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
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
the stooping rhythms of failure
But I'll begin at the real beginning, on the dilapidated rooftops on an ordinary estate, in an ordinary neighbourhood in London. (...) I will never understand why my brother killed himself then, why he waited until that night to leave me. The way I saw it, for the two of us, all the bad stuff, the real tragedy, was over.
Coming to London should have been our fresh start, our new beginning. I remembered how very happy we were because we were going to Great Britain. I remembered the shock of finding ourselves alone in a small council flat in east London. Truth was, in many ways we lived better in Somalia, where despite years of war we were around familiar things that at least made life seem constant. In London we had to start all over.
Until I arrived here after a six-hour flight, I imagined a different universe of street parties, white girls with ponytails - and boyfriends - who ate chunky chocolate bars while jumping rope on lush, green grass; ice cream and fine wines and homes with tended hedges. (...)
Back to that night. The twin towers of Wanstead Flats, Forest Gate, east London. James and Ashvin best friends, stood on two separate roofs of the towers.
The binmen were expected; that muscular smell of refuse made it difficult to breathe. The smell drifted everywhere, covered everything, like concrete in your developed world. The horizon, as far as the eye could see, was enveloped in the gritty fabric of the London skyline at night, traces of the permanent stench, the stooping rhythms of failure: aerosol cans, empty plastic carrier bags, orphaned toys, rubbish everywhere (...); all scattered relics from battered lives.
from Forest Gate, by Peter Akinti
Coming to London should have been our fresh start, our new beginning. I remembered how very happy we were because we were going to Great Britain. I remembered the shock of finding ourselves alone in a small council flat in east London. Truth was, in many ways we lived better in Somalia, where despite years of war we were around familiar things that at least made life seem constant. In London we had to start all over.
Until I arrived here after a six-hour flight, I imagined a different universe of street parties, white girls with ponytails - and boyfriends - who ate chunky chocolate bars while jumping rope on lush, green grass; ice cream and fine wines and homes with tended hedges. (...)
Back to that night. The twin towers of Wanstead Flats, Forest Gate, east London. James and Ashvin best friends, stood on two separate roofs of the towers.
The binmen were expected; that muscular smell of refuse made it difficult to breathe. The smell drifted everywhere, covered everything, like concrete in your developed world. The horizon, as far as the eye could see, was enveloped in the gritty fabric of the London skyline at night, traces of the permanent stench, the stooping rhythms of failure: aerosol cans, empty plastic carrier bags, orphaned toys, rubbish everywhere (...); all scattered relics from battered lives.
from Forest Gate, by Peter Akinti
Monday, May 25, 2009
The deepest purpose of fiction is...
I subscribe to two wildly different models of how fiction relates to its audience.
In one model, which was championed by Flaubert, the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independent of whether people are able to enjoy it. We can call this the Status model. It invites a discourse of genius and art-historical importance.
In the opposing model, a novel represents a contract between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group (...) The deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness.
from How to be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
In one model, which was championed by Flaubert, the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independent of whether people are able to enjoy it. We can call this the Status model. It invites a discourse of genius and art-historical importance.
In the opposing model, a novel represents a contract between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group (...) The deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness.
from How to be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
Mum was in Dad's minicab and parked, probably illegally, outside the station at Faversham. I started to get into the car, but she got out first. 'What's this? She picked up one of my arms and let it drop. She tapped my wrist, pinched my cheek, poked me in the stomach. 'Did you leave the rest of you in Cambridge?'
Her hair was greyer. I forgot to look at her eyes. Instead I could see the smiling and the frowning she'd done while I was gone, her face quietly folding itself away into some scary distance. I couldn't think of anything to say. I hugged her. She smelt of flour and vanilla.
'I made you a birthday cake,' she said. 'In case you decided to have a birthday today. Remember that, eh?'
Inside the car I buckled up my seat belt, wanting to wrestle the tip of my tongue out of my mouth with my hands, to see if that would encourage sound. She didn't seem to notice that I hadn't said anything, not even hello. She looked over at me as she started up. She said: 'You probably won't be having any cake, though, by the looks of you. Cambridge has turned you bougie, hasn't it. I'll make you a nice cup of tea instead.'
At last: 'Bougie? Are you really calling me bourgeois? What are you on about, Mum?'
Mum grinned. 'Your figure's all boyish now. You know, like one of those girls with skin from a make-up ad who goes off to a lovely house in Italy and has the most beautiful breakdown because the philosophy books she's reading are too much for her brain.'
from White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi
(NB: the lovely house in Italy is definitely in Tuscany)
temporal name-tags
Five days was a long time at Diplomat's Week. Agnes, who had once thought days existed merely for identification purposes, temporal name-tags to facilitate social confluence, came to know each one as a prisoner does her jailers.
Of course Monday was the worst, a jack-booted Nazi of a day; people did suicidal things on Mondays, like start diets and watch documentaries. Fear of Monday also tended to ruin Sunday, an invasion which Agnes resented deeply.
Moreover, it made her suspicious of Tuesday; a day whose unrelenting tedium was deceptively camouflaged by the mere fact of its not being Monday.
Wednesday, on the other hand, was touch and go, delicately balanced between the memory of the last weekend and the thought of the weekend to come. Wednesday was a plateau and dangerous things could happen on plateaux. For example, one could forget one was in prison at all.
Thursday was Agnes's favourite, a day dedicated to pure anticipation. By then she was on the home stretch, sprinting in glorious slow-motion towards the distant flutter of Friday's finishing line; which, however, when reached, often felt to her like nothing but a memento mori of the next incarceration.
from Saving Agnes, by Rachel Cusk
Of course Monday was the worst, a jack-booted Nazi of a day; people did suicidal things on Mondays, like start diets and watch documentaries. Fear of Monday also tended to ruin Sunday, an invasion which Agnes resented deeply.
Moreover, it made her suspicious of Tuesday; a day whose unrelenting tedium was deceptively camouflaged by the mere fact of its not being Monday.
Wednesday, on the other hand, was touch and go, delicately balanced between the memory of the last weekend and the thought of the weekend to come. Wednesday was a plateau and dangerous things could happen on plateaux. For example, one could forget one was in prison at all.
Thursday was Agnes's favourite, a day dedicated to pure anticipation. By then she was on the home stretch, sprinting in glorious slow-motion towards the distant flutter of Friday's finishing line; which, however, when reached, often felt to her like nothing but a memento mori of the next incarceration.
from Saving Agnes, by Rachel Cusk
Saturday, May 23, 2009
the Arthritic motion of the clock on her wall
She had been employed, for reasons she was not yet able to ascertain, as assistant editor of this illustrious weekly, but soon came to feel that she was not so much assisting as getting in the way. The pain of this suspicion would become particularly acute when, sitting in her overheated office. she would find herself transfixed by the arthritic motion of the clock on the wall, and, forgetting for a moment that her imprisonment was owed to an act of will rather than one of international terrorism, would become tearful at the thought that perhaps the rest of her adult life was to be wished away thus.
from Saving Agnes, by Rachel Cusk
from Saving Agnes, by Rachel Cusk
a cold breath of air on my forehead
Whenever I was in the station, said Austerlitz, I kept almost obsessively trying to imagine -- through the ever-changing maze of walls -- the location in that huge space of the rooms where the asylum inmates were confined, and I often wondered whether the pain and suffering accumulated on this site over the centuries had ever really ebbed away, or whether they might not still, as I sometimes thought when I felt a cold breath of air on my forehead, be sensed as we pass through them on our way through the station halls and up and down the flights of steps.
Austerlitz, W G Sebald
Austerlitz, W G Sebald
Sunday, May 17, 2009
W.G. Sebald interview extract
The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives. But it is something you cannot possibly escape: your psychological make-up is such that you are inclined to look back over your shoulder. Memory, even if you repress it, will come at you and it will shape your life. Without memories there wouldn't be any writing: the specific weight an image or phrase needs to get across to the reader can only come from things remembered - not from yesterday but from a long time ago.
A malevolent and lightless palor (depression)
-'As soon as I so much as picked up my pencil the endless possibilities of language, to which I could once safely abandon myself, became a conglomeration of the most inane phrases.'
-'And in this dreadful state of mind I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the wall, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one's power.'
-'Especially in the evening twilight, which had always been my favourite time of day, I was so overcome by a sense of anxiety, diffuse at first and then growing ever denser, through which the lovely spectacle of fading colours turned to a malevolent and lightless pallor...'
from Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
Hidden Cities
'In the morning you wake from one bad dream and another begins.'
'The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognise who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.'
from Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
'The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognise who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.'
from Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Friday, May 15, 2009
There's a Certain slant of light,
Winter Afternoons -
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are -
None may teach it - Any -
'Tis the Seal Despair
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air -
When it comes, the Landscape listens -
Shadows - hold their breath -
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death -
Emily Dickinson
Winter Afternoons -
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are -
None may teach it - Any -
'Tis the Seal Despair
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air -
When it comes, the Landscape listens -
Shadows - hold their breath -
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death -
Emily Dickinson
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The inexorable sadness of pencils...
Dolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate pubic places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
Theodore Roethke
I feel almost guilty for enjoying this poem so much - Roethke's life, according to his wikipedia entry, seems to be full of heartache and catastrophe. He spent big chunks of his childhood in his father and uncle's jointly owned greenhouse - his poetry (though not Dolor) perhaps reflects this. At 15, they uncle committed suicide, father died of cancer. He dropped out of Harvard, taught English at various universities, was expelled from one of them. This was followed by an affair with a fellow poet; he also began to suffer from manic depression, which helped/hindered his creative life. (the constant dilemma) He married a different woman, had a heart attack in a swimming pool, and died at the age of 55.
God. Thankfully it is fairly rare to read one's own orbituaries. (It happened to Nobel, the journalist reported wrote an orbituary about the wrong Nobel - so he was in the curious position of having himself described as the 'creator of weapons of death and suffering', and repented. Peace prize to atone.)
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate pubic places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
Theodore Roethke
I feel almost guilty for enjoying this poem so much - Roethke's life, according to his wikipedia entry, seems to be full of heartache and catastrophe. He spent big chunks of his childhood in his father and uncle's jointly owned greenhouse - his poetry (though not Dolor) perhaps reflects this. At 15, they uncle committed suicide, father died of cancer. He dropped out of Harvard, taught English at various universities, was expelled from one of them. This was followed by an affair with a fellow poet; he also began to suffer from manic depression, which helped/hindered his creative life. (the constant dilemma) He married a different woman, had a heart attack in a swimming pool, and died at the age of 55.
God. Thankfully it is fairly rare to read one's own orbituaries. (It happened to Nobel, the journalist reported wrote an orbituary about the wrong Nobel - so he was in the curious position of having himself described as the 'creator of weapons of death and suffering', and repented. Peace prize to atone.)
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
the end of his triumph
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and
people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would
never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth
doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean> on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they
would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the
gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field
after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other
side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the
marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it
was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the
end of his triumph.
It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and
people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would
never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth
doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean> on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they
would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the
gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field
after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other
side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the
marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it
was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the
end of his triumph.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Piccadilly books
What's the point of books?
(this is a bit of a loaded, self-obsessed question for me, because I might as well be asking 'What is the meaning of my life?' I work in books. Although the fact thatI pathetically rely on work to give meaning to life is horrific, and not to be dwelled on here.)
I really love looking at what people are reading on the tube in the mornings. Marian Keyes got a look in this week. And a man in a very nice grey duffle coat (with those nice tuggy tag button things) was reading Peter Ackroyd on the night bus just now. There's a woman I see almost daily at Finsbury Park, she is almost through Les Miserables now.
But books are more than just passing time from one end of the Piccadilly line to another, no? Betsy Lerner (Elizabeth's Wurtzel's editor, now an agent) writes that the more popular culture fails to present the real pathos of our human struggle, the more opportunity there is for writers who are unafraid to present stories that speak an emotional truth.
Apparently the Writers who Matter to Us are the ones who dared to say 'I am a sick man'.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The Septembers of Shiraz
I can't decide whether I prefer the hardback or paperback jacket. I'm madly in love with them both.
The book itself is beautiful and devastating.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Humph
Beauty, dark goddess,
We met and parted
As though we parted not.
Like two stopped watches
In a dusty store window,
One golden morning of time.
- Charles Simic
I'm really not sure about this. Lots of reasons - mainly: isn't there something a bit equestrian about being referred to as 'beauty'? Somehow sounds like what one would whisper in the ear of some highly-strung racehorse who shows the whites of its eyes at every noise or rabbit leaping in its path.
We met and parted
As though we parted not.
Like two stopped watches
In a dusty store window,
One golden morning of time.
- Charles Simic
I'm really not sure about this. Lots of reasons - mainly: isn't there something a bit equestrian about being referred to as 'beauty'? Somehow sounds like what one would whisper in the ear of some highly-strung racehorse who shows the whites of its eyes at every noise or rabbit leaping in its path.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
Lady with the Braid
A friend emailed me these song lyrics. It seems fairly standard until that fatal final paragraph... Actually I think the whole thing is brilliant. Those desperately hospitable endless questions - are you too cold, which side of the bed, is it too bright - remind me of my mother. When guests come round to the house, she asks them what they would like to drink/eat with an eagerness that borders on hysteria.
Would you care to stay till sunrise?
It’s completely your decision,
It’s just that going home is such a ride,
such a ride, Going home is such a ride,
Going home is such a ride,
Going home is such a low, low, lonely ride
Would you hang your denim jacket
near the poster by Picasso?
Do you sleep on the left side, or the right?
Or the right?
Would you mind if I leave on the light?
Would you mind, if it isn’t too bright?
Now I need the window open,
So if you happen to get chilly,
There’s this coverlet my cousin hand-crocheted,
Hand-crocheted,
Do you mind if the edges are frayed?
Would you like to unfasten my braid?
Shall I make you, in the morning, a cup of homemade coffee?
I will sweeten it with honeyand with cream
When you sleep, do you have dreams?
You can read the early paper,
and I can watch you while you shave,
oh God, the mirror’s cracked
When you leave, will you come back?
You don’t have to answer that at all
The bathroom door is just across the hall
you’ll find an extra towel on the rack
on the paisley-pattern papered wall
There’s a comb on the shelf
I papered that wall myselfthat wall
myself
Would you care to stay till sunrise?
It’s completely your decision,
It’s just the night cuts through me like a knife,
like a knife
Would you care to stay awhile and save my life?
Would you care to stay awhile and save my life?
I don’t know what made me say that
I’ve got this funny sense of humour
You know I couldn’t be downhearted if I tried
if I tried
It’s just that going home is such a ride
Going home is such a ride
Going home is such a ride
Isn’t going home a low and lonely ride
Isn’t going home a low and lonely ride
Would you care to stay till sunrise?
It’s completely your decision,
It’s just that going home is such a ride,
such a ride, Going home is such a ride,
Going home is such a ride,
Going home is such a low, low, lonely ride
Would you hang your denim jacket
near the poster by Picasso?
Do you sleep on the left side, or the right?
Or the right?
Would you mind if I leave on the light?
Would you mind, if it isn’t too bright?
Now I need the window open,
So if you happen to get chilly,
There’s this coverlet my cousin hand-crocheted,
Hand-crocheted,
Do you mind if the edges are frayed?
Would you like to unfasten my braid?
Shall I make you, in the morning, a cup of homemade coffee?
I will sweeten it with honeyand with cream
When you sleep, do you have dreams?
You can read the early paper,
and I can watch you while you shave,
oh God, the mirror’s cracked
When you leave, will you come back?
You don’t have to answer that at all
The bathroom door is just across the hall
you’ll find an extra towel on the rack
on the paisley-pattern papered wall
There’s a comb on the shelf
I papered that wall myselfthat wall
myself
Would you care to stay till sunrise?
It’s completely your decision,
It’s just the night cuts through me like a knife,
like a knife
Would you care to stay awhile and save my life?
Would you care to stay awhile and save my life?
I don’t know what made me say that
I’ve got this funny sense of humour
You know I couldn’t be downhearted if I tried
if I tried
It’s just that going home is such a ride
Going home is such a ride
Going home is such a ride
Isn’t going home a low and lonely ride
Isn’t going home a low and lonely ride
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
but of course, it's My Truth
I really like what Elizabeth Wurtzel writes, as a kind of disclaimer, in her memoir Prozac Nation. She starts of with a quote from the Talmud: 'We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.' She goes on to state that 'every word of this book is the truth. But of course, it's my truth.'
I find that quite a touching admission, to recognise that one's own understanding of how things happened is not necessarily the Ultimately Accurate and Rational version. My truth is not The Truth. It's an uncomfortable thought. It reminds me of one of the quotes at the beginning of P.J. O'Rourke's book, 'Holidays in Hell'. 'Everywhere you go, there you are.' That You, that annoying warped lens/interpreter/opinionated head-noise, is constantly smudging and dirtying The Truth.
In my first year of university I kept on psychotically trying to hop from one degree discipline to another. When I told my mother that I wasn't carrying on with Psychology and Physiology but was contemplating Medicine, French and Arabic or possibly Physiotherapy she brought me back down to reality quickly with a cutting, 'whatever course you run to, you can't run away from yourself.' Utterly unhelpful, extremely annoying, perfectly true.
In the end I switched to Theology.
I find that quite a touching admission, to recognise that one's own understanding of how things happened is not necessarily the Ultimately Accurate and Rational version. My truth is not The Truth. It's an uncomfortable thought. It reminds me of one of the quotes at the beginning of P.J. O'Rourke's book, 'Holidays in Hell'. 'Everywhere you go, there you are.' That You, that annoying warped lens/interpreter/opinionated head-noise, is constantly smudging and dirtying The Truth.
In my first year of university I kept on psychotically trying to hop from one degree discipline to another. When I told my mother that I wasn't carrying on with Psychology and Physiology but was contemplating Medicine, French and Arabic or possibly Physiotherapy she brought me back down to reality quickly with a cutting, 'whatever course you run to, you can't run away from yourself.' Utterly unhelpful, extremely annoying, perfectly true.
In the end I switched to Theology.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Rushes - Fragments of a Lost Story
This is a photo from Rushes, a new piece the Royal Ballet is performing this month. I usually don't really like ballet photos that much - you lose all the poignancy of the movement and music and get stuck with the silly tutus (my sister calls them 'those farcical parasols bobbing round their hips). But this photo captures something of the piece. More photos here http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2008/apr/22/dance?picture=333676334
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