Lead Igloo

Eliot & Picasso – Extract from Modernism still matters

TF — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:44:53 +0000

There was another problem: no composer would dream of writing like Tchaikovsky today, except in an ironic manner; no painter today would dream of painting like Sargent, except in an ironic manner; yet novelists writing in English seemed to want to write like the Victorians and the Edwardians. Others might object that literature is simply different from the other arts and it is absurd to compare them. But then why did I feel that there were profound affinities between Eliot and Picasso, Proust and Bonnard, Simon and Cézanne? Were Eliot and Proust really in thrall to the debilitating idea that they should be modern at all costs? No one who has responded to them could ever imagine this to be the case. Yet critics and reviewers who paid lip-service to Eliot and Proust seemed to fail utterly to see that to take their work seriously meant asking questions about the bulk of current English writing that were simply never asked. Even writers such as William Golding and Muriel Spark, whose work gave me the same thrill as the one I got from Marguerite Duras and Milan Kundera, were treated as the quirky authors of books about children, shipwrecks and eccentric schoolteachers.

From Modernism still matters by Gabriel Josipovici in New Statesman. [Originally discovered at the always worthwhile A Piece of Monologue.]

Winding down

TF — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:05:45 +0000

Things are in flux and blogging is slipping further and further down the priority list.

I feel both restricted and freed by this: I have opinions on a number of issues I want to explore in writing, but at the same time it feels far healthier to avoid thinking about them. Off the top of my head, these include the current political farce, the so-called “death” of literature, poetry & print books & the problem I have with labelling anything that was never living in the literal sense as dead, and I want to elaborate on a comment I made on Wordhome’s blog. I also want to examine style and the conscious versus the unconscious elements that contribute to style, but that’s another blog topic I won’t write.

And I’m tired of meta. Lately, I’ve been wishing I grew up in a meta-less era, where people just spoke about what they did in conversation. I hate tweets about tweeting, blogs about blogging, news shows about news reporting etc. In a report I recently saw, the reporter spoke about how reporters had invaded the privacy of a murder victim’s family, like they weren’t a part. Oh, brave new metaworld. (He says, in a blog post about blogging less.)

But, as stated above, it seems wiser to ignore it all and just do what I’m doing. I’m still writing. I started writing for the blog to write, to forge something of a style and to experiment with fiction. I’ll write until it’s not fun anymore.

I’m also a lot more picky with what I spend my time reading. I don’t know how I judge what is “worth” my time, but it’s happening.

Who knows – rather than winding down, I might be invigorated.

No related posts.

New short story in Ricochet Magazine

TF — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:24:05 +0000

I’ve got a new short something in issue uno of Ricochet Magazine, out today. It’s titled ‘Some words I did keep’.

Apart from being honoured to be featured in Ricochet’s first issue, I feel obliged to say a bit about the experience. In my dealings with Ricochet, chiefly chief editor, Emily Tatti, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the professionalism that’s been shown and their scope of ambition. For a start-up with a budget of AUD0.00, the final product certainly looks impressive. It’s for this reason I wish Ricochet 1, and the Ricochets to come, success.

This is also the first time my writing has been featured in a PDF e-zine – something one can either download and view on-screen or print off and hold in their hands. This I like.

I’ll comment on my story (and maybe some of the other pieces once I’ve had a read) in the comments.

No related posts.

Neo Tokyo crumbles

TF — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:05:31 +0000

An atomic flash, the fiery eruption of a motorcycle, windows of entire buildings shatter, the ground fragments, falls away. Tetsuo’s doctors explode, hospital walls crack, the bear, rabbit and car outfits of the gray-skinned children break into toys and other play things, the floor crumbles and rises, the children’s castle topples as if made of sandstone bricks, the room is turned to choppy debris. A helicopter’s blades hit a building and the copter pops, the detonation of a rocket in flight exposes the pipes and wires embedded beneath the road, tanks bust into black smoke, molotovs are launched, a bridge breaks into even portions and the pieces slide into the harbour. The earth opens, Akira’s shell is dismantled and falls into a heap of broken pipes and curled sheet metal, the earth is shot from satellites in orbit, the satellites disintegrate. Tetsuo swells into a mass of wires and curdling, molten flesh, Akira consumes Neo Tokyo, buildings part, Neo Tokyo splinters block by block and turns to flotsam under heavy skies.

The sun bursts through the clouds. Rebirth.

No related posts.

Public Library 23.8.10

TF — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:23:27 +0000

Salvadore Dali and Disney’s Destino. There’s some great iconic surrealism in this animated short. Via Art History on tumblr

Intensity of a plot. Guernica interview with Don DeLillo from 2007. Don talks Falling Man, terrorism and his writing process.

Don DeLillo. William Wood writes: “Point Omega has the disheartening feel of having been written by a technically proficient and uninspired imitator of DeLillo’s work. Some critics have tried to see the novel’s defects as experimental virtues, misguided perhaps by deference in the face of DeLillo’s advanced age and assumed historical wisdom. Yet it is probably more accurate to see Point Omega not as “an object lesson in the methods of late-phase literature in general,” as Guardian book reviewer James Lasdun has written, but rather as an object lesson in its characteristic pitfalls.” Via The Point Magazine

The scramble for Timbuktu. Intriguing article on Africa’s (largely ignored) written culture. By Charlotte Wiedemann, via signandsight

Beyond perfect-bound. “I do think it is clear that there is a strong and growing interest in alternatives to commercial publishing in poetry communities. That this interest is often coincident with an interest in broader book arts has resulted in a vast and growing body of compelling and often beautiful book works exploring the literary and aesthetic implications of different publishing models and the relationships between poetry and more visual and tactile art forms. And the notion that “form is content” is evident everywhere in this work, as poets and bookmakers create book works and textual objects in which the text is inextricable from its medium.” The Poetry Foundation on the chapbook’s potential and as a publishing alternative.

DeLillo & Point

TF — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 01:57:17 +0000

“It was only after two years’ work,” he confesses, “that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn’t realise I knew that I said, ‘I’m a writer now.’ The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That’s really what writing is – an intense form of thought.”

From Don DeLillo: ‘I’m not trying to manipulate reality- this is what I see and hear’. Via The Guardian

Bought Point Omega yesterday. Reading it slowly, to enjoy the words and make it last. Thinking of why and how I should read it again. Initial idea was to re-read it with a pencil in hand to underline phrases I like/love and make notes in the margin as if I know what I’m doing. I don’t know how helpful that would be.

Bought Falling Man yesterday. Will read it in a fortnight, at the park, in the last of the winter sun. Very much on the ground.

Fatima Bhutto, Complexities of storytelling, Nonfiction

TF — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:03:15 +0000

Fatima Bhutto was due to be keynote speaker at the 2010 Byron Bay Writers Festival (but pulled out for, as far as I can tell, undisclosed reasons).

While I knew there was a trend of getting individuals who are not, strictly speaking, writers to speak at writing festivals, the addition of Fatima piqued my curiosity. I knew she was the granddaughter of former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and neice of Benazir. I assumed she would be at the festival to talk about Pakistan, its political instability and the plight of its people, but why Byron and why now?

As it turns out, Fatima was not just invited because she is part of an infamous family – she is a writer. She published a book of poetry as a teenager, is a columnist for several newspapers and recently published a memoir, as I discovered in an interview she did with Joel Whitney for Guernica.

Prior to reading the interview, I had only heard good things of Benazir Bhutto. My impression of her death was that it elevated her to the status of martyr and that it was a blow to the prospect of stability in an increasingly volatile land. Reading Fatima’s comments contradicting this impression was then somewhat shocking, heightened by the fact it was coming from Benazir’s niece.

This inevitably opened up in my mind questions of truth, bias and the multifaceted nature of stories. But this is really a secondary concern to me and my interests than the idea of how a story is told.

As I learnt in the interview, Fatima’s father Murtaza Bhutto was assassinated outside the family home. Saying the circumstances were dubious is a huge understatement. Fatima, only 14 at the time, was inside the house and heard the gunshots that executed her father and his entourage. She said that later, when she questioned Benazir (who was then prime minister of Pakistan) about the attack, Benazir told her things weren’t as simple as they seemed.

The above is the briefest of summations of over a decade of, for some people, hurt and the recent history of a nation. Important details are missing – like the fact that Murtaza Bhutto was taken from the scene to a nearby clinic where they were unprepared for treating gunshot wounds – as are all the tiny, incremental details that make up life and the world.

A good story teller knows what to leave out. But what do you leave out when your history is embedded in the history of a nation? What do you leave out when your father was murdered in earshot? What do you leave in when your aunt condoned it by, at the very least, inaction?

Is a distance between story and teller, therefore, important?

In his post I’m Chinese-Australian but…, Tom Cho (who is, incidentally, appearing at the Byron Bay Writers Festival), wrote about critics making backhanded compliments by pointing out his and Nam Le’s ethnic distance from some of their subjects.

This is of interest to me for a number of reasons, the main one being that I have written literature from the perspective of and about non-white Australians, though I myself am white as can be. Apart from the inherent technical problems with the stories themselves, I was uncomfortable with the act of telling a story that was not similar to my own. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. And while they skip around in my thoughts from time to time, I ultimately abandoned those pieces.

Perhaps there are different schools of thought when it comes to fiction and non-fiction. Two books that immediately come to mind are Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man and Helen Garner’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation. In both books, there is a distance between story and teller. Those who have read the stories will know that that distance shortens in both instances, but neither authors are directly involved in the case or with the individuals involved.

But, again, in both books, the distance shortened. My feeling is that Chloe Hooper did not visit Palm Island simply because she saw a complex court case with the makings of a murder mystery unfolding. Even if she did, she explicitly states she helped the murdered man’s family. Maybe Helen Garner was initially intrigued by the case of Joe Cinque’s death, but the book is titled Joe Cinque’s Consolation for a reason.

These stories are real and must account for real people and real pain. It’s for this reason I question Fatima Bhutto’s ability to objectively tell her story – I couldn’t – and wonder how good the story can be given that she is so close to it.

Does this mean neither side should tell the other’s story? Does it mean that if your father was assassinated in front of the family home you should not tell your story or that of your country?

Without intending to dillute a terribly complex matter, and without intending to critique those mentioned above, it seems to be an argument of intense emotion versus a perceived absence of it. Impassioned or unimpassioned, which makes the better story teller?

Un(title)

TF — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 01:55:19 +0000

The shape of my skull, the way that I walk.

I feel like my father.

The way my head rolls back when I laugh, the way I drum my thighs while I consider your response. The way I lean back in my seat and fluff up my hair in fast, violent motions. The way I peer at you from under my brow when you say something I don’t like. That thing I do that I don’t know I do that you don’t like is my father’s. The way I eyeball a full steak before I eat it, take it in and commit it to memory as if it was a woman.

I break like my father.

The way I stare into the bathroom mirror, my nose almost against it, while I squeeze and smooth, while I part my hair and check the line and grimace as I think it’s receding. The way beer collects at my gut and under my chin so it looks like I don’t have a chin, just a bump.

I will tell you to fuck right off like my father.

The way I get bullish when I’m mad. The way my eyes turn pink and my nostrils flatten when you have pissed me off. The way I flounder and mutter when I’m shocked. The way I floundered and muttered and swore – softly, you didn’t hear – when you said what you did. Then my eyes lost their whiteness.

My skin browns in the sun, like his. Like the colour I always associated with fried fish. I don’t enjoy being on the water like him but I, now, at this age, understand the peace he felt when he was fishing. I understand the peace that filled him when he had a line hanging over the calloused skin on the side of his left forefinger and the vague annoyance he felt when that reverie was interrupted by a fish that escaped anyway. The way he’d absently jiggle the line and pout.

The way my eyes are hooded and I act like turning to listen is too much trouble when you talk to me. The way I stay silent, thinking of things I can say that will hurt you. The way I’m starting to hunch. The way I get out my tools and slide under the car as the sun sets, even though there’s nothing wrong with it. Even though you know there’s nothing wrong with it, and I know it. I’ve been hearing a tick, I tell you. The way I pretend to not notice you glaring at me as I walk away.

On the water was the only time he kind of/ I don’t know. Kind of looked patient. Kind of looked not waiting.

I remember one time when there was a storm – it was summer, so thunder, lightning – and he stood watching it like he knew something was about to happen. The rain tacked against the window. I couldn’t see his face but I could imagine the lightning illuminating it every time it reached across the sky. I watched him watching the sky, wondering what he was thinking. I expected him to turn and tell me to come and watch this, whatever it was that was happening, whatever it was that was different this time. But the storm passed and he left the window. Now I know what he was doing.

Dare to know – Extract from Kant’s What is Enlightenment?

TF — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:42:16 +0000

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] “Have courage to use your own understanding!”–that is the motto of enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.

From An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? by Immanuel Kant.

I wish you way more than luck – extract from This is Water

The writer’s voice

TF — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:35:42 +0000

I have of late come across a number of recordings of authors reading their work and thought it prudent to gather the ones that interest me in one spot – for myself as much as anybody else.

Discussions of how an author sounds are inevitable. But I would encourage listeners to take the time to think beyond this and listen to the way these writers move through their work and to how they tell the story. The literaray culture we have inherited grew from an oral tradition – storytelling came from being told, in speech, a story.

It is now such a personal thing – when I read Crime and Punishment on a full morning train, it’s only me and Dostoyevsky. I suppose it is why things like the voice of Joyce or Wilde are such a novelty. But I do wonder what impact this has had on the way the modern writer tells stories.

Don Delillo reads from Point Omega

I haven’t yet read PO as I can’t get myself to spend 30 beans on something I’ll finish in an afternoon. However, Don has said in a number of interviews how important words are to him…

David Foster Wallace Audio Project

DFW is something of a god round these parts. I’ve listened to quite a few of these recordings, and others on YT, so I now have DFW narrating in my head when I read his writing.

Joyce reading Finnegan’s Wake

If you’ve heard Joyce read anything, it’s probably this piece: Anna Livia Plurabelle. Worth another listen anyway.

Is this Oscar?

Possibly a recording of Oscar Wilde reading from The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1900. Eerie, whoever it is.

Faulkner at Virginia

The sound and the fury… William Faulkner’s sessions from when he was writer in residence at the University of Virginia in 1957 and 1958.

T.S. Eliot reads The Waste Land, Journey of the Magi & Four Quartets

I love Eliot’s poetry and I love hearing him read it.

Hemingway reads In Harry’s Bar in Venice

The interesting thing about this reading is that Ernest reads the piece almost as if it’s his first time seeing it.

Pound’s Collected Poetry Recordings

Like the DFW link, I’ve featured this in an old Public Library post. But no post on voice and the music of writing would be complete without adding Pound. This is a link to PennSound’s complete collection of Ezra Pound recordings. It includes an in-depth interview with Richard Sieburth, editor of the page.

Materials of art