tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14950087560019219492024-03-05T19:43:50.345+13:00out therereading and writingpeajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-31716400607490042882013-09-20T16:25:00.001+12:002013-09-20T16:25:46.847+12:00Moving<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've moved my blog to patrosierblog.wordpress.com and reactivated it over there.<br />
<a href="http://patrosierblog.worpress.com/">http://patrosierblog.worpress.com</a></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-79539931656460349792013-06-02T15:43:00.001+12:002013-06-02T15:45:55.877+12:00Reading the wide world<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Only one of the books in this post is set in Britain,
and that was written in the 1920’s and takes place in a number of earlier times.
None are set in either the United States or New Zealand.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">I read <i>How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia</i> by Mohsin Hamid because a friend in London heard him speak and was impressed. I'm glad she told me about him as the next week I saw it in the "bestseller" section at my library and brought it home. It's is an unusual book, based I think in Pakistan, written in the second person; the reader</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"> is addressed as "you" throughout and given advice even in the chapter headings such as "Move to the City" or Work for Yourself." There is a narrative, the story of the person who I guess is the protagonist. It's a beautifully written book and I loved it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">Re-reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Orlando</i>
for a reading group, I was surprised at the dense, lyrical writing, which I had
forgotten. I kept thinking about Cezanne's paintings. Virginia Woolf had such a
great understanding of sexual politics and what being a woman meant at
different times. Orlando's consciousness of her self in different periods
without any demonstration of surprise is fun. And I especially like the way the
three hundred years it covers start and finish under the same tree.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipk1IwOo2509aEXPJc44vJstaHOApriH3sWXSfuVvh1Es3R9rV0lEmBNDC8EuojcStA746uywX21lsUCsa7twVkvy-YgLvTIzHwFuIdzdvcG0Lb4xZqdG6T1PStXhzWf1GLhZ3edl8r8I/s1600/OMS.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipk1IwOo2509aEXPJc44vJstaHOApriH3sWXSfuVvh1Es3R9rV0lEmBNDC8EuojcStA746uywX21lsUCsa7twVkvy-YgLvTIzHwFuIdzdvcG0Lb4xZqdG6T1PStXhzWf1GLhZ3edl8r8I/s200/OMS.png" width="133" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">Adam Johnson's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Orphan Master's Son</i> won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize, which is why I read it.
It's a grim story set in North Korea when Leader Kim Jong il was a young man. The
story is told through a number of means—in the first person, via official
stories piped into every workplace and home and street, via stories extracted
through torture, and all sorts. The human to human cruelty is immense. The plot
is complicated. It’s a great, if grim, read. Pak Jun Do, the son of the title,
listens while he’s at sea on a fishing boat, to the broadcast of a young
American woman rowing around the world.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>"What was it about English speakers
that allowed them to talk into transmitters as if the sky were a diary? If
Koreans spoke this way, maybe they’d make more sense to Jun Do. Maybe he’d
understand why some people accepted their fates while others didn’t. He might
know why people scoured all the orphanages looking for one particular child
when any child would do, these were perfectly good children." (page 41)</i></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">The story of
Jesus’s life from four different points of view, all of them involving “lies” makes
up Naomi Alderman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Liars’ Gospel. </i>This
book is really interesting to read as picture of the lives of the times, which
were often grim and gruesome. People’s capacity to do dreadful things to each
other has been around for a very long time. I guess it’s naïve of me to think
we are any better “now.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-72205227362176482502013-04-15T17:03:00.000+12:002013-04-15T17:06:28.376+12:00Mainly Men + Toni Morrison + Shulamith Firestone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In this selection of my reading, three of four authors and four of four protagonists are men. (And I finish with a radical feminist.) The woman writer is Toni Morrison. Her novel <i>Home</i> Is about Vietnam War vet Frank Money, who goes in search of his sister, who has been working for—and experimented on—by a white doctor. It’s grim on all fronts but not without hope in the end. The home of the title is a place where you can get looked after, probably without sentiment or even affection, and could well be the place you ran away from as soon as you could. Toni Morrison is a great writer and I am glad to have read this book.</span></div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p>It’s not
hard to pick that David Vann’s <i>Dirt </i>is
not going to be a barrel of laughs. Galen wants to be enlightened and sees his
nightmare family as preventing him. He’s tragically self-absorbed.
Everyone—mother, aunt, cousin, Galen—seems mad, except perhaps the grandmother.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"His
grandmother, unable to remember anything, was definitely on pause. Someone
taking a break from the game. Then there was the big question of what the game
was about. Why were we all trying to learn lessons? Galen knew it was so we’d
finally be without attachment , but why did attachments ever have to exist in
the first place?" (page 69)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I liked
reading this bleak book, too.</span></div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEzKG1YTCZEb-qmKXj50f21AL-iZDtDpvgUA-0DF-W0LkgHTcbpPgVTyg33dO_94LvFWy9E02Hg8WKyRqtjHG-hoKx0giUxIWnWPwGlrfE5vrhyphenhyphentf3oDM8Wyc8voMw15AQWP-5jyTIEkQ/s1600/Scan+3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEzKG1YTCZEb-qmKXj50f21AL-iZDtDpvgUA-0DF-W0LkgHTcbpPgVTyg33dO_94LvFWy9E02Hg8WKyRqtjHG-hoKx0giUxIWnWPwGlrfE5vrhyphenhyphentf3oDM8Wyc8voMw15AQWP-5jyTIEkQ/s200/Scan+3.png" width="132" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I wrote in
an earlier post about Vladimir Nabokov’s tragic/ comic </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pnin. </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">His</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Pale Fire </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">is
tricksier, just as hilarious in places, and compelling, but there is no
character to equal Professor Pnin. The protagonist, KInbote, is the most
unreliable of narrators. Most of the novel takes place as his deluded commentary
on the poem Pale Fire by murdered poet John Shade, footnotes included. Having
read these two books I don’t understand why Nabokov’s fame rests on </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lolita; </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">it’s not nearly as good as
either of these. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pale Fire </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">has been
described somewhere as a precursor to David Foster Wallace’s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Infinite
Jest. </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Apart from the footnotes, I don’t see it.</span><br />
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<div class="Body1">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKaI0xMYjZavXA5MjcE3RGyDMKd9c336lB4by8cfiQHmQxuIRDZeyTvJr6VmG1KHQUDkKg3U-vcNGesleeP2peO8pexYQnCWFuEMGAvewX8QWvCsYgJWwL1s9i8bDO-fu5R0pmm-D9bYk/s1600/Scan+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKaI0xMYjZavXA5MjcE3RGyDMKd9c336lB4by8cfiQHmQxuIRDZeyTvJr6VmG1KHQUDkKg3U-vcNGesleeP2peO8pexYQnCWFuEMGAvewX8QWvCsYgJWwL1s9i8bDO-fu5R0pmm-D9bYk/s200/Scan+1.png" width="145" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">New Zealand
poet Glenn Colquhoun has published a collection of prose writings plus some
poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jumping Ship and Other Essays. </i>He
gets a lot right. Take this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Engaging
with Maori does not mean assimilating them. It does not mean being assimilated
by them. There are two ways of doing things in this country that cannot be
found anywhere else in the world.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
understated style and humour are endearing, sometimes veering towards
sentimental maybe, but always perceptive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the humour is good. For example, in writing of a man who had worked
mining sulphur: “If he went to hell for lying he would at least be used to the
smell.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagXBUaWMyh2-Ri1s-nJQOvbcOjS0Bf6hSmQCibs_DdaKQIIuvdjuns_glY93Glm8ecuk3ioZWA3auhvUs8hr59q464q72V0_UbEvYBnOLmt1KauoQ7M3oYvv_ap0rmzB0t9jS0oyAOBY/s1600/Screen+shot+2013-04-15+at+4.41.34+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagXBUaWMyh2-Ri1s-nJQOvbcOjS0Bf6hSmQCibs_DdaKQIIuvdjuns_glY93Glm8ecuk3ioZWA3auhvUs8hr59q464q72V0_UbEvYBnOLmt1KauoQ7M3oYvv_ap0rmzB0t9jS0oyAOBY/s1600/Screen+shot+2013-04-15+at+4.41.34+PM.png" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I just read
an article in the <i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/15/130415fa_fact_faludi">New Yorker </a></i>(15
March 2013)<i> </i>by Susan Faludi, about
Shulamith Firestone. I knew Firestone had died last year, sick and poor, but I
didn’t know the extent of the tragedy that was her life. (I doubt she would
like being included in a post mainly about men.) She was an icon, a firebrand,
a passionate, uncompromising fighter, the author of <i>The Dialectics of Sex, </i>a radical feminist theory of politics where she argued that
gender inequality was the result of a patriarchy that structured society by defining
women through their biology. For her the biological family was a tyranny
imposed on women. I remember being shocked by her ideas at the same time as
admiring her for putting them out there. She was an icon, an example of a
fearlessness that many of us lacked. Is it foolish, I wonder, to wish she had
had a better subsequent life?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
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peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-76668355282604750482013-03-30T10:10:00.000+13:002013-03-30T10:10:31.673+13:00Books That Show Us Other Lives <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA5-qVEP7-Mh5gf6eknmrAAeYYSOckIrkDH6FuA03lHTC3t-BxshD5jJ5owRVFVQfedJONHMjoGDKm1iPGQd8kDN8L_J5gs_s4Np7NQsHhV5lyNgTqb2TlKujV_coH82NubCWVjXYHGRU/s1600/Scan+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA5-qVEP7-Mh5gf6eknmrAAeYYSOckIrkDH6FuA03lHTC3t-BxshD5jJ5owRVFVQfedJONHMjoGDKm1iPGQd8kDN8L_J5gs_s4Np7NQsHhV5lyNgTqb2TlKujV_coH82NubCWVjXYHGRU/s200/Scan+2.png" width="130" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">One of the highlights of a recent trip to
Auckland was the launch of Aorewa McLeod's new novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who Was That Woman Anyway?</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Snapshots
of a lesbian life. </i>The crowd in The Women’s Bookshop spilled out into the
street as Stella Duffy did the honours and Aorewa talked about the writing of
the book and read two extracts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Reviewer Elizabeth Heritage writes in the Booksellers NZ blog: "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #262626; font-family: Calibri;"><i>Who Was That
Woman, Anyway?</i> is an engaging and determined attempt to look at the ways in
which we structure our own identity in terms of gender and sexuality. Why do we
act the way we do? Why do we feel sexual desire the way we do? What determines
who we are attracted to? To what extent is gender a cultural performance, and
to what extent is it biologically determined? Ngaio doesn’t definitively answer
any of these questions; her life in this book becomes a process of examining
and querying and arguing." Read the whole review at: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/book-review-who-was-that-woman-anyway-by-aorewa-mcleod/">http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/book-review-who-was-that-woman-anyway-by-aorewa-mcleod/</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I read Cory
Doctorow’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Brother </i>partly
because it’s sci-fi-ish, slightly-in-the-future setting makes it background for
the novel I have embarked on. It’s a novel about what happens when “homeland
security” goes, well, mad. Marcus, a 17-year-old who cares about justice, gets
his friends into trouble. Marcus — a fictional character — has been compared to
Aaron Swartz, the internet activist charged with using a university computer
network to, without authority, download millions of academic journal articles
with the idea of making them freely available. Aaron Swartz committed suicide. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Brother </i>is good, and chilling,
and I plan to read the sequel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homeland.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrWNfHUjIVU9z05oZpejwhOjgneOxhsUvVsZrMlo7o4nwtKL5aEDE0OVHaJNa5AZH3cI7NDOWWmew0_efN5eiRSEfSpBXhpYzC-nCzNmcjb4WdKKuRhESiWnBZkSNCXWag_1jX9rNok8/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrWNfHUjIVU9z05oZpejwhOjgneOxhsUvVsZrMlo7o4nwtKL5aEDE0OVHaJNa5AZH3cI7NDOWWmew0_efN5eiRSEfSpBXhpYzC-nCzNmcjb4WdKKuRhESiWnBZkSNCXWag_1jX9rNok8/s200/Scan.png" width="134" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">When I
started reading Rose Tremaine’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merivel, </i>I
thought it might be a variation on Hilary Mantel’s magnificent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wolf Hall </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bring Up the Bodies. </i>It isn’t. Merivel the character is not a
political figure, he’s much more Montaigne—to whom he refers often—than Thomas
Cromwell. He wants to believe in himself as worthwhile but struggles with his
own past and present dissipations and can’t decide whether he is slave or
friend to Charles II. As a physician of his time, he pays plenty of attention
to bodily functions, smells and (lack of) sanitation. In many ways a foolish
character given to weeping, he survives many changes of fortune. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">"Such
are the days and times of every man and, no matter how hard we work and
strive, we can never know when something shall be given to us and when it will
be taken away." (page 286)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I recommend
this beautifully written book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I don’t very
often give up on a book, but I did on <i>America</i>. And it’s Franz Kafka! I found it<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>a great disappointment compared
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Metamorphosis, The Trial </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Castle</i>. The protagonist of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">America </i>endlessly introspects on minor
matters, makes and breaks “friendships” oddly and doesn’t seem to learn
anything. The book has a Kafkaesque sense of doom but about halfway through I
couldn’t be bothered finding out any more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” it says on the cover
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Behind The Beautiful Forevers, </i>by
Katherine Boo. I didn’t see a lot of hope as I read of people living grim,
stinking, insecure, violent, self-punishing lives recycling the waste of the
rich on a rubbish dump. One woman’s plan for getting on in the world involved
becoming a slumlord. However,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">"Among powerful Indians, the distribution
of opportunity was typically an insider trade." (Page 138)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglN7xHwnrAo-_cvRnekSmFi35_xitpUOrPrAJ0FcmVZnghTwaKWGF7xX2FTa6dvK9Kb6iTmba3W2MgCJ4dfHGSPP1bRYjAdhPaBtmYt0XXDv8G_rz-CFsqoTvf8Yj3pfASlpXLk4m8-y4/s1600/Scan+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglN7xHwnrAo-_cvRnekSmFi35_xitpUOrPrAJ0FcmVZnghTwaKWGF7xX2FTa6dvK9Kb6iTmba3W2MgCJ4dfHGSPP1bRYjAdhPaBtmYt0XXDv8G_rz-CFsqoTvf8Yj3pfASlpXLk4m8-y4/s200/Scan+1.png" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Katherine Boo
says in an excellent note at the end of the book that it’s all true, including
people’s names. She used interviews, recordings and public records to get the
stories. It’s hard to read about such unrelenting poverty and awful living
conditions, but somehow, once you have started this book, necessary. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">"Sunil
thought that he, too, had a life, a bad life, certainly—the kind that could be
ended as Kalu’s had been and then forgotten, because it made no difference to
the people who lived in the overcity. But something he’d come to realise on the
roof, leaning out, thinking about what would happen if he leaned too far, was
that a boy’s life could still matter to himself." (page 199)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-14573279500896835202013-03-07T09:40:00.000+13:002013-03-07T09:40:03.010+13:00There's More to ebooks than Kindle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWajuM_1xL6r5jMUtZIjE1nLj5Sevx_206gzceWeP2wmPLswoxOmGAnOlqiOvXBohIAZvYXzanDRXDnSwB6wquz_p5o0y4lIz6xvYDTPUz7BoAJGBCBn_JJwqn4cvRve-na8rZoRL90qg/s1600/Screen+shot+2013-03-07+at+9.26.36+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWajuM_1xL6r5jMUtZIjE1nLj5Sevx_206gzceWeP2wmPLswoxOmGAnOlqiOvXBohIAZvYXzanDRXDnSwB6wquz_p5o0y4lIz6xvYDTPUz7BoAJGBCBn_JJwqn4cvRve-na8rZoRL90qg/s320/Screen+shot+2013-03-07+at+9.26.36+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I've been an
advocate for independent bookstores for years. (My two favourites in New
Zealand are <a href="http://www.unitybooksonline.co.nz/">Unity Books</a> in Wellington and <a href="http://www.womensbookshop.co.nz/">The Women's Bookshop</a> in Auckland.) For Unity you need the "<a href="http://www.unitybooksonline.co.nz/">unitybooksonline</a>" page and the "ebooks" button and on The Women's Bookshop page the Kobo link is at the very top on the left of the home page. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqm7FsqxBqi7y0AdCxMonfWnVdYMfypVs5LsobzQoDxwJ2StHjnvcWvwYBo8ceSX1znS_SIoWnyBFxC-g32SmwTRGia2Ms3qnLrGMiRmdU5Gx1GCQ_C4BFSjXPb2eiNibjP6BcscgHHmE/s1600/Screen+shot+2013-03-07+at+9.27.46+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqm7FsqxBqi7y0AdCxMonfWnVdYMfypVs5LsobzQoDxwJ2StHjnvcWvwYBo8ceSX1znS_SIoWnyBFxC-g32SmwTRGia2Ms3qnLrGMiRmdU5Gx1GCQ_C4BFSjXPb2eiNibjP6BcscgHHmE/s320/Screen+shot+2013-03-07+at+9.27.46+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I have read a
lot about "the death of the book as we know it" and
"the death of print" and so on, to which I say "Tosh!" It’s
both/and, people, not either/or. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The Ebook
market is presently dominated by kindle, an ereader that takes books from the
Amazon Kindle store in a format called .mobi that is particular to Kindles.
Which means you can only read it on a Kindle device or app, so Amazon creates a
circular process whereby you spend your book money with them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I want to
say out loud: “THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES.” There's another Ebook format, called
ePub, which is used for nearly every other Ebook reader than Kindle. New Zealand
booksellers have decided to go with a reader called<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kobo, and sell this device. You can also
download a free Kobo app to your iPad or smartphone. iBooks is another<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>app for ipads and smartphones that reads ePub.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">So you have
a Kobo and you want to put some books on it. If you go direct to the <a href="http://kobo.com/">kobo.com</a> website you can buy and download from
there. BUT, if you go to the website of your favourite independent bookstore
and tap or click on their 'ebooks' button you can go from there to the kobo
website and its 3 million books and—this is the important bit—the bookstore
gets a cut from the sale. This is a tiny amount, a few cents, but it a) adds up
if lots of people do it and b) keeps the independent bookstores in the game;
they remain a player in the business of getting the books we want to read to us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">This all
seems ponderous written down, but once you've done it a couple of times it's
simple enough and, whatever happens in the book retailing world, I want
independent bookstores, who are the ones who care about books and readers, to be a big
part of it. Independent bookstores are also important to independent
publishers, who are also important to us readers. Whether you take your books
with or without batteries, support the independents.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">PS. My own preference is still for reading books printed on paper. There's something about the physical object I really enjoy. The irony is I didn't appreciate this until I read a couple of books on my ipad. </span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-24142468470028595552013-02-02T10:03:00.000+13:002013-02-02T10:10:07.070+13:00Reading on<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM8EKtxur4JUIMvrRwEcEvYSI4drVRDbqAXW9Rh3pDzyeUUa44IrCYJwwpKTlomY-rQ1LpBmhp-PTbJWtjAonHOs-NU9SDb4_mQLALBJmrwk_AFbpdNXe88VgdmLhYU8X_AR6xIcHIlhQ/s1600/TWUY.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM8EKtxur4JUIMvrRwEcEvYSI4drVRDbqAXW9Rh3pDzyeUUa44IrCYJwwpKTlomY-rQ1LpBmhp-PTbJWtjAonHOs-NU9SDb4_mQLALBJmrwk_AFbpdNXe88VgdmLhYU8X_AR6xIcHIlhQ/s200/TWUY.png" width="146" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">Halfway through Jared Diamond’s latest, <i>The World Until Yesterday, </i>I am not as
enthusiastic about it as I was with <i>Guns,
Germs and Steel </i>or <i>Collapse. </i>In
the latest book he is comparing earlier kinds of societies—hunter and gatherers,
herders, and so on—with WEIRD societies. WEIRD has to be an ironic acronym and
stands for Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic. He is
suggesting that there are things we today could learn from some of the ways things were done back then. It
rather inhibits the telling that there are so many variations even among
societies of the same kind, that there are a lot of qualifying of statements. But there is interesting information
about things like warfare, and childrearing, and I suspect there will be more
of interest in the coming sections on health, religion and language.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">W. G. Sebald’s <i>Vertigo </i>was published in 1990. He’s a favourite author of David
Foster Wallace and several other writers I like so I decided I’d better read
him. This one, chosen randomly from those available from the Wellington Public
Library, is four linked stories about men traveling, (mis)remembering, being in
a state of greater or lesser anguish. Sebald’s theme, according to the blurb,
is “the vertiginous unreliability of memory.” I was not entirely gripped by any
of it. Resolved to try another of his books before too long.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A.D.Miller’s <i>Snowdrops </i>is a bleak tale that I enjoyed a lot. It’s set in Moscow
in the mid-oughties. The protagonist is an unappealing expat banker who loses
his “moral compass” and allows himself to get involved in two scams of very
different scale. It’s written as a confession to his fiancé, whom he met after
the events of the book, and he says he thinks she may not marry him once she
has read the story. I won’t spoil the story and quote it, but the last sentence
seemed to me the most likely to provoke that reaction.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU_i4NatWYBxfl454PsKUD09asMJARTzxePByLhIFKARQp5Q5cpxHDbloyO2hs-KD6vdBZ92DkRKroE1JmkDDL-LuvuX4TDOdq2TmyffVCwWnJ930UD8P1aUZuzZVbizpx3McoAT_aVy4/s1600/THBI.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU_i4NatWYBxfl454PsKUD09asMJARTzxePByLhIFKARQp5Q5cpxHDbloyO2hs-KD6vdBZ92DkRKroE1JmkDDL-LuvuX4TDOdq2TmyffVCwWnJ930UD8P1aUZuzZVbizpx3McoAT_aVy4/s200/THBI.png" width="135" /></span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">I’ve been a James Meek fan since he came<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to Wellington Writers’ and Readers some years
ago, and I read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The People’s Act Of Love,
</i>a grim and complicated story about how to live a moral life. Meek’s latest<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, The Heart Broke In </i>is a ramble of a
book with many characters and time shifts. It’s about becoming part of the
long-term stream of life, for example, by having children or doing science. It
also deals with love and betrayal and guilt and self-justification, especially
through the vile, self-serving celebrity, Richie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">Richie tended to
divide his memories into two categories: things that happened to him and things
that happened to other people while he was there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The idea that modern life lacks a moral compass
features in this book, too. A key idea seemed to me to be the question of how to be
moral without religion. Maybe.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-16792391406385790942013-01-01T13:20:00.000+13:002013-01-01T13:21:29.158+13:00Some Notes on Writing & Publishing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">1.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">Stones
Gathered Together </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">will exist as an ebook by the
end of the month. Separate pieces with different layout is more tricky to
format for a ebook than the running text of a novel, but I’m onto it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">2.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">A friend who has completed the Whitireia
publishing course has offered to do a print layout of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where The HeArt Is, </i>as practice of what she learnt in the course,
so later this year it may appear as a paper book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">3.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">I finally feel as though I am getting going
with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alice Green. </i>I bought some
software called Scrivener and spent several brain-itching days getting my head
around how it works. Once I felt I had a handle on the basic ideas of it and
after a couple of runs through the tutorial and perusing of the first part of
the 500-odd page PDF format manual (free to download) I started using it. It
actually seems to work, though it’s early days yet, both in the writing and in
my control of the software. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLk2JMyaeiBVrgWzOt3FRxaloz-dnIRYljH69wXIourMNBQTEZ1vFDHkV46E_x4EcpJUPNHdyC8vnp_3FqtdfEUH3oyZr6PUTELmrPrtEBG73lR1Ufn_FaWuLFtyjVtwN2vEXRyaRi8xE/s1600/SCRIV.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLk2JMyaeiBVrgWzOt3FRxaloz-dnIRYljH69wXIourMNBQTEZ1vFDHkV46E_x4EcpJUPNHdyC8vnp_3FqtdfEUH3oyZr6PUTELmrPrtEBG73lR1Ufn_FaWuLFtyjVtwN2vEXRyaRi8xE/s1600/SCRIV.png" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">What I can do, which I couldn’t do with Word,
is have quick access to lots of web pages (for information) and each of the
three strands I am writing, without having to go in and out of many files,
losing my way and getting frustrated. For example I can have a writing page and
a web site I am referring to open in the same window and move easily between
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">The software isn’t going to sort out for me the
tricky business of bringing the three parts/aspects/strands of the story into a
cohesive whole—once I have written them—but I am hopeful that it will help. That’s
a way ahead. In the meantime I am pleased to be actually writing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">Soon, very soon, I’ll write about what I’ve
been reading. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-12834603601157670532012-12-17T16:33:00.000+13:002012-12-17T16:34:18.665+13:00The Stones Are Gathering<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve just about got the collection of pieces I call <i>Stones Gathered Together</i> ready for
publishing as an ebook. Look for it in January. I stopped bothering about there
being sixty items, as that was an idea from way back that doesn’t seem relevant
any more, so I could drop a few pieces that really weren’t good enough to
include—judgment about this is totally subjective of course.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4ZebCm4czYZYooUzth5Ap-YBHB99tQy4IBgM57VYUSrID-qlpsbpykBn8KevpeZYI233TGEf81kzUlIk2zErT57QKOHSuMQrVNZExAHYp8g08kinW9Kucmrg9LG7mdBBvlei9pSN4rA/s1600/SGTcover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4ZebCm4czYZYooUzth5Ap-YBHB99tQy4IBgM57VYUSrID-qlpsbpykBn8KevpeZYI233TGEf81kzUlIk2zErT57QKOHSuMQrVNZExAHYp8g08kinW9Kucmrg9LG7mdBBvlei9pSN4rA/s200/SGTcover.png" width="136" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">Where would I be without my early readers? They
include my writing group, my partner Prue and sundry others and make my writing
better. Here’s the cover. Making one’s own cover is easier for an ebook than
for a print book because you need only the front.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">The new novel, which so far exists only in my
head and a folder of articles and stuff I call research, is truly on the agenda
now. For the time being at least it’s called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alice Green, </i>which is the name of the protagonist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">I’ve just finished reading another David Foster
Wallace. This is a further posthumously published book, called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Both Flesh
and Not </i>and is a collection of essay-type pieces, most of them previously
unpublished. In between each is a double page of words and meanings—DFW was a
word collector, and was part of a panel working on an American dictionary. I’ll
confine myself to just one quote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">What if we choose to
accept the act that every few years, despite everyone’s best efforts, some
hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of terrible suicidal attack
that a democratic republic cannot 100 percent protect itself from without
subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">My summer reading will include some classics
from the library—W G Sebald and Kafka—the new James Meek, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Heart Broke In, </i>and some others, yet to be chosen, from the
“waiting” pile. I’ll keep you posted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-5263337249507938742012-11-24T13:37:00.000+13:002012-11-24T13:42:46.267+13:00From Gertrude Stein to David Foster Wallace<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi93-aP8i-eAbbHDEvXMl7r1y4j3FU4vunNaV0vV3OMPFEjz4rl34-m9g-iN1TXTRxfiIpi_9qUOnoj4fZqgJeMNXddEgsdRwpcLYVbGVQZpybFjj58mrTLORJYGYQjW4p-fYcau_zPxA/s1600/Stein.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi93-aP8i-eAbbHDEvXMl7r1y4j3FU4vunNaV0vV3OMPFEjz4rl34-m9g-iN1TXTRxfiIpi_9qUOnoj4fZqgJeMNXddEgsdRwpcLYVbGVQZpybFjj58mrTLORJYGYQjW4p-fYcau_zPxA/s200/Stein.png" width="127" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">My fascination with the writing and life of
Gertrude Stein goes back a way now. I’ve been thinking about what attracts me
to her writing recently, because I have a similar reaction the writings of David
Foster Wallace, even though the writing of the two, one from each end of the
twentieth century, has little in common. GS said herself that she was doing
writing that was the first real writing of the twentieth century; earlier
writing she maintained was of the nineteenth century.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">In her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lectures
In America</i> she says,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">Our period was
undoubtedly the period of the cinema and series production. And each of us in
our own way are bound to express what the world in which we are living is
doing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">GS was writing a new way, a way demanded of
daily life in the world of the moment. Of course, this is a simplistic
statement about her work, but it is this element of wanting to write in a new
way to embody something of a new (twentieth century) world that for me connects
her to DFW. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd0eN3Kc09UzfwzzRvX62kbFKyH2sJ1jd_tshi8yWrnksOwaxOc7KmKV-OiV1wBxX7MzeN10HF2cWGFgzDuKIL5o__suDGoJfvmnRoObQgqOsPZDTqElNuaYVhR90MXHwZU4Al8V-itJ4/s1600/dfw.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd0eN3Kc09UzfwzzRvX62kbFKyH2sJ1jd_tshi8yWrnksOwaxOc7KmKV-OiV1wBxX7MzeN10HF2cWGFgzDuKIL5o__suDGoJfvmnRoObQgqOsPZDTqElNuaYVhR90MXHwZU4Al8V-itJ4/s200/dfw.png" width="136" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">As is made clear in D T Max’s biography of DFW,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, </i>Wallace
constantly searched for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">way </i>to
write that embodied what he was writing about. In a world where entertainment
rules and pleasure is the end game, how do you write a novel that is not just
an “entertainment”? How do you write about boredom without being boring? How do
you move your fiction writing from clever, smart-alecky, irony to conveying
authentic experience without sentimentality? These were life and death matters
to Wallace.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE;">In an earlier blog I wrote about DFW’s novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Infinite Jest </i>that it was “</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">an
evisceration of American-style, commercial, pleasure-based culture where there
is so much choice that choice is meaningless, in a USA where people are
over-entertained and sad and bored and lonely.” Max’s biography details
Wallace’s struggles with drugs, alcohol and depression and the ways he overcame
these from time to time. Finding a way to write that was true to experience,
that was what GS and DFW had in common, I think. That and nothing much else,
except perhaps having read extremely widely. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">GS died suddenly, on the operating table, in 1946.
DFW killed himself in 2008, leaving the partially completed manuscript of what
would be published posthumously as <i>The
Pale King </i>and a two-page note to his wife. This<i> </i>note has not been made public. (And neither should it be; if it
ever is I am sure I will read it.)</span><!--EndFragment--></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-90353008595023723012012-10-29T17:30:00.000+13:002012-10-29T17:31:15.559+13:00More books, a little writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I finished <i>The Satanic Verses </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">by Salman Rushdie with
enjoyment. The elements of what I think is called magic realism in it didn’t
bother me, as I had thought they might. It’s full of allusions to Indian
history and culture, about which I am woefully ignorant, so I am sure I missed
a lot of them, but I found the book fascinating and full of big ideas treated
thoughtfully and with fun. What’s to not like, never mind get outraged at.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0RzSYn6tlCVeZqYry3VkVBZbS5B4if-rDKJ27AbWeT7h2SXl3hwRp8Zr7lOrp3-DYIShdzDv33kA6-G4tr-7DjK3VxhCxPL458eCPK7eBhVX1mlvYzenU2CZ1DRx8KFKqdcSs2oT3SCM/s1600/SD:JA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0RzSYn6tlCVeZqYry3VkVBZbS5B4if-rDKJ27AbWeT7h2SXl3hwRp8Zr7lOrp3-DYIShdzDv33kA6-G4tr-7DjK3VxhCxPL458eCPK7eBhVX1mlvYzenU2CZ1DRx8KFKqdcSs2oT3SCM/s200/SD:JA.jpg" width="138" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><i>Joseph Anton, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">the book Rushdie wrote about his years under
protection because of the (misnamed) fatwa that put his life at risk because of <i>The Satanic Verses </i>is another
large book. I read it over three days; even though I knew (more or less) the
ending it was a page-turner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">One of the things that makes the book gripping is that he—unless there
is a good reason not to—uses people’s real names. I’m sure there are things
left out in consideration of people’s lives and feelings, but there’s plenty
left in, so the whole tale has a specificity that gives it a sense of being a
real telling of Rushdie’s experiences of living under a death threat. He writes
of being shamed and being ashamed of himself and, rousing himself to fight,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“…against the view that people could be killed
for their ideas, and against the ability of any religion to palce a limiting
point on thought. But he needed, now, to be clear of what he was fighting for.
Freedom of speech, freedom of the imagination, freedom from fear, and the
beautiful, ancient art of which he was privileged to be a practitioner. Also,
scepticism, irreverence, doubt, satire, comedy and unholy glee.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There are also his gratitude to friends, his
love and concern for his son, the domestic details of having four policemen
living in his house and much more. Actually, there was nothing in this book I didn’t like
reading. I haven’t come away with a picture of Salman Rushdie as necessarily an
easy person to get along with, but I do admire him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The edition of <i>Joseph Anton </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">on sale in New Zealand has
an ugly cover. Who did that? The Random House hardback cover is much better. I
can only show the ugly one from my copy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It’s unusual for me to stop reading a book in the middle, but that’s
what I did with Gary Shteyngart’s <i>The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I didn’t like
the characters (except for the old man who talked to his fan) or the story. I
guess plenty of other people did, it’s well reviewed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-mufDcu3srTY58eFDewPD2gZ61VTFm52IlAkLc-mFaMr71_hveE_xBSZldMKNkvZQNf0wbiZ3FbyYSmORuES_eHcdUc2nTfC8ZJujMG8JTd5py8MAcoSfTA3VlBZbSlykKnukq3UwwM/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-mufDcu3srTY58eFDewPD2gZ61VTFm52IlAkLc-mFaMr71_hveE_xBSZldMKNkvZQNf0wbiZ3FbyYSmORuES_eHcdUc2nTfC8ZJujMG8JTd5py8MAcoSfTA3VlBZbSlykKnukq3UwwM/s200/Scan.png" width="133" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
People all over the book pages, both in print and on the internet, have
been raving about Allison Moore’s <i>The Lighthouse. </i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Perhaps I read
too many of these before I read the book, but I couldn’t get fully involved in
it. I did finish reading it, and I do admire her writing, but there were too
many coincidences, too many repeated hints at connections between the main
characters and a contrived—though darkly funny—final scenario that both amused
and irritated me. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 12pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span>
<div style="font-size: 12pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwL_ft26aB9TeoN8AfHpNp4KoFyUvDU-6OfWfWthyiGJFnSd0hXyhhWZC6JZ6PQv0Yc1Jr7okpEHnKJ6dztSDVFcOwakVl2eZV59Bx24Umga9zOIqRP9ufZqgWei9xRpoG826Xiad_VPQ/s1600/Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwL_ft26aB9TeoN8AfHpNp4KoFyUvDU-6OfWfWthyiGJFnSd0hXyhhWZC6JZ6PQv0Yc1Jr7okpEHnKJ6dztSDVFcOwakVl2eZV59Bx24Umga9zOIqRP9ufZqgWei9xRpoG826Xiad_VPQ/s200/Cover.png" width="133" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The two more pieces I need to write to
complete the collection of sixty I will publish as an ebook, are slow to
develop. I’ve had a few opening lines, but nothing yet that has grown into a
piece of writing. I could publish a collection of fifty-eight pieces, I
suppose, but I always had in mind that it would be sixty, at one point I was
thinking of calling the collection Sixty Pieces. For now, it’s called <i>Stones
Gathered Together</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">. I’m
playing around with some photos I took of a pile of small stones in my study
for the cover.</span></span></span></div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-54810235722601696272012-10-01T13:05:00.003+13:002012-10-01T13:07:48.816+13:00Five Big Books<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">The whole month of September without a blog post, oh dear. No more statements of intent.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">I read three big paperbacks (as in many pages, brick-like shape) during
the month, and am in the middle of a fourth in preparation for a fifth. Ten
days on holiday in Samoa, a place where the weather, the sea and the people are
all warm, provided the context for a large part of this reading: five days in
Apia at the famous Aggie Grey’s:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigqBX9i3SWZYWlBZYJQZ8OPuu0PAFl5SO9ZKaYa6OVcIL9dkxzPRyvdq15NklRtbAGMzKIlpO1eyHQ_6CdTXTUX9aMS2pGmrlohFGtybUo0R2RYVhByLWWpx0M4Nuy0RzPCCFCphIIWus/s1600/DSC00282.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigqBX9i3SWZYWlBZYJQZ8OPuu0PAFl5SO9ZKaYa6OVcIL9dkxzPRyvdq15NklRtbAGMzKIlpO1eyHQ_6CdTXTUX9aMS2pGmrlohFGtybUo0R2RYVhByLWWpx0M4Nuy0RzPCCFCphIIWus/s320/DSC00282.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The dining room at Aggie Grey's</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">And five in Lolomanu:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_xKG3fB_S9-yZ3nwGpA6z4tYMIKhzR6I67abPTegdJDK7YvgTJM4sKaAI9cLaJI04FUhyphenhyphenBvtC0ff1ItpoagCL5Q6AyUBjZkU_NT5gnooktLf1IQvKCbQjcp0JsXjkBfUPjnuY1hZ0Ndw/s1600/DSC00414.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_xKG3fB_S9-yZ3nwGpA6z4tYMIKhzR6I67abPTegdJDK7YvgTJM4sKaAI9cLaJI04FUhyphenhyphenBvtC0ff1ItpoagCL5Q6AyUBjZkU_NT5gnooktLf1IQvKCbQjcp0JsXjkBfUPjnuY1hZ0Ndw/s320/DSC00414.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taufua Beach Falés</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Richard Ford’s <i>Canada </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">is told in the first person by Dell, looking
back from his retirement as a teacher to the events of his year of being
fifteen, when his parents robbed a bank. Dell reflects a lot on how to get
going in his own life, rather than having things happen to him, and on what <i>sort
</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">of
people people are, beginning with his twin sister and his parents. <i>Canada</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> is quite
different from Ford’s <i>Sportswriter </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">series. I liked the issues
it raised, while not being sure they are fully worked out—or whether they could
be.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Hilary Mantel’s <i>Bring Up the Bodies, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">follows on from the
brilliant <i>Wolf Hall, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">and is every bit as good. Her constructed character
Thomas Cromwell continues to be the centre of the story, set in the world of
Henry V, in this volume during the time of wife number two, Anne Boleyn. An
inconsistent king with mood swings desperately strives for a legitimate son
among a court full of people full of their own importance bent on power,
influence and wealth. The young Elizabeth is in the background and Mary hovers.
Mantel portrays Thomas Cromwell as socially enlightened, with concern for
orphans and the poor. Court life is fraught with rumour and intrigue and while
Thomas Cromwell’s position is powerful, the nobles patronise him for being of
low birth. It’s a great read, and I’ll certainly read volume three.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">John Lanchester’s <i>Capital </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is a large ramble of a book. The title is nicely ambiguous for a book set in London with characters variously affected by the financial
events of 2008 and beyond. The main characters live in a street named after
Pepys. The resolution of the main threads—one concerning postcards with the
message “You Have What We Want,” and the fate of Roger Yount—are a bit feeble.
But then, it could be that life is like that, with more whimpers than bombs and
maybe that is Lanchester’s point, or one of them. I did enjoy reading <i>Captital,
</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">it
was when I finished it I was left feeling “so what”ish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPP3ywJviMZsKJzOqrdMIro8Qbs1PXIFqj7Z4onxjsvIGina_Rr1Vxu_aPnhegYHG_DHbcbul7WPp8rMK25IzmRpchSqGTWjsI5qiQOIrgsIAOthRqvJryQCD-MlQRLjLVl3vh2SG5ZP4/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPP3ywJviMZsKJzOqrdMIro8Qbs1PXIFqj7Z4onxjsvIGina_Rr1Vxu_aPnhegYHG_DHbcbul7WPp8rMK25IzmRpchSqGTWjsI5qiQOIrgsIAOthRqvJryQCD-MlQRLjLVl3vh2SG5ZP4/s200/Scan.png" width="128" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">I am currently—back home—over half way
through <i>The Satanic Verses, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">which
I am reading in preparation for Salman Rusdie’s opus on his years in hiding as
the result of the fatwa declared against him because of this book. Magical
realism is not generally my favourite writing, but the mixture of fantasy and
reality in <i>The Satanic Verses </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">is
keeping me engaged. <i>Joseph Anton</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> is the title of the book about the effects of the fatwa. More about these two books in a later
post.</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-4968591010231901002012-08-30T16:15:00.000+12:002012-08-30T16:16:32.797+12:00Reading on and off the rails<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I haven’t written something for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>this blog every week, so I guess that was an unrealistic idea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We are going to Samoa for ten days next week, with our lovely house and
dog sitter coming to stay in the house. I’m taking three solid<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>novels to read. Hilary Mantel’s <i>Bring
Up the Bodies </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is our
book group choice, so we’ll definitely both read that. And there’s <i>Canada</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> by John Ford
and <i>Capital</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> by John Lanchester.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj_L6e4mCObJDCipoHHVjeBzwN5DFKvZkMRhPl6w227Fd0hMdg947w2yUioWPECJOSPdt8DEm0e1vTkUOhj1AmHEHIChRv4JN6lSCAeVKkQJ1c-Gsug3eRmoE6ynqN1rgWXwYS177QCYM/s1600/DSC00273.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj_L6e4mCObJDCipoHHVjeBzwN5DFKvZkMRhPl6w227Fd0hMdg947w2yUioWPECJOSPdt8DEm0e1vTkUOhj1AmHEHIChRv4JN6lSCAeVKkQJ1c-Gsug3eRmoE6ynqN1rgWXwYS177QCYM/s320/DSC00273.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’ve just re-read <i>Cloud Atlas </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">by David Mitchell and
understood it better this time. Maybe I read it more thoughtfully as some of
its themes relate to the new novel I am thinking about. Not that I could write
anything as clever and complex and this book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Scifi/fantasy is not a kind of book I read much of these days, though I
have in the past. As an example of a happy reading accident I read China
Mievelle’s <i>Railsea</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> thinking it was one of the three shortlisted book for
the Pullitzer Prize for fiction this year, the year the prize was not awarded.
(David Foster Wallace’s <i>The Pale King </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">was also on that list, and
should have won the Prize.) The actual shortlisted book was <i>Train Dreams </i>by Denis Johnson, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">which I haven’t
read.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The point of this anecdote is that <i>Railsea
</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">is a terrific book,
well-written, with a clever, if unlikely, premise, great characters and a very
satisfying ending. </span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-57845767241696827722012-07-31T09:15:00.000+12:002012-07-31T09:16:14.812+12:00Research for writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">I don’t come out of an academic tradition, where research involves
applications for funding and ethical approval along with a detailed exposition
of methodology. Nor have I been a journalist in the usual sense, even when I
was a magazine editor. I do understand about getting the facts right, and
checking things, and information being as reliable as its sources, and giving
credit where it is due and so on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m thinking about research because the novel I have embarked on
requires me to do some so I can write about subjects on which I do not already
have expertise. For my second novel, <i>Poppy’s Return</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> I wanted to
Poppy to go to Whitby, in England. So, as part of a holiday, my partner and I
went to Whitby. That was a good call. All the places in my novels that have any
significance at all are places I have been to, albeit for entirely different
purposes from those of my characters. That, and checking dates and weather and
the current locations of some art works and the habits of a few sea birds, and
such has so far been sufficient research.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">For this novel I have folders, both the sort that holds paper and the
sort that live on my computer. And I have a fresh view on how the research can
take over. It’s fun, and it involves the internet and the public library, both
places I like to go. It’s easier than working out and writing a story, too,
doesn’t require such hard thinking. So I’m being firm with myself, not reading
and taking notes from every book that touches on my subject/s not saving every
website into my electronic filing system. I’m looking for what I need to know
so that I don’t write rubbish. Of course I will find out more than I could ever
use—information is not the point of the novel, it’s a setting, a demonstration
of my characters and what they are about. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">There are writing programmes and apps that
promise fool-proof ways of organising materials for writers and I decided not
to spend the time learning to use one. I’m doing fine with my folders and a
table or two for dates and names. </span></div>peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-23464599107649320742012-07-24T11:54:00.000+12:002012-07-24T11:57:26.471+12:00Narrators and News<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">This week I finished reading Vladimir Nabokov’s <i>Pnin. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The only other
book of his I have read is <i>Lolita. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Pnin is about Russian
Professor Pnin, an unlikely lecturer at a minor American university, first
published in 1953. Nabokov died in 1977.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I read it because I kept seeing references to Nabokov as “master prose
stylist”—I quote from the back of the recent Vintage (Random House) edition.
It’s a short book and I read it over a couple of weeks, which is slow for me,
studying the style. I think I get it; it’s discursive, with a Narrator who carefully describes his relationship to Pnin at the end of the book and gets inside Pnin's head. A random example:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">He seemed to be quite unexpectedly (for human
despair seldom leads to great truths) on the verge of a simple solution of the
universe but was interrupted by an urgent request.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The urgent request was from a squirrel wanting someone to activate the
drinkng fountain in the park where Pnin was walking. <i>Pnin is </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">both funny and
tragic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Coincidentally I’ve read another book lately that has a narrator who is
also a character; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s <i>The Great Gatsby. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I was surprised
at how short it is, almost a novella. Nick is a character with a strong
narrator role, and he’s an interesting side-line to the main story of the
nouveau-riche Gatsby, a high-liver, bound to self-destruct. A book of flappers
and car crashes, as the man who wrote the annoying Introduction says. This is
one of those books I am glad to have read because it gets referred to often.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Teju Cole’s <i>Open City </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">is a book I heartily recommend to everyone. Written in the first person it’s a novel set
largely in New York, with a side trip to Brussels. Julian is from Nigeria, a
psychiatrist, registrar in a New York hospital, and he walks in
the city. There’s no plot to speak of and few other characters. It’s like a
riff on modern life, and is described on the cover as, “A meditation on history
and culture, identity and solitude,” which is close enough. The detail—what
Julian notices—is often original and the reflections on modern life and
experiences thoughtful and thought-provoking. It’s not at all hard to read and
I think everyone should read it. Nice writing, nothing fancy, does the job extremely well. One example of many, many possible examples:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">… there isn't anything that immunizes us from a plague of one kind or another … we are just as susceptible as any of those past civilisations were, but we are especially unready for it. Even in the way we speak about what little has happened to us, we have already exhausted ourselves with hyperbole.</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s three weeks since my last blog entry, so I have a FAIL on my
resolution to write in here weekly. So be it, no gnashing of teeth. I’ll see if
I can Do Better.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Two pieces of writerly news have made the
major media in the last twenty-four hours. The first is intriguing: the
discover of some previously unknown Katherine Mansfield stories which have the
pundits out in force. The second is sad: the death of Margaret Mahy. Her
wonderful books are not, of course, lost to us but her eccentric presence is; there's an
empty space in New Zealand’s cultural world. </span>
</div>
peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-5724215813531025832012-07-02T12:56:00.000+12:002012-07-02T12:57:56.741+12:00Writers on Writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Neil Gaiman, famous for writing <i>The Sandman </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">series, <i>American
Gods, Coraline </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">and a lot more, says, “I make things up and write them
down.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The pieces of my writing that I’m collecting for <i>Stones Gathered
Together, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">are partly made up stories, partly to do with things I think about and
partly close to being memoirish, derived from my life. I think I remember what
is remembered and what is made up, and am aware that the remembering and
writing down add layers to the original memories, which become something other
than the original experience, even though the thing remembered has its core of
this-thing-happened-to-me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">(Unattributed photograph from </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">(http://info.neded.org/stathand/parttwo/</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">cather.htm)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Willa Cather said, “Most of the basic material a writer works with is
acquired before the age of fifteen.” And Chekov said, “When men ask me how I
know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men,
I learned from me.” Both of these suggest that writing is largely memoir in
different forms, in opposition to Neil Gaiman’s “making it up.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">What writers write about writing is one of my favourite areas of
reading. As with, as it is said, the bible and Shakespeare, you could find a
quote from a published writer to fit just about any opinion on what writing/
literature is and how it happens. That’s one of the things that makes it
interesting; writing <i>is</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> more complex than learning how to fix a bicycle, or
knit a jumper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Susan Sontag writes in the second edited (by her son, David Reiff)
collection of writings from her diaries, <i>As Consciousness Is Harnessed to
Flesh, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">that she wanted to “play
only with the top team,” who she defined as “Those who become reference points
for successive generations in many languages (eg, Kafka).” Earlier in the same
book she says, “I’m good at understanding things …. But I’m not a genius, I’ve
always known that. My mind isn’t good enough, isn’t <i>really </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">first rate …
ultimately too conventional … I’m not mad enough, not obsessed enough.”</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48Cn2LhU8Mmvcb5dmx138T4BUVzn6cd8odZkCNxpIjF0KIUXc3u_yB62vRuWwIVoJw-WOI1fEFPv9p1bz5kTDt9MJKBR7y0-jRCw7fAzq6a-Au0LnHoMlhyphenhyphenPfHxfAWxcGG-A3s6wRW9s/s1600/Gertrude-Stein-9493261-1-402.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48Cn2LhU8Mmvcb5dmx138T4BUVzn6cd8odZkCNxpIjF0KIUXc3u_yB62vRuWwIVoJw-WOI1fEFPv9p1bz5kTDt9MJKBR7y0-jRCw7fAzq6a-Au0LnHoMlhyphenhyphenPfHxfAWxcGG-A3s6wRW9s/s200/Gertrude-Stein-9493261-1-402.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Calibri;"><i>Gertrude Stein</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Calibri;"> [Internet]. 2012. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: ArialMT;"><a href="http://www.biography.com/people/gertrude-stein-9493261"><span style="color: #0089d9; font-family: Calibri; text-decoration: none;">http://www.biography.com/people/gertrude-stein-9493261</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Gertrude Stein, on the other hand, <i>knew </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">she was a genius, and said
so, often. (There are a few references to her in Sontag’s diaries but she
doesn’t put Stein in the same team as Kafka.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I could do this for a long time—quote writers and compare what they say
about writing to what other writers say about it. However, the one central
idea, the incontrovertible core, is that a writer writes. And if, as Gertrude
Stein said, “Remarks are not literature,” then I had better stop these remarks
and do some writing. Whether what I then write can be called “literature”
involves a whole other discussion which I’ll pick up in a later post. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-48933613886621265492012-06-25T12:21:00.000+12:002012-06-25T12:23:41.218+12:00Why I read the LRB and the NYer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The <i>London Review of Books</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> is published fortnightly, <i>The
New Yorker</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> weekly with a few double issues. I subscribe to the printed version of
each which gives me electronic access to back issues.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">As its title suggest the <i>LRB</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> consists largely of book
reviews, though it does include occasional articles on contemporary
issues/politics and a nod at a few art exhibitions. The reviews are long and
discursive. Reviews of non-fiction books are often written by someone with
extensive knowledge of the subject area. Writers of fiction reviews tend to be
published writers or university teachers of literature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">So, <i>LRB</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> reviews are not necessarily an easy read, and a few
defeat me altogether. Mostly, though, I am interested and stimulated and get an
idea from the review about whether or not I want to read the book. I don’t make
myself read every review to the end!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeE7iU0yEN77zi_WglqNUgXAvRWBL0J2WtsL_cd-oThzkKM2TeSSWUHGwslWX0mQzWfneMdpVUs1DoVt6crT5NdesNJCygcCPQnt40rCJuTXlXUIr2T-rWgnEdg5wmohAtfGFIW9NXkQQ/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeE7iU0yEN77zi_WglqNUgXAvRWBL0J2WtsL_cd-oThzkKM2TeSSWUHGwslWX0mQzWfneMdpVUs1DoVt6crT5NdesNJCygcCPQnt40rCJuTXlXUIr2T-rWgnEdg5wmohAtfGFIW9NXkQQ/s200/Scan.png" width="142" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This New Yorker cover is by Bob Staake and is called "Spectrum of Light." </i></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The issue came out just after President Obama announced his support for gay marriage.</i></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>The</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> <i>New Yorker</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> is not a literary magazine as such, though it has
reviews, long, highly-researched articles about writers (as well as about
sportspeople, politicians, dictators and any other category of people you can
think of) and a short story in every issue. (And a lot more, I’m focusing here
on the booky bits.) Again, I get pointers on what I want and don’t want to read.
If I wanted a purely book-related magazine from the US, I’d get <i>The New York
Review of Books, </i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">but that I read from the Wellington Public Library
shelves when I have time to spare in the library.</span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Both <i>LRB </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">and <i>The New Yorker </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">give me a sense of some slight
connection to that big wide world of literature out there, and pander to my
book-snobbery—that is, my wanting to know something about what is the “best”
published writing, whatever that means. One of my other favourite kinds of
reading is writing by writers about writing; not “how to” books so much as books
about how they live as writers.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">One final point about subscribing to these magazines—the cost per issue
is about one fifth of the cost off a magazine stall, even with international
postage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-83999731976141896172012-06-18T12:08:00.001+12:002012-06-18T12:09:13.097+12:00Reading to write<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">The new writing idea I’m developing involves finding out about things I
have ideas about but not a lot of information, so I’m reading, both on the
internet and in books (oh, hail to the Wellington Public Library!) and writing
a little. And there' a lot of thinking going on, and sketching of family trees
to keep the generations clear in my head and hence on the page. (Once I
inadvertently had a minor character have a baby at age 11, when I didn’t pay
enough attention to dates and generations.)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2nI2E2tzNUBX0FE_AhUhCRZe8XYkHsu2eoBM7cM7bmLoqJIYM9E5_66Y7LeT8AATVnC6dhKzj6Aas6j8LFZteEd2xwFAFDhkptkBF0vZiqzoh9HE2_KN9Mbo5m3wQNldI9KurSeLB1CU/s1600/DSC00236.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2nI2E2tzNUBX0FE_AhUhCRZe8XYkHsu2eoBM7cM7bmLoqJIYM9E5_66Y7LeT8AATVnC6dhKzj6Aas6j8LFZteEd2xwFAFDhkptkBF0vZiqzoh9HE2_KN9Mbo5m3wQNldI9KurSeLB1CU/s200/DSC00236.JPG" width="185" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I also plan to get my collection of short pieces, the one I tentatively
call <i>Stones Gathered Together, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">into final shape and published as an ebook. My
self-imposed deadline for this is the end of this year, so I must remember to
give it attention; the excitement of a new project tends to take over my mind. Here’s
a photograph I took that might make it onto the cover. Although design experts
say you should not use obvious images on a cover, I do l like this one.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">Pleasing news of the week—a story I entered into the New Zealand Flash
FIction contest (http://nationalflash.wordpress.com/) has made it to the next
round.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">My ideas about the new project change as I read, and I’ve never been
keen on talking about the content of work in progress, so there’s not going to
be a lot of plot revealed in these notes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-32344783417369198502012-06-11T13:30:00.003+12:002012-06-15T17:13:27.937+12:00Books Books Books, or, What I’ve Been reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I missed the brilliance so many others have found in Emily Perkins’ <i>The
Forrest, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">as did the five other members of my book group. None of the characters
engaged me, not even Dorothy, who loves Daniel all of her life in a way he will
never love her, which should have been moving, but I was irritated. At the
beginning I enjoyed the detail involving the characters’ senses of things in
the physical world, but, while each separate piece was excellent, the
cumulative effect was—that word again—irritating. By page 64 I wanted to scream
at this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpDAWCMoaqfg2R3qq1wvEzfaKVEaagRyegfkOmuu4fOYc0WXzcOpaMQUZjWe_zHcnSPwhzbttnwH5YFS77XEop5RhTkkofREO1ud_0y6-bBGpr9ptO6MRQBplm6GUxLxZk0ygRt6miu88/s1600/Scan.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpDAWCMoaqfg2R3qq1wvEzfaKVEaagRyegfkOmuu4fOYc0WXzcOpaMQUZjWe_zHcnSPwhzbttnwH5YFS77XEop5RhTkkofREO1ud_0y6-bBGpr9ptO6MRQBplm6GUxLxZk0ygRt6miu88/s200/Scan.tiff" width="144" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">"He dug a ready-rolled cigarette from the
pocket of his jacket. Tiny brown curls of tobacco dangled from the end of the
cigarette paper and when touched by the flame from his match they illuminated
bright orange and disappeared."</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s good description, but there have been so many good description of
small details by page 64 that the characters are buried under the sensations,
the detail, and I’ve had enough. Clearly many others hadn’t, because there have
been rave revues from all over the world. (The last time I remember being so
badly out of step over a book was when Sandra Coney and I seemed to be the only
people who hated Lynley Hood’s biography of Sylvia Ashton Warner.) On page 201
Dorothy throws away a pen without bothering to put its two pieces together,
because, “there was nothing left to protect.” That bald statement had a strong
emotional impact. I guess that was what I wanted more of, but then, Emily
Perkins was writing <i>her</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit5_IYnm-rCwC1tvLGBolOFr5_040daGpfGDD4xcd_txfuTM05WnSzGYpAkmDGeB9_uV5PhoMAGuSekqq-lBScXcL0EjIuVcwqvzm8BoeRb35cmGiU8c3pUoCRSTHeVi0PlSRtbk5iahc/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit5_IYnm-rCwC1tvLGBolOFr5_040daGpfGDD4xcd_txfuTM05WnSzGYpAkmDGeB9_uV5PhoMAGuSekqq-lBScXcL0EjIuVcwqvzm8BoeRb35cmGiU8c3pUoCRSTHeVi0PlSRtbk5iahc/s200/Scan.png" width="134" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Haruki Murakami’s <i>1Q84</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> is actually three books, published in English
as one large volume, so I took a break between them and read the whole thing
over several weeks. It certainly works as a story and I had a good time reading
it. After I finished I wondered whether I had forgotten some details from the
early book because some of the things about time shifts and odd creatures and
their purpose seemed unexplained. Yet they are probably unexplainable. An
over-riding theme about the need for balance between good and evil is played
out kind of weirdly, but it was fun to read.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP60KHFLF0PRylaBU267cXWfSga9_UM0hsnsJEi50SuLoFp7VVs3VYo0CVDm2L2Kp3N92j6zf8CSb-j-QxT6VrTM2Tjgb6Beq7SQSqpVAYyVfqTh5gU6tug9yRkZtm85g9MbV8f6pvhtA/s1600/Scan+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP60KHFLF0PRylaBU267cXWfSga9_UM0hsnsJEi50SuLoFp7VVs3VYo0CVDm2L2Kp3N92j6zf8CSb-j-QxT6VrTM2Tjgb6Beq7SQSqpVAYyVfqTh5gU6tug9yRkZtm85g9MbV8f6pvhtA/s200/Scan+1.png" width="138" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The second of Alison Bechdel’s comic-form memoirs about her parents is
called <i>Are You My Mother. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Full marks for courage, publishing this while
her mother is still alive—with her mother’s acceptance, if not full-scale
approval. It gets a little bogged down in the psychology of WInnicott and the
author’s therapy, but the portrait of her mother that comes out of it all is
satisfyingly complex and interesting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m in the middle of a re-read of Umberto Eco’s <i>Name of the Rose </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">and in total
admiration of his erudition and ability to handle so many big themes in one
book—faith, politics, pride, greed, power, love—along with a murder
inquiry. I’m going to have
another read of his earlier novel <i>Foucault’s Pendulum </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">and then take on his latest, <i>The
Prague Cemetery, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">which is on my to-be-read pile.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m going to aim at more
frequent—weekly—entries and alternate reading and writing as topics in separate
entries. Maybe I <i>can </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">maintain
a schedule.</span>
</div>peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-3283744341691413232012-05-16T14:09:00.000+12:002012-05-16T14:33:43.062+12:00Write on<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Zj2JNLtF_H5QgAI5v9RkODAcrRTDGcKmFQkkwY70PQWK_MG70_z-btMVN6NsVuLccb_uPp_K3BkBF-SQfPVbQR9BQjfKzCA5jN9uzLccqy-cpNKFtEsGgeNOXvAwr4NrobqVgOWpmwM/s1600/Scan.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Zj2JNLtF_H5QgAI5v9RkODAcrRTDGcKmFQkkwY70PQWK_MG70_z-btMVN6NsVuLccb_uPp_K3BkBF-SQfPVbQR9BQjfKzCA5jN9uzLccqy-cpNKFtEsGgeNOXvAwr4NrobqVgOWpmwM/s320/Scan.tiff" width="204" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The well of writing has been a bit low over the past few moths. Absence of ideas that excite me
enough to want to write something has been the issue. I can always make myself
write <i>something </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">but I prefer to be driven by an idea that lights up my
mind. I have no idea in advance what will do this, it just happens from time to
time.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">However a couple of things have bubbled up. One of them, which will be a
short story I think, is to do with Gertrude Stein and a “what if ….” Such as
“what if a Gertrude was born in the forties on a diary farm in the Waikato?” A
crazy notion, maybe, but I’m going with it for a bit. It involves a fair bit of re-reading what she wrote and what has been written about her as well as doing some writing "in the style of."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The other idea is, well, too embryonic to say anything about. I need to
so some background reading, which is a fun idea in itself. This could turn out
to be a short story or something longer, depending on how complicated it gets.
Or nothing at all. More some time later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Keeping on reading<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiw-AbOWFzvh0R4eDFrCN_H3QoYCL-SHPP8l9fR9U3tISoIiren9yozWyAb5BXpNV-KcksedC7InJEoLTVbx_of2JjuHtYWH0_PrBlhp_y0uAREKrYqq75kQTPegXH-0Ig_IPmFG4HiOc/s1600/DSC00221.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiw-AbOWFzvh0R4eDFrCN_H3QoYCL-SHPP8l9fR9U3tISoIiren9yozWyAb5BXpNV-KcksedC7InJEoLTVbx_of2JjuHtYWH0_PrBlhp_y0uAREKrYqq75kQTPegXH-0Ig_IPmFG4HiOc/s320/DSC00221.JPG" width="206" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">In the meantime, there’s been a lot of reading going on. Margo Lanagan’s <i>Sea Hearts, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">is not my usual reading, but as fantasy—or realism
with fantasy elements or something—goes, it’s very grown-up and compelling.
Terrific writing, a highly original story, even if it is based on mythology,
achingly good characterisation and a satisfying ending that is neither too
bleak nor too clappy-happy. I read it because Margot Lanagan came here for an
earlier Writers’ and Readers’ week and I liked <i>Tender Morsels. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I think <i>Sea
Hearts </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">is even better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Terry Castle’s <i>The Professor </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">was recommended by a good
friend. It’s seven essay/memoir pieces, the longest about her profoundly
disturbing relationship as a grad student with a professor. Castle spares
neither herself nor the professor. She (Castle) is neurotic, needy, and desperate,
the professor cruel, dissociated and manipulative. Tears before bedtime is not
the half of it. Something about the very clever telling of this sad tale was
disturbing. Nonetheless I was fascinated, compelled along to the end. There’s
an element of snarkiness in Castle’s writing which I didn’t like myself for
enjoying. Her piece on Susan Sontag, “Desperately Seeking Susan,”is a
particularly strong example; I’m not sure it’s enough of an excuse for what at
times seems like mean-spiritedness, to acknowledge it in oneself. My friend,
the one who recommended the book to me, would not agree at all I think, with
what I have said about <i>The Professor</i>. She said it was “brilliant.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">In Anne Enright’s <i>The Gathering</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;"> one
of the siblings in a large Irish family has committed suicide. The protagonist and voice of the novel,
Veronica, was particularly close to Liam when they were children. She is
married to Tom, who she either hates or loves, it’s hard to tell, and they have
two daughters. Veronica is
uncertain. “I need to bear witness to uncertain events,” she says. The book
evolves into her trying to know why Liam killed himself, and portrays the
family as messy and dysfunctional. It’s wonderful writing, kind of bleak, kind
of funny.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">I read Joan Didion’s <i>Blue Nights </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">in a couple of hours one
evening. It purports to be about the death of her daughter, but really it’s
about her own aging. These are both topics of close interest to me, so I didn’t
mind. The observations are sharp, the emotion raw. It’s a book I am glad to
have read.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">Other books I have read recently that are worth the attention are: <i>State
of Wonder </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">by Ann Patchett; <i>Look At Me, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">an earlier novel by
Jennifer Egan of <i>A Visit From the Goon Squad </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">fame; <i>The Bear Boy </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">by Cynthia
Ozick; and <i>Granta 118: Exit Strategies. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">The story by Alice Munro in
<i>Exit Strategies </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri;">disappointed me, but I guess not even AM can be
brilliant every time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-79675175197154333962012-04-22T12:41:00.000+12:002012-04-22T12:41:15.544+12:00Consider David Foster Wallace<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I might be done for now with David Foster Wallace, having finished his
posthumously published, novel-in-progress <i>The Pale King. </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Which, as I
write is embroiled in an internet brouhaha over the fact that it, along with
two other books, was a finalist for the Pullitzer prize for fiction and no
prize was awarded this year. “Outrageous!” shouts one lot. “I should think
not,” opines another, “you can’t give the Pullitzer to an unfinished novel
cobbled together by the author’s editor. And, anyway, it's tedious.” There’s even, “Whatever, let’s stop
talking about this dead guy.” </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqq2IGC1XJOBLMbYrVzVqHyQqH3NnVRsovVSexYoetBzT4xP6dIMOz74CmJ_VEC8sgkbBQmrtHfu_ATdpDo9lbVX9oOcqFwMQYwgejCV0OVkvlq4HMdQ4ksnOlC__3Nt7oHU41jXQfMBQ/s1600/DSC00219.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqq2IGC1XJOBLMbYrVzVqHyQqH3NnVRsovVSexYoetBzT4xP6dIMOz74CmJ_VEC8sgkbBQmrtHfu_ATdpDo9lbVX9oOcqFwMQYwgejCV0OVkvlq4HMdQ4ksnOlC__3Nt7oHU41jXQfMBQ/s320/DSC00219.JPG" width="201" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I haven’t read the other two finalists so I don’t
know whether they would have been worthy winners, but I would have no problem
with <i>The Pale King </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">winning that or any other prize. David Foster Wallace
is described by some as a genius, an attribution that bothered him; in a manner
most unlike that of Uriah Heep , he seems to have strived to be humble.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I struggle to identify what it is that I find so compelling about his
writing. There’s something about his attention to the details of people being
people, the internal monologues, the self-consciousness, the uncertainties,
that appeals, but it is more than this. Perhaps, in <i>The Pale King, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his capacity to examine the special
boredom, the tedium, of workers auditing tax returns in the US Inland Revenue
Service, in the context of a change in culture in that Service from the service
aspect, of doing necessary work, to a business model. The business model means
that the tax returns that will be followed up on are those where the additional income to the IRS, in the form of previously unpaid taxes, is greater than the cost of
doing the follow-up. “Bottom line” over “justice”. But it’s complicated.
Always, with DFW it’s complicated, and that may be another way in which his
writing appeals to me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><i>The Pale King, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">unfinished as it is, is a collection of pieces
concerning how people in the IRS deal with the organisation, their jobs at
various levels, each other and themselves. There’s no coherent plot, which,
surprisingly, didn’t bother me. He captures something of the way many of us
profess disdain for the very things we indulge in, like television or buying
new things. Also, he sidles into people’s mental states and their relationship
to reality—is how I think about myself how others think about me?.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I’ve written two earlier blogs about DFW’s writing (21 December 2011
& 28 Jan 2012).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It’s impossible to give a real flavour of DFW’s writing in short quotes,
but here are a few anyway:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“Something has happened where we’ve decided on a personal level that
it’s all right to abdicate our individual responsibilities to the common good
while we all go about our individual self-interested business and struggle to
gratify our various appetites .”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage
is .”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“… all accountants wear hats? They are today’s cowboys.… Riding hard on
the unending torrent of financial data.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And I’ve not managed to say or quote anything to show how laugh-out-loud
funny Wallace can be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-86550229151871368042012-03-26T19:23:00.001+13:002012-03-26T19:25:36.919+13:00Memory in memoir and fictionWhy do we remember some things and not others? How come different people (especially siblings) remember the same past events so differently? Is it true that we unconsciously distort our memories to fit our view of ourselves? <br />
<br />
It’s everywhere in literature, this consciousness of the vagaries of memory, the elusiveness of truth regarding the past, whether personal or historic in the larger sense. Who was Shakespeare? Was it me or my sister who dropped the bus money home down a drain, given we each remember it as the other? Probably the most famous and most quoted novel about memory is Proust’s but it’s an ever-recurring theme.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkYfCVAn6oFYFAEEa5KvQIpMxL2OTJq77SwyD1if_qHSLUOCfR3apNaAQxTyhthLrsmi0UmwyoiE6FrArJgUgoQCAgfkTtkVyXKkyR8GeeV7KMnxOLPiDggmuzMcZei1h30hkIdb74C50/s1600/DSC00216.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkYfCVAn6oFYFAEEa5KvQIpMxL2OTJq77SwyD1if_qHSLUOCfR3apNaAQxTyhthLrsmi0UmwyoiE6FrArJgUgoQCAgfkTtkVyXKkyR8GeeV7KMnxOLPiDggmuzMcZei1h30hkIdb74C50/s320/DSC00216.JPG" /></a></div><br />
When I write fiction I draw on anecdotes and memories from my past, use as settings places I have visited, and create characters from everyone I have ever known. Some of this is conscious, some is not, but my fiction is never ‘about’ me, I am never telling my story, I am making up a story. When I write about myself, as I do in this blog, it is obvious that is what I am doing.<br />
<br />
At the moment I am working on a collection of pieces that may well be called <i>Stones Gathered Together</i>. This collection includes short stories that are completely made up as far as I can tell and pieces that are clearly about myself and pieces where It’s not obviously either. Everything I write, I think has something to say about my world view, at times through being in opposition to it. I’m always trying to ‘say’ something in my writing, something that matters. Whether or not the reader sees this is not the point, the point is that it matters to me, it’s why I write. Which is not to say there is always something deep and meaningful there, rather that I had a reason for writing it, it’s never just an exercise. I might be playing with an idea, or with some language, but there’s some internal idea or intent driving me.<br />
<br />
Following this are two pieces that might make it into <i>Stones Gathered Together</i>. The first is about me, the second is entirely made up.<br />
####################<br />
<br />
<b>A Rosier By Any Other Name</b><br />
I was offered the chance to buy a book about Rosiers once. While it purported to be “a history of the name” it was really a cheap compilation of odd bits of information and lists in a hard cover volume at a price I could not afford, and I didn’t buy it. <br />
<br />
No family stories went back beyond my grandfather, Henry (Harry) Rosier, a failed farmer who subsequently worked, the story went, on the scenic road through Auckland’s Waitakeres and found a Maori stone adze. The adze ended up with me, and I no longer have it. I think I remember giving it to the Auckland Museum. I hope I did. I knew him as an old man with whom I would walk to watch bowls at the local club when my grandparents came to stay. He would buy us an ice-cream at the dairy on our way home. I liked him better than my grandmother, who cheated when she played cribbage with me. (I learned to cheat back.)<br />
<br />
Later, after both had died, I realised he had been a disapproving, critical husband and father, which did not alter the fondness of my memories. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIYcXpKrilcX42dycIcUWv2JbzFNetqnDiBTmkeJlqxzDzgFsT7i7jU-wt3BCDBLQ2a_4ZbSEkFGRZOylq4Q34jBs3PA2oDSsfWfXRUThChRrL76IhUDPEpp185YbZHmdyX3x75Hc7pJg/s1600/Scan.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="189" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIYcXpKrilcX42dycIcUWv2JbzFNetqnDiBTmkeJlqxzDzgFsT7i7jU-wt3BCDBLQ2a_4ZbSEkFGRZOylq4Q34jBs3PA2oDSsfWfXRUThChRrL76IhUDPEpp185YbZHmdyX3x75Hc7pJg/s320/Scan.tiff" /></a></div><i>Henry (Harry) Rosier in his garden, 1940s.</i><br />
<br />
I was a Rosier child, and got all the expected jokes, mostly from adults who thought they were being funny or clever and weren’t either. For some fifteen years, while I was married, I used my husband's surname. Returning to my birth name was a pleasure, the only down side being that I then had a different surname from my children. <br />
<br />
Occasionally I get a phone call from a Rosier wondering if our families are connected; I have never found it to be so. My grandfather had a brother, but if he has descendents I never knew them or heard from them. Grandad had two sons, one of whom died in his teens before he had children. Two daughters took their husbands’ names. My father had two daughters, none of whose children carry the name Rosier, and no sons. <br />
<br />
I’ve never tried tracing my ancestors, not the Rosiers nor my mother’s “Donalds of the Isles.” The Rosier name is, I gather from the internet, originally recorded in provinces of Languedoc, Forenze and Auvergne, in France. Probably, the name was given to growers of roses; rose petals were widely used in medieval times for medicines as well as perfume and textile dyes. (Surnames became necessary with the introduction of personal taxation.)<br />
<br />
My grandfather Henry came to New Zealand as a child or young man from England. Rosier was a 17th Century Huguenot Protestant refugee surname in British Isles, from the time of Roman Catholic persecution of protestants in Europe. Many of the refugees were skilled artisans. Early recorded examples of the name in England include Bartholemew Rosier at the church of St Martin Pomeroy in the city of London, April 14 1638 and James Roszier at St Dunstans Stepney on August 19 1804.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm3XHMMMR0oaQa07iLrKyk1CfYvO7VSHFM0q439Rpp9klbf1kEQX8PvjpvTKHt3ntlyi7DEBNS0pyUjSwrU02qeTPc-UUI8jBmpAffkP0dZ1mWaWL0WC7LvXqjs_KP1xaGB7rrze-dgAo/s1600/DSC01559.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm3XHMMMR0oaQa07iLrKyk1CfYvO7VSHFM0q439Rpp9klbf1kEQX8PvjpvTKHt3ntlyi7DEBNS0pyUjSwrU02qeTPc-UUI8jBmpAffkP0dZ1mWaWL0WC7LvXqjs_KP1xaGB7rrze-dgAo/s320/DSC01559.JPG" /></a></div><br />
In 2008 when I was in Paris—the only time I have been in France—I had my partner take my photo under the Rue des Rosiers sign. I liked the street a lot. One end is Jewish, the other full of gay men, I gather. It’s narrow, with lots of falafel shops, in one of which we had a good lunch.<br />
<br />
When my death is noted at the appropriate registry that will be the end of the record of a branch of Rosiers. This does not strike me as in any way tragic. It just is, and I am pleased that Rosier as a name was around long enough for me to have it for a while. <br />
####################<br />
<br />
<b>Long Distance Travel</b><br />
Caitlin first noticed her at check-in. The woman was wearing matching trousers and jacket in navy blue with a white shirt, a high neckline covering whatever was on the end of the silver chain. The resulting prim look was not reflected in her brisk, assured actions as she lifted her bag up for weighing and produced her passport and electronic ticket. <br />
<br />
A window seat meant that Caitlin would be able to pull her bag out from under the seat in front as a footrest and curl up against the side of the cabin for some sleep during the twelve long hours of the flight from London to Los Angeles. The woman in navy took the neighbouring seat. That had to be a laptop bag going under the seat in front of her. She put a small book in the pocket below the folded up tray table without Caitlin being able to see the title.<br />
<br />
The woman closed her eyes, breathing evenly, her hands lying in her lap, while the plane finished loading. She stayed like that, motionless, until takeoff and the safety announcement, which she followed closely. At it’s end Caitlin said, ‘Hello, I’m Caitlin. Don’t you hate this long flight?’<br />
<br />
‘I have never taken it before.’ Her voice was light, firm, clear, English. ‘Is it really very bad?’<br />
<br />
‘Very bad, very long, and another one to follow, if you are going to New Zealand. Which I am,’ said Caitlin. ‘Sister’s wedding,’ she added, ‘I’m a bridesmaid.’ And she pulled a face that she hoped was rueful but not critical. ‘For the third time. One more to go. You see, I’m one of five girls and I’m a lesbian, and don’t believe in marriage. Or civil unions for that matter. But I can hardly refuse to be a bridesmaid when my sister asks me, and this sister is my favourite. I’m the youngest and she’s the one who would tell me things. Sorry, I’m rattling on.’<br />
<br />
The woman held out a hand. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘I’m Jane Eyre.’ Her hand was cool, soft, dry. Caitlin made sure she didn’t shake it for more than a second in case she gave the wrong idea. Why did she still come out to every stranger in the first two minutes?<br />
<br />
‘You could say,’ Jane went on, her hands back in her lap, neatly folded, perhaps a little tightly clasped, ‘that I’m running away from a wedding. He has a wife.’<br />
‘Oh?’ Caitlin wanted her to continue. She wouldn’t mind at all if Jane cried, she had tissues handy for the runny nose the air conditioning usually brought on. <br />
<br />
‘I am going,’ Jane went on, ‘to High Grove school for girls in Hamilton. Do you know it?’<br />
<br />
‘Only by reputation,’ said Caitlin. Snobby rich bitches, she didn’t say.<br />
<br />
‘I had hoped,’ and here Jane sighed, a deep, tired sigh, ‘to never teach in a girls’ school again But such, I fear, is my fate.’peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-31208553025254971052012-03-16T14:30:00.000+13:002012-03-16T14:30:03.637+13:00Remembrance of Things PastIf there was a theme to the 2012 Wellington’s Writers' and Readers' Week, part of the biennual International Arts Festival, then it is encapsulated in the title of Proust’s magnum opus, which I have cheekily used as the heading of this blog entry. <br />
<br />
Kate Grenville, I discover, wrote 23 drafts of <i>Sarah Thornhill</i>, which I have yet to read, though I have read the earlier, <i>A River Runs Deep</i>. “Books about the present,” she says, “sit in the past” and she has been engaged with writing novels drawing on her family’s Australian history. “Sorry business,” she tells us, “when spoken by Aborigines, refers to what you do when some-one dies, to mourning.” So, saying “sorry” has a particular meaning in that context, one not obvious to a New Zealander. She talks, too, about her words being precious to her, taking them seriously, wanting to get her writing, “more than right enough.” Her first draft is random, drawing on sources, without necessarily an actual story line and it’s subsequent drafts that meld it into shape.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi915lwxJlMIAmZyD24Jqdyf5SpVfDrfPNcngJ8dz5xdqj7nJBhjfTf90Hbl-spD6cjheyvdbYfI-ofTJUXPN8_dGApTI73kcyDEuZE8xz90NWzloVnjMFF-7Yey6Pp08by_wL8-7yZjIE/s1600/DSC00213.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi915lwxJlMIAmZyD24Jqdyf5SpVfDrfPNcngJ8dz5xdqj7nJBhjfTf90Hbl-spD6cjheyvdbYfI-ofTJUXPN8_dGApTI73kcyDEuZE8xz90NWzloVnjMFF-7Yey6Pp08by_wL8-7yZjIE/s320/DSC00213.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Alan Hollinghurst, however, writes his first draft slowly and doesn’t do much rewriting. “<i>The Stranger’s Child"</i>, he says, “is about time and its workings and memory and its failings.” He also says, “Books creep up on me in little pieces.” Later, we look up Tennyson’s poem, “In Memoriam,” because he talks about it. <br />
<br />
Jenny Erpenbeck’s East German beginnings seem relevant to her concerns about “who is the ‘me’ in me, how am I built up?’ and how ‘our stories of ourselves can be broken,’ for example, if we grow up in a family and later discover our birth origins lie elsewhere. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4zM9ETu3-SNPejEnsgLf3XeEW-StJKKSita0QZfGWerLAAeujEl42L9yM9gGQCBV37UuhICA6sQ4bGci5Pm3s-Uuvx1S0qO_MkD0MW0Wm2pOkegY6szVDNSN0kjmtU0dhcRtohctV90E/s1600/DSC00215.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4zM9ETu3-SNPejEnsgLf3XeEW-StJKKSita0QZfGWerLAAeujEl42L9yM9gGQCBV37UuhICA6sQ4bGci5Pm3s-Uuvx1S0qO_MkD0MW0Wm2pOkegY6szVDNSN0kjmtU0dhcRtohctV90E/s320/DSC00215.JPG" /></a></div>(Jenny E may be my new-author-discovery for this W & R) She spoke of writing about characters who “turn in on themselves” and how part of everyone is kept internal, for their own self. Her book <i>Visitation</i>, which I am yet to read, focuses on a particular house, drawing on one that was important to her as a child, but not about her.<br />
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Jean Gabriel Vásquez left his homeland, Colombia, for Paris, because, “books happen there.” He talks about how the USA’s “war on drugs” created the mafia in Colombia, and how history and politics “invade a private life” and shape an individual morally. He sees a role for novelists in working to make it hard for the forces of forgetfulness at large in the world, referring to Colombia as an “amnesiac country” where people try to forget difficult times in its history. (He and Kate Grenville would have made a good panel pairing.)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPWu2wgAVkE47NelOHPbKhtLPAqhnKfObeWYMY2H4pozgQlemL536eOBTkudo3GmlCKer29csFcX_BepCP3Pa6pZK0819Erru87ZLBIoEjKsXifu7VjEiS_Irc7gC1snv6UpUHJomKiC4/s1600/DSC00214.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPWu2wgAVkE47NelOHPbKhtLPAqhnKfObeWYMY2H4pozgQlemL536eOBTkudo3GmlCKer29csFcX_BepCP3Pa6pZK0819Erru87ZLBIoEjKsXifu7VjEiS_Irc7gC1snv6UpUHJomKiC4/s320/DSC00214.JPG" /></a></div><br />
There were others, of course: Patrick Evans regretting the lack of “consequential writing” in New Zealand. (Writing, I think he said, about those things which must not be spoken of.); Germaine Greer, making the case for <i>Shakespeare’s Wife</i> as a tour de force in Stratford; Michael Hulse writing poetry from a place of asking questions; Kim Scott, searching on the inside to illuminate what is happening outside; Denise Mina, charming everyone and offering her set of bullet points about how to write comics (which she does, along with an impressive range of crime fiction). And more, always more.<br />
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The to-be-read pile has grown, but not by as much as some years, and I figure I’ll be back in 2014.peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-38315004621361698012012-03-01T15:25:00.001+13:002012-03-01T15:30:16.306+13:00And the reading continuesThis publishing business does chew up the hours, but reading has been going on.<br />
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<i>August</i> by Bernard Beckett is a discussion about free will in a novel. Two people in some undisclosed future time are having this conversation while stuck upside down in a crashed vehicle. Flashbacks elucidate the discussion. It appealed to the part of me that likes any discussion of ideas, although the story was somewhat overwhelmed by the weight of the ideas. The need of two of the characters—in-the-flashbacks to outdo each other was interesting, too.<br />
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Emma Donohue’s <i>Room</i> was compelling. <i>Hood</i>, (1995) an earlier novel, a coming out story, not so much. On the evidence of the newer novel being more succesful, for me, than the earlier one, I’ll certainly read her next. <br />
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Stella Duffy’s <i>Mouths of Babes</i> (2005) is a good read about lesbian detective Saz, her partner and their baby and a promise that is inevitably broken. The most interesting aspect of the book for me is how the person to whom the promise is made reacts when it is broken. (To say more would ruin the plot.)<br />
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Other books I have read I will be writing about in other places, to which I’ll refer in a later blog entry.<br />
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With Writers and Readers Week in Wellington on the horizon I am looking forward to discovering a new author or two, as well as hearing from some favourites like Kate Grenville.peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-31120160066525185282012-02-24T10:51:00.000+13:002012-02-24T10:51:03.111+13:00Keeping on keeping on: publishing my novel Where the HeArt is as an ebook (5): Letting people knowThe log I am keeping of my efforts to let people who might be interested know about <i>Where the HeArt is</i> is impressively long. However, many of the items are to record contacts I have made that have not, so far, produced any results. I am told, on some of the how-to-sell-your ebook sites I look at, that a slow build is the most likely scenario. Others suggest all sort of things to do, such as emailing your entire address list several times over a couple of weeks, which I regard as spamming and have no intention of doing. <br />
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If you look at the top right corner of this blog you will see the cover of <i>Where the HeArt is</i> and links to Smashwords and Kindle below it. These will remain at that spot on the screen regardless of what else I post, and I just checked both those links and they work. (In case they don’t work for you, googling my name or the book title will find them.)<br />
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Any day now, I’ll do a blog entry about what I’m reading.peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1495008756001921949.post-63275842527778827142012-02-12T10:03:00.001+13:002012-02-12T10:05:05.802+13:00Self-publishing my novel as an ebook (4) Details details detailsGetting to grips with the marketing thing means letting people know the book is available, how to get it, and encouraging them to buy and read it. I tend to focus on the first two, and have a ‘handout’ in both electronic and printout form that I am distributing. Here it is:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTyScOqC7RnwN07EcEoZt43fogFx2ahwduMrLLbH8IK0nW8bLeJkCyiMGcqE81dihlUWheTZROUSqWOmlxqAgxh1mNQfFO7n2G27u3q78JdPAbFzFouzh_PlNSghpZxrStVhAZ4BHKsOg/s1600/WTHI+Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTyScOqC7RnwN07EcEoZt43fogFx2ahwduMrLLbH8IK0nW8bLeJkCyiMGcqE81dihlUWheTZROUSqWOmlxqAgxh1mNQfFO7n2G27u3q78JdPAbFzFouzh_PlNSghpZxrStVhAZ4BHKsOg/s320/WTHI+Cover.png" /></a></div><br />
<i>Where the HeArt<b></b></i> is by Pat Rosier<br />
Published: Jan. 22, 2012 Price: 4.95USD<br />
<b>Blurb</b><br />
Will travel fix Ann's broken life? Suddenly bereft of both partner and job, Ann needs to find a new direction. Connecting frayed threads of family and finding herself in what she calls "art events" in America is rewarding, but no preparation for the totally unexpected—in more ways than one—things that happen in London. Ann returns home to New Zealand both shaken and stirred. <br />
<b>Extended description</b><br />
It was her mother's idea that forty-year-old Ann should go traveling. Ann's parter has walked out and she's been made redundant from a university job she enjoys, teaching the Romantic poets. She can combine her love of art museums with visits to family members in Washington DC, New York and London, mending frayed connections. A final few family-free days in Paris will round off her trip. Travel will give her a break from well-meaning advice and a chance to think about future directions for her fractured life. After all, she has a willing father to take care of the sale of her once-shared house, and the dog was always more her partner's.<br />
Unexpected "art events" begin in New York, where her experience of the art works she admires take on a whole new dimension. In London, Ann finds that her cousin's competent wife could actually use some help with two-year-old twins, so she extends her stay and her knowledge of young children. A decidedly non-familial encounter with a dynamic librarian in London and an impetuous mistake in Paris mean that Ann returns to New Zealand and her future both shaken and stirred.<br />
For sale for 4.95 US Dollars as an ebook on both the smashwords site and the kindle site. The URLs are:<br />
<a href="http://">http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125647</a><br />
This is the Smashwords site, where you can get versions for all different kinds of readers, (including Kindle) including a pdf for your computer if you want. One purchase gets all versions.<br />
<a href="http://">http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073O5DVC</a><br />
This is the Kindle site itself. You can buy it here, but only the Kindle version.<br />
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I’m keeping a log of what I am doing to get the news out about the book, both to avoid repeating myself and for future reference should I do this again. I trawl around the internet looking for likely places to announce it. Each place I approach, usually by email, wants something different and has a different way of doing things. It can take a LOT of time with, I suspect, little return. <br />
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I have discovered that (in New Zealand) you can get ISBN numbers for self-published ebooks from the National Library, just as you do for print books. They issued me with separate numbers for pdf, mobi and epub versions. It costs nothing and makes books findable. They also operate legal deposit for ebooks, so have sent mine in.<br />
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Nielson book data is another place to make books findable, and I am awaiting a reply from them regarding whether they list ebooks. <br />
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I’m not writing anything new while all this is filling my mind.peajayarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11817426345138196141noreply@blogger.com0