Posts tagged Literature

Deja Vu

By on October 26, 2009

YouTube Comment or E.E.Cummings? One of the funniest 20th century poetry/21st Century internet crossovers I have seen today. Not that I have seen that many, of course.

After a few weeks of awe-inspiring knitting productivity, my busy fingers have become almost idle. I cast on, knit maybe twenty rows, decide the project doesn’t thrill me and I rip it all out. Lather, rinse, repeat. Possibly it is the continuous failure of Topstykke that haunts me. The pattern is great, of course, but I keep messing up:

  1. I cast on too few stitches and tried to remedy this whilst on a fast moving bus to Aberdeenshire filled with shouty Russian students.
  2. I cast on the correct number of stitches but lost my stitch markers somewhere between a sofa and the kitchen table (a 3 year old nephew might have been involved).
  3. I cast on correct number of stitches, got all of the set-up row right and blissfully knitted on until I realised that I was knitting a size up from what I’m supposed to knit.
  4. I cast on correct number of stitches, got all of the set-up row right and blissfully knitted on until I realised I had twisted my cast-on and I was knitting a moebius-shaped top which will be impossible to wear (in this dimension, at least).

So I think it is time to let Topstykke rest for a few weeks whilst I get other things done. David’s sweater is a top priority (he won the Halloween costume competition, by the way) and I want to have another lace shawl on my needles (Aeolian, I’m looking at you). I just hope that I can stick with those two projects and not rip them out after twenty rows.

Shockingly enough I have begun reading again and am currently one-third through Iain Banks’ Transition. Banks strides the literary and speculative fiction divide, but cunningly uses a middle initial “M” to differentiate between the two genres. Interestingly, “Transition” is being marketed in the UK without the “M” (i.e. it is not speculative fiction, you fools!) whereas the US market gets courted with the “M” (hey, it’s speculative fiction!). My favourite Banks novel, The Bridge, is a non-M novel but is more speculative than many genre novels. It’s all about marketing, isn’t it? So far I’m enjoying the novel, in case you were wondering..

This entry is filed under Books 2009, Craft, Knitting, Literature, Purls and tagged , , , , . | 3 Comments

Little Women & Werewolves

By on October 1, 2009

Yes, the classic “Little Women” has fallen prey to the publishing trend that started with “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”. Joy. I never read the Austen-goes-supernatural novel.  I mean, I still have issues with casting Colin Firth as Darcy in that BBC mini-series, so imagine what issues I’d have suddenly encountering zombies in the midst of Pemberley!

Anyway, the synopsis of “Little Women” reads thusly:

In this retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s classic, the beloved little women must keep not just the wolf, but the werewolves, from the door…and the kindly old gentlemen next door and his grandson may have some secrets to hide — or share with the March girls.

There is a silver lining, though. On io9, commentators have fun trying to come up with the next installments in this classics-goes-monstrous trend and they’re really quite funny:

  • A Sentimental Education of Vampires
  • Canterbury Tales from the Crypt
  • Uncle Tom’s Kraken
  • Love in the Time of Cthulu
  • The Barchester Martian Chronicles
  • The Handmaid’s Tail

Can anyone come up with a synopsis for any of these?

This entry is filed under Literature, Popular Culture and tagged , , , . | 4 Comments

Man Booker? It’s Me, Karie Rantypants.

By on September 25, 2009

  • Genre writers complain about chosen genre being ignored by the mainstream literary establishment.
  • Mainstream literary establishment responds by saying that genre fiction is never submitted to major literary awards by its publishers.
  • Genre writers sulk and go “at least we have plenty of readers unlike mainstream literary fiction”
  • Mainstream literary establishment snarls: “[genre fiction] is in a special room in book shops, bought by a special kind of person who has special weird things they go to and meet each other.”
  • Blogs pick up on spat.
  • And I weigh in with an essay-length comment on the history of the Man Booker Prize because I’ve been commenting on the Man Booker prize and its ways since the beginning of time.

My comment in expanded format:

Booker prize winners have had fantastical elements despite claims to the contrary. Keri Hume’s the bone people (1985) springs to mind with its fusion of quasi-religion, magical realism and utopian vision. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas got very, very, very, very close to taking the prize in 2004 while Atwood’s The Blind Assassin took the prize in 2000. Both novels use science-fiction as part of their mise-en-abyme structures. Both authors have written other books which both arguably belong to the speculative fiction genre.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of the Man Booker prize for various reasons: I think it promotes a certain type of literary fiction which does not reflect the myriad of exciting literature being produced in the Commonwealth; I think it has become too focused on easily-marketed books (the Kelman win in 94 really was wretched for booksellers and the Man Booker has taken great care not to alienate the High Street since); I think too much importance is being given to the Man Booker over several other literary prizes; I think the idea of a literary prize is, by its very nature, somewhat dubious.

But the Man Booker does not exclude books with fantastical or science fiction elements more than, say, the Hugos ignore David Mitchell (who is one of the best young novelists working in the English language) or Margaret Atwood (who is one of the best novelists working in the English language, full stop). The Hugos have their Neal Stephensons, their China Miévilles and their Neil Gaimans just as the Man Booker has its Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Salman Rushdie. Same difference. Same sense of ghettoisation.

Now I’m going to go have dinner, curl up with the last rows of my Ishbel shawl and have a lazy Friday evening with my partner. But I’ll probably rant about the Man Booker some other day. The award is rewarded shortly, you know, and I will have Opinions.

This entry is filed under Literature and tagged , . | 3 Comments

Along the Canal

By on September 20, 2009

sept09 560Alexander Trocchi‘s novel, Young Adam, is an interesting little piece of Scottish beat literature, if rather uneven. It tells the story of Joe, a young disaffected man working and living on a barge boat travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The film adaptation, which stars Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton and Peter Mullan, is excellent and well-worth your time (if you like your films grim and existential). Nowadays I live a very short walk away from the Forth and Clyde canal where Young Adam is set – I still halfway expect to see Ewan McGregor in a fetching fisherman’s sweater every time we walk along the canal.

Today we walked down to the annual Big Man event which seeks to get the local community involved in the area surrounding the Forth and Clyde canal. Local artist Andy Scott is hoping to erect a 30m steel sculpture-cum-footbridge (the Big Man) across one of the canal junctions – in Scott’s own words: “the footbridge will be representational of the historic ironworks, boat-building and other industries that were found in the (..) area. I hope he becomes a symbol of the area’s proud history and a beacon of hope for the future”.

Anyway.

I’ve now embarked on the bane of my life: the Christmas wish list. Usually I get asked for it in August but this year my family managed to wait until end of September because we are going across to Denmark and so they do not need to post the presents. I’m wondering if it would be okay to ask for yarn seeing as I’m yet to knit up all the yarn I got last year.. Any good Danish knitting books just published? Any new Scandinavian yarns? Any good shawl pin vendors in Denmark?

Now to write the UK version..

This entry is filed under Literature, Personal, Photography, Scotland and tagged , , , . | 2 Comments

Why Neil Gaiman is Like a Toffee-Coated Banana

By on September 4, 2009

Want to feel jealous in a bookish manner? Go look at Neil Gaiman’s library. The colours, the layout, the view from the windows and the mind-boggling amount of books.. I hardly ever covet anybody else’s possessions but I do covet that room.

On the topic of Neil Gaiman, people tend to assume that he is one of my favourite authors and I am at loss to explain why this is so. I have received emails from dear friends with subject lines like “Neil in Edinburgh!!!” (at which point I flailed happily around the house until Other Half pointed out that the email referred to Neil Gaiman and not Neil (yes, in Casa Bookish there is only one Neil and he needs no surname)). Other friends have assured me that if I run out of reading material, they have plenty of Gaiman books  they’ll put at my disposal. And yet other friends approach me asking if I’ve read the latest Gaiman novel?

I’ve read two and three-quarters Gaiman books: American Gods, Neverwhere, Good Omens (co-written with Terry Prachett) and Odd and Frost Giants. None of these clicked with me – Neverwhere came closest, I think. American Gods is said to be Gaiman’s finest and most complex work so far and it left me completely cold. I did like the film adaptation of Stardust.

I understand that people are passionate about their favourite author and I get that  people want to share their passion, but once I have read a couple of books by an author I am able to make my mind up about an author and decide that, nah, that guy isn’t really for me. In that respect, Neil Gaiman is a bit like Ian McEwan. I read Amsterdam (still the worst Booker prize winner, in my opinion) and Atonement (horrid), listened to people going into raptures over McEwan, read a chapter of Black Dogs, and decided to choose Life over reading another page.

I suspect the “you must love Neil Gaiman’ thing has to do with demography: I am in my early thirties, like geekery, am a Firefly and Doctor Who affectionado – and Gaiman just sort of goes with that territory. I still consider Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials one of my favourite reads this past decade, so sometimes I do find books within that niche that I really like. Gaiman just doesn’t do it, though.

Have you ever experienced something similar? Have you read, listened to or watched something you knew you were meant to be Just Your Thing, but you just couldn’t get into it? Other examples of mine include Bjørk, Tori Amos, Jonathan Safran Foer, and, well .. banoffee pie.

This entry is filed under Fandom, Literature, Popular Culture and tagged , , , . | 12 Comments

Music and Silence

By on August 27, 2009

Yesterday I picked up a friend from hospital and, whilst waiting, I began and finished Rose Tremain’s Music and Silence. Full disclosure: while I would rather see Denmark become a republic than remain a monarchy, I do have a favourite Danish king, King Christian IV, and Tremain’s novel is set in his court.

It is always interesting to see my heritage interpreted by foreigners. Recently I went to Largs on the west coast of Scotland and visited their Viking exhibition. I was unsure of whether to laugh or cry at the incompetent and sometimes plain wrong presentation. Tremain has a firmer idea of what she wants to do with the source material, thankfully. The book is well-researched and coherent. I was quite impressed by Tremain’s use of personal names as I’ve often seen otherwise decent historical novel fail by using anachronistic names. I did wonder about inconsistent orthography (“ø” is rendered faithfully but “å” isn’t) but it is a minor quibble.

So Music and Silence is a well-researched novel about the Danish King’s court in 1629/1630. You get the full meltdown of the King’s relationship with his infamous mistress/Salic wife, Kirsten Munk, and you are also privy to the disastrous economic situation in Denmark following years of warfare and overspending. The book is well-written literary fiction. You would think I would be all over this, wouldn’t you? Sadly the book left me cold.

I wanted to spend more time with the King who actually had a larger-than-life personality. I wanted a more nuanced take on Kirsten Munk who becomes Evil Carnated in Tremain’s version. I wanted to hear about the King’s children (some of whom led incredibly colourful lives). I wanted to know about a country in transit from European superpower to European ruin. I wanted to read about a country where the monarch had continuous problems controlling his own noblemen. Tremain had so much interesting material available to her and I was stuck reading about two dull original characters and their insipid backgrounds. Moreover, I was left feeling that her literary-visual take on a Baroque royal court owed far more to Sally Potter’s film adaptation of Orlando than anything else.

Anyway.

This week has been a real beast and I’m yet to send out any of the blog giveaways. I am very sorry. Bar more unforeseen disasters (you don’t want to know), I hope to send things out by Saturday. And please cross your fingers that the few remaining days of this week will pass uneventfully.

This entry is filed under Books 2009, Denmark, History, Personal and tagged , , , , , . | 4 Comments

Isn’t It Romantic?

By on July 27, 2009

A few weeks ago my partner, David, came down with the flu and I succumbed a day later. I suspect it was the dreaded H1N1 flu, although we cannot be sure. I was cooped up in bed for a few days which obviously led to me devouring one book after another. That is, one Georgette Heyer regency romance after another. To be absolutely precise, fourteen Georgette Heyer books. I’m in withdrawal as we speak.

The curious thing is that I started to really get into the socio-economics described by Heyer. Usually she is praised for her knowledge of early 19th century fashion and her distinct language usage (la!), but as I was lying in bed reading one novel after one, I started paying attention to money. Who has money? Who hasn’t? What do they do with the money? How does money flow through the novels? How does money connect and separate people? Gosh, I almost feel like a Marxist literary critic..

A Civil Contract sees an impoverished aristocrat marrying a wealthy trader’s daughter and through the marriage attempt to improve his estate’s farming conditions. It is not a wildly romantic novel (no passionate embraces; no swooning) but a rather pragmatic look at class differences and social aspirations. While the book is far from being Great Literature, I found it convincing and interesting. I’m not sure I will read it again (unless I discover an hitherto unknown passion for early 19th C drainage problems) but it is certainly one of Heyer’s beefiest novels.

The Unknown Ajax is a straightforward read compared to A Civil Contract. The hero and heroine flirt, chase ghosts, encounter smugglers and fall in love. Lather, rinse, repeat. What I loved about the book, though, was the fact that the hero is a Yorkshire woollen mill owner(!) and Heyer devotes several passages to the discussion of fleeces, crimp, sheep breeds, and the economics thereof. Just the thing to read when you’re in bed and too weak to knit.

At the end of it all David pondered if I like reading Heyer because of a) the fashion discussions (I am a costume history devotee), b) the Yorkshire sheep or c) the many, many dogs with distinct personalities? I like to think it’s a combination of all three plus the sparkling wit, the often ludicrous language and the knowing use of literary references (like the Shakespeare, Pope and Byron quotations in Venetia, possibly my favourite Heyer novel).

Speaking of things Romantic, I have begun knitting the Percy (Bysshe Shelley) shawl in Old Maiden Aunt 2ply alpaca/merino in the Bracken colourway. I paged through my well-thumbed copy of Shelley’s Collected Poems earlier today and was amused by the doom and gloom I encountered. I had forgotten how Gothic he can be..

Ah, and the title? Enjoy Chet Baker’s version of it on YouTube..

This entry is filed under Books 2009, Craft, Knitting, Literature, Music, Reviewed and tagged , , , , , . | 4 Comments

“Because I know I shall not know”

By on June 6, 2009

I have read poetry most of my life, it seems. I was a quiet Danish teenage girl who read Lord Byron and Rupert Brooke in the school library, swooning over the bold romanticism of the poets’ words and lives. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I bought a slim volume of poetry. Away from school, I discovered Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Tennyson and DH Lawrence. Poetry became an escape from the clutter and clatter of my everyday life. And, yes, I romanticised poetry.

Then I began University and one morning between classes I was catching up with my reading. That is when I encountered The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot and, although I normally try to avoid hyperbolic blanket statements, that poem effing changed my life. It was like language streaming straight in my veins and I felt drunk on poetry for the first, but not the last, time.

Let me confess: I have a special place in my heart (and brain) for High Modernism. Earlier I described High Modernism as

“that vast array of strange and deliberately disconcerting art forms which emerged in the Western part of the world around 1908-ish and which petered out towards the end of the 1930s. Shklovsky’s definition of остранение (ostranenie or ‘defamiliarisation’) describes my favourite art works so splendidly: they unsettle the readers/listeners/spectators by forcing them to acknowledge the artifice of art (and thereby making a clean break with the naturalist tradition of art).”

This is an intellectual sort of enjoyment: I enjoy the game of making meaning; I derive pleasure from understanding patterns emerging from seeming chaos. I really like poets like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein for these reasons. I have to work to get at the ideas behind the poems. TS Eliot fits in with all this, of course, but I also derive a very raw emotional pleasure from his poetry.

For me, Eliot’s poetry is about understanding life. It is about finding your own way between one word and the next, between one moment and the next. It is about being intellectually curious, acknowledging how that is both a gift and a curse, and finding methods of dealing with this. It is about fragments and meta-narratives. It is about hope and loss of hope. It is about being human. It is tough, raw, almost unbearable and yet so .. beautiful.

My favourite Eliot poem is probably Ash Wednesday (from which the title is taken). An odd choice for an agnostic woman, perhaps, but it marks the transition from Eliot the High Modernist to Eliot the Religious Poet. I have always been drawn towards liminality.

This entry is filed under Language, Literature, Personal, Philosophy and tagged , , , , , , , . | 3 Comments

Yes, Words Matter

By on May 27, 2009

BBC has a Poetry Season which means I am watching far more TV than I usually do. So far Gryff Rhys Jones has explored why poetry matters, the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown has had his own programme, and last night I got a full hour of Simon Schama and Fiona Shaw reading John Donne to each other (phoawr!). Armando Iannucci is looking at John Milton later on and, get this, there is an entire programme devoted to my favourite poet, TS Eliot. Thank you, Auntie Beeb. It is such a pleasure to listen to and experience precise language when the world is so full of imprecise language.

Poetry matters because language matters.

Which is excatly why I find it so troubling that the Danish government calls their crackdown on Christiania (as well as the earlier eviction of Ungdomshuset) “a process of normalization“.

This entry is filed under Denmark, Language, Literature, Philosophy and tagged , , , , , , . | 2 Comments

AS Byatt & Contemporary British Fiction

By on April 26, 2009

There was a marvellous inteview with AS Byatt in yesterday’s Guardian Review. I particularly loved the following quote, but you should really read the entire interview. So enlightning and so clever.

What distinguishes her is a sort of grounded curiosity. She has been a visible admirer and encourager of younger writers including Hensher, Lawrence Norfolk, David Mitchell, Adam Thirlwell and Ali Smith. Her advocacy is “not entirely disinterested, because I wish there to be a literary world in which people are not writing books only about people’s feelings. If you notice, all the ones I like write also about ideas. You know, there’s been that sort of clonking account of what was good about British writing which was McEwan, Amis, Graham Swift and Julian Barnes – but there’s all sorts of other things going on. In fact I admire all four of those writers . . . and they don’t only do people’s feelings but nevertheless it’s become ossified.

Reading “..I wish there to be a literary world in which people are not writing books only about people’s feelings. If you notice, all the ones I like write also about ideas…” made me very, very happy as did her insistence that contemporary British fiction does not begin nor end with McEwan, Barnes et al. All my literary rants of the past decade summed up elegantly by someone vastly more intelligent than me – isn’t that just splendid?

This entry is filed under Literature and tagged , , , . | 2 Comments

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