Author: jenniferhodgson

Writer, editor, researcher

THE VARIED FATE OF THE LAST BATTERY HEN IN PITY ME, CO. DURHAM

If it was true that when last night before his desk he sat head on veiny forearms, a very young man though ordinarily as capable as most people at that moment as helpless as most people, until Honey called from the other room – the bedroom – it was the third time, Come to bed, without getting an answer for the third time, and again, Come to bed, and he raised his head, roared, NO, then lowered it onto his fist propped elbow on desk, staring at his blank page with an expression that looked like the mask of misery, saying to himself, it’s like being in space so empty you don’t even know whether you’re there, trying to describe what was happening so it would stop happening, this paralysis, to call it a paralysis, because he would know what to think about it and more important, what to feel about it, and she came to the door of the bedroom and moaned, What are you doing? In her blue pyjamas and the single long braid of thick brown hair that she slept in coming over her shoulder, falling like a brush between her breasts, sleepy, cranky, eyes half closed and cheeks flushed from the warmth of bed, and he answered, I’m laying an egg, she opened her eyes to a wide fuzzy, unfocused, sleepy, guileless brown, asking, You’re what?

-The Permanent Crisis, Ronald Sukenick
(Because I am too eternally grateful and delighted to be here to bitch n’ moan about the minor inconveniences incurred whilst playing football for a living.)

THE BLOSSOMEST BLOSSOM



Below my window in Ross, when I’m working in Ross, for example, there at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It’s a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white, and looking at it, instead of saying “Oh that’s nice blossom” … last week looking at it through the window when I’m writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There’s no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance … not that I’m interested in reassuring people – bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.





With H. to see George Shaw show n’ tell at the Baltic on Saturday. What to do when a Turner Prize nominee shares your fugitive visions?  Les Dawson, Lady Godiva, Kenneth Williams, Rita Tushingham: Me too, George, me too! Must Matthew Collings act as one’s go-between when attempting to invite a Turner Prize nominee on a fact-finding mission to the disused Humbrol Factory on Marfleet Lane? I expect we’ll commune privately. Anyway, for now, he reminded me of this, about which, fucking hell, I cannot say a single thing.

COMPLEXITY-AS-SUCH

The uncanny has, as it were, been domesticated as yet another version of “an ethic” of better living through ambiguity, the ethic that of course continues to underwrite a wide range of literary studies.
– Mark Seltzer, “The Graphic Unconscious: A Response”

I was there during the Great Uncanny Goldrush of the mid-noughties, and for this diffident taught postgraduate in search of a lexicon with which to talk about “what makes weird stuff weird”, that thing “The Uncanny” was a gift. It made “woooargh” legit. I’m still here, five years later, though, ‘cos it’s not quite as simple as that. That’s the thing, with chasing the ball over the hill – you can’t catch it, no, but neither is it enough to just stand there and point as it rolls away.

THE GREAT HUG

Pin Lady has the Pin of Tomorrow Night – a wicked pin, those who have seen it say. That great hug, when Balloon Man and Pin Lady roll down the hill together, will be frightening. The horses will run away in all directions. Ordinary people will cover their heads with shopping bags. I don’t want to think about it. You blow up all them balloons yourself, Balloon Man? Or did you have help? Pin Lady, how come you’re so apricklededee? Was it something in your childhood?

Balloon Man will lead off with the Balloon of Grace Under Pressure, Do Not Pierce or Incinerate.

Pin Lady will counter with the Pin of Oh My, I Forgot.

Balloon Man will produce the Balloon of Almost Wonderful.

Pin Lady will come back with the Pin of They Didn’t Like Me Much. Balloon Man will sneak in there with the Balloon of the Last Exit Before the Toll Is Taken. Pin Lady will reply with the Pin of One Never Knows for Sure. Balloon Man will propose the Balloon of Better Days. Pin Lady, the Pin of Whiter Wine.

It’s gonna be bad, I don’t want to think about it.
(cont.)
————
Because of this bloody article, and his idiotic “Contract”, Jonathan Franzen’s face became pinned to the bullseye in the dartboard of my imagination. (Before then, it was Zadie Smith for this bloody thing and yes, you’re right, perhaps I shouldn’t be pursuing my academic research in the manner of of Wile E. Coyote packing an Acme anvil – though I’ve a 5-page square-up as to why prepared, if you’re askin’.)

This question of “consolation” and fiction is not quite as simple as bluster, though, is it, as the copy of Donald Barthelme’s “Sixty Stories” on my bedside table indicates.

IN THE TOOL SHED AT THE HOUSE OF FICTION

If you live a daily life and it is all yours, and you come to own everything outside your daily life besides and it is all yours, you naturally begin to explain. You naturally continue describing your daily life which is all yours, and you naturally begin to explain how you own everything else besides. You naturally begin to explain that to yourself and you naturally begin to explain it to those living your daily life who own it with you, everything outside, and you naturally explain it in a kind of way to some of those whom you own.

– “What is English Literature”, Gertrude Stein

Between the set text (Ian Watt, Raymond Williams) and the seasoning (Steven Moore), ENGL1061 “Introduction to the Novel” students, I hope you’ve taken note.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

Professor Chris Higgins, Durham University’s vice-chancellor, said: “We are passionate not just about excellence – but excellence with a smile.”

To reflect my vice-chancellor’s tiggerish willingness to conform to the new paradigm, today I am wearing 37 pieces of flair. I raise you “exasperation with a determined grimace”, Professor Chris Higgins.