*Some excellent British post-war weirdness from the back bedroom of the house of fiction, to be filed alongside Rex Warner, William Sansom, Rayner Heppenstall and those lads. Available, I am duty-bound to add, in full and pristine condition at Dalkey Archive Press.
Category: literature
BECOMING RICHER AND DEEPER
So, I’m doing that thing again where I go to the Midwest and gawp at things for a bit. It’s a bit like academic orienteering, or, well, Challenge Anneka. I’m here to dig through the archives of publishers Calder and Boyars, and, you know, seek inner peace in near-total monastic isolation, probably/most likely polish off the 70,000 remaining words of my PhD thesis, concoct half-baked cultural generalisations, complain about the food and the rest. Items in my “America is So Weird” dossier thus far include Deepak Chopra on the Fox News breakfast programme, advising viewers that the best defence against the global financial crisis is to ask oneself: “What makes me a unique human being?”. Yesterday morning I was roused gently from my slumber by a television infomercial for the Brazilian Butt Lift fitness DVD, comprising the “Bum Bum” and the special bonus disc of the “Bum Bum Rapido”. You can imagine the effect the tagline Higher! Tighter! Rounder! Perkier! had on my delicate hypnagogic state.
Spent Easter Sunday like a crochety toddler in flip flops, chewing my editor’s red pen and squirming in my seat. Making a yah-boo-sucks face at Microsoft Word, letting the Chicago Manual of Style “have a rest” in the microwave (I’m a really excellent editor, though. Honestly. Employ me!). Wondering, idly, will this ever end-slash-will this ever start. And, as usual, now it’s past eleven and I’m macro-photographing my extremely picturesque (if, like me, you’re an incorrigible perv for a well-lit staircase) towel rail and thinking, yes, I could probably-definitely re-read the entire oeuvre of Jim Crace before bed. More as it comes in…
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.
Taking the tinfoil hat off – momentarily, I promise – and putting my “professional” (ahem) hat on, here is some work-related news:
GIVING THE HORNET’S NEST A BIT OF A POKE NEWS
With impeccable timing, we began a series of seminars called “The Uses of Literature” – intended as an attempt to hash out why exactly we do this bloody thing we do and, of course, to take issue with the unacceptably utilitarian, actually terms of the question itself – on the same day the Comprehensive Spending Review was announced. We’ve done four now, with another tranche of speakers to follow this term, and it’sbeen spirited, heartening and even rather passionate. Heck, we’ve even started streaming ’em online, take a look:
http://inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com/
INCORRIGIBLE SELF PROMOTION NEWS
I reviewed Tom McCarthy’s good-but-not-as-good-as-Remainder novel, C, for the Review of Contemporary Fiction here.
ends
THE LONG, LONG DEATH OF THE NOVEL
I met you under the balloon, on the occasion of your return from Norway; you asked if it was mine; I said it was. The balloon, I said, is a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, having to do with the unease I felt at your absence, and with sexual deprivation, but now that your visit to Bergen has been terminated, it is no longer necessary or appropriate. Removal of the balloon was easy; trailer trucks carried away the depleted fabric, which is now stored in West Virginia, awaiting some other time of unhappiness, some time, perhaps, when we are angry with one another.
…AND I REALISED THERE WERE STILL POSSIBILITIES
Sed realistas, exigid lo imposible.
Tomemos en serio la revolución, pero no nos tomamos en serio a nosotros mismos.
Millonarios de todos los países, uníos, el viento cambia.
Todo comienza en la mística y termina en política.
(inscripciones en los muros de Francia, “El Corno Emplumado”, octubre 1968)
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10689794&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
El Corno Emplumado – a story from the sixties from Anne Mette W. Nielsen on Vimeo.
THE SCHOOL OF AMERICAN WHIMSY, A MANIFESTO: DISCUSS
The deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness; to resist existential loneliness; and so a novel deserves a reader’s attention only as long as the author sustains the reader’s trust.
– Jonathan Franzen, “William Gaddis: Mr Difficult”
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…?
The thing that has made the glory of English literature is description simple concentrated description not of what happened nor what is thought or what is dreamed but what exists and so makes the life the island life the daily island life. It is natural that an island life should be that. What could interest an island as much as the daily the completely daily island life. And in the descriptions the daily, the hourly descriptions of this island life as it exists and it does exist it does really exist English literature has gone on and one from Chaucer until now. It does not go on so well now for several reasons, in the first place they are not so interested in their island life because in short they are not so interested. And in the next place because it is not so much an island life.
– Gertrude Stein, “What is English Literature”