head and ask if they are certain there’s no one else in this city likely to be interested in this particular book about Hispanic males age 24 and the relationship they enjoyed with their mother on a particular city block in the Lower East Side in 1961.

Still they delighted us this week by acquiring for the small Puffin Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons in French (Les Hirondelles?) from the National library in Quebec. Such is its preciousness and age, we can only read it inside the library. I feel like we are getting a peek at the bones of a famous nun.  The only remaining dilemma is my woeful French.

Nations, Chilly ones.

Any person living in a place where the temperature dips below zero should be paid a “cold person’s allowance” for the miserable, swish sound of plastic rain/snowpants, worn by necessity indoors and out, all bleedin’ day.  How are coherent thoughts managed in these conditions? It’s only -7 to -18 here. The catcall that we aren’t used to it isn’t convincing. It’s unfathomable territory. We shouldn’t get used to it. Give it back to Toronto.

Apparently folks are underwhelmed by Quebec’s trot to nationhood

Outside Quebec, 77 per cent of Canadians rejected the idea the province forms a nation, suggested the Leger Marketing survey …

Among regional, linguistic and Liberal party breakdowns, French-speaking Quebeckers, at 71 per cent, were the only group to “personally consider that Quebeckers form a nation.”

I guess it’s not unusual to be at odds with 70 percent of the populus. Clearly that 70 percent have never tried to learn the bloody subjunctive tense in French because if they had they would immediately appreciate the effort req’d would warrant being rewarded with your own nation.

Besides what’s up with folks… it’s surely more interesting to be journeying to a new nation on your holidays. Consider “I am going on my holidays to Blackpool” or “I am off to visit the nation of Blackpool”.

 The people of North Mayo, many of whom, are trying to stop the Shell gas pipeline proposed to run under their kitchen windows might be wishing they could too could form their own nation, where the Guards don’t batter them every morning and the government actually heeds their anxiety from the comfort of their posh houses in Rathgar.

Prime Time have  a special on both the division and the misery it’s causing:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/1123/primetime.html

There’s a link on the right with more information about the campaign.

Rauschenberg, phobia, and Crimestoppers.

Adrian Searle pays tribute to Rauschenberg in the Guardian:During the 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg produced some of the best and most influential art of the decade. Visiting Rome in 1952 with Cy Twombly, he hung small, totemic sculptures called Personal Fetishes from the trees in the Pincio Gardens. Subsequently, he threw all the work he had made and shown in Italy into the Arno River. “It saved a packing problem,” he said. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1958599,00.html

The argument between or about bloggers vs reviewers is still going on interminably over there. I hope someone is close on patenting a decent arthritis pill that doesn’t burn a hole in the tummy, for the degenerating cartilage in the arms of those typing epistles arguing over whether we should be paid very badly to think about books or not be paid at all. Perhaps these folk need to get some phobias …

Jenny Diski admirably managed to overcome her arachnophobia(http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n23/disk01_.html ) in what must surely be akin to the level of surprise or revelation Bernadette experienced when the Virgin Mary turned up in the rosebush beside her (or however that story goes). It offers hope for my rodent and fear of dying anxieties. A hamster moving in helped.  The hamster, a dwarf, has gained weight and is more fluffy golf ball than rodent now. I considered a job as an autopsy attendant, tried looking at autopsy websites, an’ came very close to passing out.  I think phobias reside in the frontal lobe, sharing the couch with writer’s block and other such joys.

 Some medja are suggesting atonement for Ian McEwan. Forget that, his real calling could lie in forming a partnership with Crimestoppers. Since his last novel suggested he may be persuaded of the power of poetry to change the mind of tempestuous criminals. Am surprised the Met police haven’t recorded him reading poetry and then set up some kind of tape deck to blare it on a loop near notorious London crime spots.

 

La Neige: brooming the tree

 Up the road, in the dark, walking in the very deep snow, I notice a man and his pregnant partner in the middle of the road with a boxy camera down in the snow. They’re taking a picture of the hospital they say because it looked nice and creepy. A discussion about the usual terrible state of arts funding blather ensued as another 5cm of snow fluttered down.

 Up the hill, inspired by these two Urban, reproductive types I decide to take a picture of an orange road bollard. In the lense though I can’t see any sign of the bollard, so snap any old thing.

At the intersection of two roads I see a man, with woman and a dog, and a broom. He is putting the broom up into the tree and brushing it. He is definately brushing the tree. I know because I stand five minutes in the chilly conditions to be absolutely certain. 

Two young fellas approach with the broom business directly in their line of vision. One has a set of googles like a snorkle on, so I remark on its functionality. The other one, seemingly jittery, says: did you see that flash before?” and anxiously scans the pavements for its source.

 Too embarrassed to admit that was me taking a pic of a road bollard that I couldn’t actually find when it came down to it. I suggest it’s someone taking a picture.

I found it mighty curious that a man sweeping a tree didn’t create any consternation, yet an average flash sent him snorkelling into detective mode.

The man with his broom up the tree worries me. I have that furry foreign moment of I’ll never come to terms with this city until on a radio program today I hear someone describe tree branches heavy with snow, cracking and landing on the power lines, and rewarding the population with instant darkness on top of the troubling conditions.

 The man brushing the tree is actually a visionary. 24 hours and a warm oven to cook his chicken in ahead of his time.  It was the broom more than the camera that mattered.

$71.71 for Mr Beckett

 

Mr Beckett has in my adulthood often administered the same lifting tonics, that the spontaneous receipt of a twenty pound note from a relative of otherwise few words once did in childhood. If you were a poor child, you’ll fathom that last bit..

 Last week I invested from my very modest means the most I have ever spent on a book in his honour. $71.71. There was something very Beckettish about the price of it. Kind of check-mate ish.

I genuinely admire the work of the Beckett foundation (http://www.library.rdg.ac.uk/colls/bif/index.html#pubs who offer several unique publications) and it’s founder James Knowlson and Elizabeth Knowlson, his partner, who have written extensively and with extraordinary dedication for much of their lives about Beckett.

For anyone who missed these radio pieces during the centenary … Je dis (to borrow from Monsieur Jelloun) .. Merci Monsieur Beckett.

http://www.rte.ie/beckett100/radioarchives.html

Such is my commitment to the French language I attempted to read Mal Vu Mal Dit en Francais and felt myself to be getting along very well with it. I was gathering a certain degree of minimalism and the moon and I thought talk of curtains. Few chapters in checked against the English to see if there really was a woman having the conversation I thought she was with the moon.

I had not grasped a single word of it accurately. Not even a hint. Except the title and the page numbers.

There’s an interesting literary experience for readers waiting inbetween translation. A whole new book arrives.

The temptation of a spat

I know it’s trivial to draw attention to it, but who can resist a spat. As spats go this one is pretty minor since it does not involve a set of dentures. One of my favourite spats was the Martin Amis’ teeth spat since I had the same dental issues as Monsieur Amis. (bi-max osteotomy http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/~omfs/chopper.html is the genius who fixed my jaws with the hacksaw etc)  and longed to weigh in only on the dental front, never mind the book deal for God’s sake, consider the trauma to those poor overcrowded, on the road to recession gums. Did Mr Amis realize he could them fixed on the NHS? Getting your two jaws broken is great training for writing a novel, I discovered. Unfortunately it offers no advantage for finishing one.

I link to this article because I think it’s a well written and classy piece:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1956873,00.html

I’m not taking a position on the actual spat, since there are no teeth involved. But did wonder why no one took the opportunity to point out how poorly paid literary journalism is or freelancing full stop. I had to get a job as a security guard in order to subsidize my own journalistic efforts, but that could also be because it actually took me 40 hours to write that Booker Prize article. (“10-6 Roger, copy, over and out” Mr Sutherland perhaps)

I realized afterwards I either formulate my thoughts very slowly or I was doing something wrong, very wrong. 

New Puffin Nation

Following on from Quebec’s excellent example of possibly declaring itself a nation within Canada (good work lads..) I am declaring my own new nation here in BC called simply Puffin. (not to be confused with Muffins. Our nation will be short but not edible. Do not attempt to nibble us on sight). This nation will be led by the following imposing looking madames:

 I can assure you that under the governance of these bonnes vaches you won’t be receiving the phone call survey I did the other night, on behalf of the local govt, where I was asked whether I thought someone should be denied a job on account of being a smoker.  Er.. it’s not too far in the distant past when our Premier got sniffly on the news apologizing for being tanked on Martinis while hurtling along the road in Hawaii. Now I wouldn’t be a huge fan of the holy smokes, but the persecution of tea drinkers is obviously next on the list.

We Puffinois will be speaking French because we like it, but there will be an end to those police escort situations for Foreign dignitaries or govt types from other provinces. Basically we’ll provide a fold up bike at the airport for ye and a small comb to rearrange yourself if you insist on arrival.

Puffin nation will provide all Puffinois with cooked food. It will be a more upscale version of a soup kitchen since we know that deep down it’s food that causes all the stress. Puffin nation recognizes some of us aren’t cut out for cooking and this misery should end.

The pressing question with all this talk of the new nation of Quebec is will this signal an end to the floppy 1980’s sweatshirt look over there?

 We’ll be debating it in our first caucus.

 In the meantime I propose we all form another nation without Stephen Harper (Prime Minister) in it.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/11/22/harper-quebec.html

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/11/23/reaction-quebec.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/parliament39/quebecnation-reaction.html

The peril of noble advice near tofu

A woman, with shiny quality curls, shoved a packet of soft tofu in front of me yesterday excitedly, because she heard me tell my young puffin there was no possibility this side of Mercury I would be buying the gunky looking peach flavoured GMO soy bean pudding he insisted upon.

Just add cocoa powder, says she of the good curls, it’s as good as chocolate pudding, my kids never notice than difference.

She added a few more supporting facts about neighbouring packets of soft tofu and thoughts of chocolate pudding had begun to be genuinely appealing.

I begin with four spoons of cocoa and a hand blender. It’s very dusty. I am unconvinced. It doesn’t look like chocolate pudding. A small lick .. such a shocking affront to my tongue that I add three large spoons of brown sugar. Then a more anxious pitch took over and I threw three big spoons of raspberry jam. Worried that raspberry jam was very silly thing to put in I hail the puffin to taste it. He look enthusiastic and swiftly revolted.

-it’s like batter wails the Puffin

-by no stretch of bleedin’ beep beep imagination does this resemble chocolate pudding, blasts the mammy craytur.

Feck it, piled another four large spoons of real hot chocolate into it, in an gesture of drowning the vileness out of it.

Reenter the puffin

-much improved.

But the problem is that the presence of tofu just couldn’t be obliterated, given the blasted thing was made of tofu.

Still disgruntled I suggest we fling it the freezer and eat it only in the event of an earthquake.

Moments later I disclose I feel very sick.

Puffin says he feels sick.

Really?

Well not really. I just feel we should go to the bakery and get a lemon cupcake to get rid of the taste.

We agree to brave an incredible rainstorm to walk five blocks to the shop having further agreed no lemon cupcakes, sensible duck crackers and less sensible choice for mother craytur.

At the bakery puffin shouts excitedly “look there’s a mouse!” Woman behind counter admits a “rodent” (she won’t commit to which variety) walked in the back door and has gone missing in action.

Mother craytur sincerely and irrevocably (forever and ever amen) terrified of rodents tries to climb into shopping trolley and generally wails like a goose, while bakery person asks Puffin to locate the mouse.

Puffin obliges. Mother waves hands and wails. Mouse or rodent cannot be located. Bakery person tells folks not to be alarmed. Mother craytur is very alarmed. We pay for provisions at neighbouring cash till and Puffin points out mouse is by front door: are we going out that way. Certainly not. Puffin points out umbrella is left in tall tub by front door. I ask Puffin to go get. Puffin goes to get it, but bends down and declares mouse presence again. I declare sighting excitedly to staff who ignore me and continuing cutting buns. Puffin returns sans umbrella. Declares he only likes mice in the distance and up close they are a bit scary wants me to go with over there with him. I say let’s abandon umbrella. Then note that storm is now coming down at such a rate pneumonia is on the menu. I beg Puffin to get umbrella. Puffin refuses. I offer Puffin money. Puffin refuses. I beg cashier to get umbrella. Cashier obliges. I heap silent blessings on cashier to the tune of God be good to her, may her house be rained on with gold coins. We exit distant door, far from mousie.  At door and window where mousie was spotted I say to Puffin. OK where is he?  We bend and peer under the trollies through the window while the rain runs into the back of our boots desperate to get a look at him, now there’s a thick pain of glass between us all. Puffin admits he thinks mousie tail is as long as his hand and mousie’s feet went up by his ears when he walked like a crocodile.

In future must speak a foreign language when discussing puddings with the Puffin. Must scan trollies for furry presence before entering magasin. Practice attachment parenting with umbrella at all times. Trust implicitly Puffin opinion on pudding matters rather than gals with shiny hair. Good chocolate pudding does not produce shiny hair.

Post script note: on subsequent visit phobic mama requested status update on Mr Mousie and it was acknowledged Mousie was actually a small rat and er… the cessation of blood through his veins is suspected, but has not yet been established.

Mad Hot Ballroom

bogtrot rather than foxtrot…

This documentary Mad Hot Ballroom (see link below) is the most fun and engaging thing I’ve seen since my wisdom teeth were removed. Various groups of grade 5 children from public schools in New York have to take ballroom dancing classes, with a view to this competition. It’s very charming and funny and curiously gripping watching the children negotiating everything involved, including each other.  This link has a list of clips from the documentary.

I recommend “change partners” and “getting to know the kids.”  

http://www.paramountvantage.com/madhot/index-site.html 

Boil Water Advisory

For days we have been on a city-wide boil water advisory after a significant storm last Wednesday, which put trees down and turned off the lights. Naturally everyone largely overreacted and got terribly excited about acquiring the last litre bottle of boiled water on the shop shelves. Curiously unnecessary since they only told us to turn on the kettle. I observed several advantages to the boil water advisory: First a distinct lack of that dreadful slurping noise one is accustomed to hearing in your left ear at the cinema. Yep no soda drinks sold in the cinema. Gracias. The unmentionable multinational coffee chain have had some service interruptions!  Maybe now they’ll think twice and pay those Ethiopian coffee farmers the 23 cents per kilo they deserve rather than the 8 cents that is further impoverishing them.

See this film for more on the farmers: http://blackgoldmovie.com/

 Also, http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1931675,00.html

And finally an increase in charming notices pinned up in public places such as one yesterday at a deli that read  “we are washing all our fruit and vegetables with bottled water.” It’s quite the irony that the water supply would not have been interrupted if we weren’t tinkering so violently with the entire weather system with all these green house gases. When you think about it if people weren’t driving these ridiculous gas guzzler cars, they’d be able to turn on the tap with confidence. So there’s this interesting warm arse = no clean water conundrum. There’s no telling them, as my mother would say.

The ice rink: a smudge from every decade

So there I was admiring the way ice rinks can gather and maintain a smudge from every decade without having to bid any of it goodbye.  The reason I was able to deduce such an astonishing conclusion was I was freezing my arse off in the bleachers,  while my six-year-old puffin was zipping and twisting between grown, middle, and diddy men, women, children, pushchairs (indeed you can take your baby skating in the stroller, literally ice rinks adapt to every decade’s needs), wheelchairs. Somewhere out there was his father. Yours truly has only ever tried it twice, to little success and such intense discomfort in the foot region that I’m not tempted to repeat it. It’s perishing up there in the stands, with an electric heat strip hanging down in three spots, with no real heat ever reaching the top of your head. I was struck by how ice rinks refuse to cover up their age, so the hokey looking polar bear complete with woolly hat and ice hockey stick painted on the wall probably arrived in the 1970’s say. Then there’s the bunting flags which openly declare which season the various teams obtained them and finally the unapologetic soundtrack of Boney M bouncing the foot of the Grand-dad beside me, with mp3 player in his ears (Boney M overruled whatever was going on in the ears), and thermos at the ready, while his grandson skates alone below.

So out I meander to try warm the bloodflow at the desk and the woman explains she learnt to skate in this rink at age three and attended the preschool in the same building and oh, they’re ripping it down to build a fancy new one because of the impending Olympics. Drat and damnation I had been so uplifted at the prospect of revisiting the 1970’s, 80’s every Sunday and concluded the only other place which records the decades so proudly and incidentally in its walls is the outdoor swimming pool, which they’ve been threatening to destroy for two years. I wonder if the Boney M tapes will go into the same mush, when the bulldozers plough through the poor polar bear.

O’Yawn moment: Literary partnerships…

In a week of noting how celebrity divorces can now seemingly usurp elections, it’s time for this blog’s first o’yawn moment.

 Lust and literature is a heady mixture, and the women writers of the 20th century who married poets and novelists often came unstuck in both life and art.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article1956989.ece

Clearly it makes far more sense to make your hay romantically in the strict marital sense with someone who actually has a job with paycheck, or cheap airline tickets, or discount on groceries, or expertise in laying pipes. The sensible thing would be to then procure the affections on the side of your literary love-a-duck, ensuring you are sufficiently absent when they are moaning about their latest tome and removing their toenails procrastinating etc. Turn up just as they have that revved, fresh, got a few good hours work done today, would you like a boiled egg glow.

When selecting partners of any extraction bottom line: make absolute sure they can cook a good egg. A good egg can cure the most irksome traits and inconveniences.

 Possibly the best partner for a writer is actually the leg of a table.

Radio again… radio 4 this time.

Clearly I’m a radio gal.

Been listening to this very interesting series on BBC Radio 4 called:

Living With Aids: Twenty five years since the first recorded cases of AIDS, Radio 4 looks at the AIDS crisis with the Living With Aids series of programmes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/aids/

There are two programmes I listened to one where Paul Gambaccini goes back over the history of the emergence of HIV in England, specifically London. And the other was about the science of the virus:

Allan Little tells the story of the race to identify the cause of a new and devastating disease.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/aidsthesearchforthevirus/pip/d2t70/

Both programmes are well worth a listen. Post your comments on them below if you wish.

Radio 3 Misunderstood Perhaps?

Just caught a glimpse of this on the paper:

Changes to BBC Radio 3’s schedule that will come into force early next year were revealed yesterday, amid rumours that the station is planning to reduce its output of live music.

Radio 3’s controller, Roger Wright, insisted that he was not planning to significantly increase the number of shows that rely on excerpts from concerts rather than the complete programme. “That’s rubbish,” he said. “We’re doing full concerts. We are not going to do excerpts, we’re going to do concerts.” The rumours, he said “come from a complete misunderstanding of what we do, leave alone what we are going to do”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1940568,00.html

 I haven’t the foggiest notion whether they are understood or otherwise but it reminded me of the wonderful Beethoven experience they did some time back where we could download these less well known symphonies.

That put me onto Radio Three and some of its delights.  The only trouble is the archive’s a bit dodgy, especially with the night? arts programme. You can get all excited about some interview last week, only to discover there’s no possible way you can hear it again.

I’m woefully uneducated about classical music, unless an abstract fondness for the cello counts, but it and Irish language broadcasting are the two things I can listen to when scribbling. I suspect only a vague grasp on what’s happening in both cases is the reason why.

Anyway here are my two leading comforters: “respect” as Mr G would say: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/ agus http://www.rte.ie/rnag/

The peril of Aunts: Mrs Desai gettin’ it in the ear

Well Kiran Desai is going to need that humility I mentioned: God help writers when the ever noble medja phones up your Aunt.

Residents of the Himalayan town featured in Kiran Desai’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Inheritance of Loss are upset over her portrayal of them.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2006/11/02/desai-booker-nepalese.html

Desai’s aunt recently told a magazine in India that she has not told people in the town of Kalimpong about her niece because “the book contains many insensitive things.”

Now the curious thing is where exactly can a writer write about without the inhabitants taking umbrage? Will we have to invent ungeographically placeable (forgive appalling grammar) cities, towns, humps in the road. A generic lego-town where no beggar (meaning general person, not person  clutching a bowl) can get offended. To say nothing of the peril of having to write only inoffensive characters who do nothing wrong or perhaps do nothing at all. Is it the onset of the blank page in publishing…

 In the meantime be careful what you say to your Aunt when she’s beside you at next years Christmas dinner, birthday, family get together, if you run into her when collecting your contraceptive prescription, buying a shoelace. They’re powerful creatures … they don’t mince words.

I once had a conversation with my Aunt while watching telly (I had a broken jaw at the time so perhaps conversation is an exaggeration) in which I professed an interest in watching a video nation piece about this mad looking Morris dancer who worked for the Council that was three minutes long. Rubbish, she said, it’s Saturday night, I want to watch a quiz show. I’m will be glad I had a broken jaw if the papers ever phone her for a quote.