Two quotes today, both from Sebald
...the ghosts of repetition that haunt me with ever greater frequency
We all move, one after the other, along the same roads mapped out for us by our origins and our hopes.
I wonder which force is more powerful: origin or hope?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding. (Sebald)
If this is true, I'm not engrossed enough in my work. And there is no complexity in my mental constructs, I knew that already. Bollocks.
If this is true, I'm not engrossed enough in my work. And there is no complexity in my mental constructs, I knew that already. Bollocks.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
The point of books
I've been rummaging around, looking for answers. Here are some compelling ones.
-Fiction is the most fundamental human art. Fiction is storytelling, and our reality arguable consists of the stories we tell about ourselves.
-Creativity starts in the well of human feeling which for want of a better single word we call the soul.
-I hoped that the book would actually tell me how to live.
-That I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf felt akin to an instance of religious grace.
-There’s never been much love lost between literature and the marketplace. The consumer economy loves a product that sells at a premium, wears out quickly or is susceptible to regular improvement.
-The writers is situated on the margins of culture. But isn’t this where he belongs? This is the perfect place to observe what’s happening at the dead centre of things… The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he’ll become.
-Ever since man became capable of free speculation, their actions have depended upon their theories as to the world and human life.
-Fiction is the most fundamental human art. Fiction is storytelling, and our reality arguable consists of the stories we tell about ourselves.
-Creativity starts in the well of human feeling which for want of a better single word we call the soul.
-I hoped that the book would actually tell me how to live.
-That I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf felt akin to an instance of religious grace.
-There’s never been much love lost between literature and the marketplace. The consumer economy loves a product that sells at a premium, wears out quickly or is susceptible to regular improvement.
-The writers is situated on the margins of culture. But isn’t this where he belongs? This is the perfect place to observe what’s happening at the dead centre of things… The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he’ll become.
-Ever since man became capable of free speculation, their actions have depended upon their theories as to the world and human life.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Moon Tiger
I've recently discovered Penelope Lively's fiction. I started with Moon Tiger which won the Booker in 87. I couldn't recommend this book enough. Since then I've been burrowing my way through the rest of her joyfully substantial backlist. Some of my favourite snippets -
'The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.'
'I didn't see him for over four years and by the time I did we had both been jolted into another incarnation of ourselves.'
'We talked. We told each other as much as were ever going to tell. I peered into spaces of his account and he, I suppose, listened to the silences in mine.'
'And what, you may ask me, does that moment in history have to do with me? Life everything else: it enlarges me, it frees me from the prison of my experience; it also resounds within that experience.'
'The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.'
'I didn't see him for over four years and by the time I did we had both been jolted into another incarnation of ourselves.'
'We talked. We told each other as much as were ever going to tell. I peered into spaces of his account and he, I suppose, listened to the silences in mine.'
'And what, you may ask me, does that moment in history have to do with me? Life everything else: it enlarges me, it frees me from the prison of my experience; it also resounds within that experience.'
Sunday, August 2, 2009
An exotic form of hoop-la
In the early 1940s, Claudia, an English war correspondent posted in Cairo, falls in love with Tom. He has a couple of days leave and they go to the zoo in Cairo.
The hippo share a small lake with flamingos and assorted duck; a keeper stands alongside with a bucketful of potatoes - five piastres buys a couple of potatoes which you then hurl into the pink maw of the hippo. The adult hippos wallow with their mouths permanently agape while two young ones, who have not yet got the idea, cruise fretfully up and down, occasionally struck by inaccurate potatoes.
'Like an exotic form of hoop-la,' says Tom. 'Do you want a go?'
Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively
The hippo share a small lake with flamingos and assorted duck; a keeper stands alongside with a bucketful of potatoes - five piastres buys a couple of potatoes which you then hurl into the pink maw of the hippo. The adult hippos wallow with their mouths permanently agape while two young ones, who have not yet got the idea, cruise fretfully up and down, occasionally struck by inaccurate potatoes.
'Like an exotic form of hoop-la,' says Tom. 'Do you want a go?'
Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively
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