The Guardian's Blog, page 108
August 27, 2014
David Foster Wallace novel translated by an 11-year-old into Lego
How to get an 11-year-old interested in the works of David Foster Wallace? Crack out your copy of Infinite Jest, and recreate it in Lego. That was the project embarked upon back in April by American English professor Kevin Griffith and his 11-year-old son Sebastian. They've just finished, and running to more than 100 scenes, as I guess any recreation of a 1,000-plus page novel would have to it's something of a masterpiece. It certainly puts these Lego scenes of classic literature to shame.
Griffith and his son had the idea to "translate" Infinite Jest into Lego after reading Brendan Powell Smith's The Brick Bible, which takes on the New Testament. "Wallace's novel is probably the only contemporary text to offer a similar challenge to artists working in the medium of Lego," they write, grandly, on their website.
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Books go on holiday: your summer reading roams the world in pictures
They dont often get snapped, but books are surely the most important travel companions so this summer we asked you to photograph them. From the Greek islands to Croatia to staycations, they have been to some enviable locations. Here is just a selection see all the contributions and add your own on GuardianWitness
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Desmond O'Grady a great citizen of world poetry
There is a scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, the fourth night episode, in which a group of intellectuals sit around reading poetry and looking suitably serious. One of them is an Irish poet, a part played by an actual Irish poet, Desmond O'Grady, who died on Monday.
O'Grady, who was born in Limerick in 1935, started writing poetry in his teens. This early work was strongly influenced by TS Eliot and Ezra Pound, whose poems he encountered at weekly meetings of the Limerick Poetry Circle. He attended boarding school in Tipperary, where his fellow students included Thomas Kilroy and Tom McIntyre and where he developed a passion for rugby.
I saw my life and I walked out to it
as a seaman walks out alone at night from
his house down to the port with his bundled
belongings, and sails into the dark.
August 26, 2014
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Hello, and welcome to this weeks blog. After a fortnight enjoying ourselves at the Edinburgh international book festival its back to work in wellies this week - but anyone inclined to self-pity, as the rain sluices through the UK, should spare a thought for these librarians, facing heroically up to the task of setting the Napa county library to rights after the weekends earthquake.
Since MartaBausells is taking a well-deserved break, Ill be holding the for a couple of weeks. For what its worth, Im currently reading - and thoroughly enjoying - David Mitchells new Booker-longlisted novel The Bone Clocks (pace Mexican2, who is not so keen). If youre in London, do come along to a talk Im chairing with him next week. If you dont live within striking distance, and have any questions youd like me to ask, do leave them here and I will do my best to include them.
Currently reading Something is Going to Fall Like Rain, by Ros Wynne-Jones - brilliant so far, I suspect there may be tears later...
I recently finished Donal Ryans The Spinning Heart. Although this book is finally available in North America it has garnered little attention. I feel that is a shame, the dialect is not difficult and the story has resonance with many communities hard hit by the the economic collapse. A beautiful, sensitive tale.
Am midway through and savouring every page of Bryan Lee OMalleys new graphic novel Seconds. Its a cracker: funny, sweet and looks great. Alongside that Ive just started Orwells Homage to Catalonia. Very interesting so far, especially as its both an area of history and an area of his life of which I was almost entirely ignorant.
Im 30 pages in and enjoying it, but with 900 pages still to go it will take a while. According to the blurb, it explores themes of power, information, secrecy and war in a gripping thriller. Blimey.
There seems to be quite a lot of technical stuff about encryption which I personally enjoy, but Im guessing that, as with most technical stuff in novels, you can simply ignore it and it wont spoil the book.
Started The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth. Its impressive. The language is a pseudo Old English made readable to modern readers, and it is incredibly well done. I was fortunate enough to be forced to learn a bit of Anglo Saxon at University, and its interesting spotting echoes of Anglo Saxon and later authors. Im not far in (its a necessarily slow read to start with) but he seems to making interesting use of dream sequences, too. The one thing Im slightly concerned about is that the rambling, loosely structured narration is going to get on my nerves over time. Something thoroughly different and convincing, though.
I started reading The Persian Boy for the Reading Group, but sadly the novelty (or novel-ty) seems to have worn off now - while I quite enjoyed Fire From Heaven, nearly a hundred pages into TPB, the second of the trilogy and all its been so far is The Secret Diary of a Eunuch Aged 14 and 3/4, with a running commentary on which groups are going where and in what formation.
Just finished Funeral Games which is the third part of the Alexander trilogy by Mary Renault and Im still gathering my thoughts. It may sound pretentious to say so but Im barely existing in my own world and am still reeling from the spectacular fallout from Alexanders death.
I gave away 1000+ books when I moved this year. To a local AIDS charity thrift store. I miss just a few, but I kept a thousand, so I wont go crazy.
I am reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which starts out brilliantly and looks to be evolving into a Cryptonomicon-lite.
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Mary Renault Reading group live webchat: Tom Holland
More from the Mary Renault Reading group
I'm delighted to say that we're rounding off this month's Reading group discussion of Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy with a live Q&A with Tom Holland this Friday.
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August 25, 2014
How do writers find their voices?
Hearing voices? What's your experience when reading?
The idea that writers can somehow "hear" the voice of their characters is a familiar one, as is the notion that characters seem to write themselves: that the author is merely a kind of conduit for voices that seem to have lives all of their own.
However, describing where that voice comes from, what it sounds like and how it feels to experience a character so intimately is a much more difficult and more fascinating matter, as a team of Durham University researchers have been discovering at the Edinburgh international book festival.
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Not the Booker prize shortlist: a long look at The Last Tiger by Tony Black
Full coverage of the Not the Booker prize
The Last Tiger is not about big cats. It's about a curious breed of marsupials from Tasmania called Thylacines. These animals looked more canine than feline, but became known as tigers thanks to their large size, their musky scent and the black stripes running down their hindquarters. The female carried her young in her pouch, while the male hid his vital organs in his to protect them from scrub and brush while out hunting. They were once the largest and most efficient killers on the Australian subcontinent. They were wiped out on the mainland before the British arrived, but survived on Tasmania until the arrival of the white man did for them, too. Their habitat was destroyed, their pelts were hunted for bounty and the last lonely known Thylacine died in Hobart zoo in the 1930s.
It's a sad story and one with plenty of obvious lessons about our own species' habit of making life untenable for plenty of others. Happily, Tony Black doesn't labour such points, content instead to let his story speak for itself. This narrative concerns Myoko, a 12-year-old refugee from the tzarist occupation of Lithuania, whose father lands a job as a tiger trapper on a Tasmanian sheep station. Myoko, for reasons that seem odd at first, is more sentimental than most of the locals. He even gets upset when lambs have their tails docked: "As he worked Nathaniel kept up a chatter about his task, but I listened more to the lamb's cries. I felt the animal's pain inside me, but it did not reach me like a board's nail through my foot, it was a heartscald, a deep anguish."
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August 24, 2014
Haruki Murakami: 'My lifetime dream is to be sitting at the bottom of a well'
The Japanese author talked writing, heroes, domestic life, dreams and how his life informs his novels at a Guardian book club at the Edinburgh international book festival and he answered some of your questions
When you start reading Murakami novels, life starts being like them. Thats their special magic. So said Guardian book club host John Mullan, introducing this months guest, the revered and multi-selling Japanese writer, at Edinburgh international book festival
Mullan told of having that very experience as he ordered a coffee on the train to Edinburgh. You like Haruki Murakami! exclaimed the waitress, noticing his copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. So do I, what a coincidence! You and 27 million other people, he was tempted to say but instead he couldnt help but mention that he would meet the author later the same day.
I wrote my first novel in 1979. Since then, Ive written every novel in the first person. I tried a couple of times to do the third person (it took me 20 years: the first was Kafka on the Shore) and every time, I feel uncomfortable, like Im looking down from above. I wanted to stand at the same level as my characters. Its democratic!
Toru Okada [the protagonist of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle] is my hero. When I was younger I wanted to be like him. I just wanted to be a quiet person and live a quiet life. Its not so quiet anymore! Life is strange.
When I write a novel, it takes one or two years and I write day after day I get tired! I have to open up the window to get fresh air. I write another line of the story to get entertained I hope the readers will be entertained as well! Also, I write in the first person, so I need something else [to develop these storylines]: letters, or somebodys story.
I was so scared when I was writing it! All the translators complained to me, saying it was scary. But writing it was much scarier! / I have to do that. The violence and sex abuse are a kind of stimulation for the story. I dont like to write them but I have to for the storys sake.
Its my lifetime dream to be sitting at the bottom of a well. Its a dream come true. [Not a nightmare? asks John Mullan. No! Why not? I dont know.] I thought: its fun to write a novel, you can be anything! So I thought: I can sit at the bottom of a well, isolated Wonderful!
Given much of his storytelling relies on nuance and subtlety, Id like to know what he thinks readers who experience his novels in translation lose by not reading in the original Japanese language.
I can read the books in English. Not in French, Russian, German or others. But when an English translation is complete, they send me the manuscript. When I read it, its fine for me! I dont know whats going to happen next! My point is that if I enjoyed it, the translation is good. So you can relax! . Sometimes I find mistakes and I call the translator. But three or four things in a book, maybe.
Is each book you write fully formed in your mind before you start to write or is it a journey for you as the writer as it is for us as readers?
I dont have any idea at all, when I start writing, of what is to come. For instance, for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the first thing I had was the call of the bird, because I heard a bird in my back yard (it was the first time I heard that kind of sound and I never have since then. I felt like it was predicting something. So I wanted to write about it). The next thing was cooking spaghetti these are things that happen to me! I was cooking spaghetti, and somebody call. So I had just these two things at the start. Two years I kept on writing. Its fun! I dont know whats going to happen next, every day. I get up, go to the desk, switch on the computer, etc. and say to myself: so whats going to happen today?Its fun!
Im obsessed with the well. And the elephant. The refrigerator. The cat. And the ironing. I cant explain it.
Dickenss books are full of coincidences; so are Raymond Chandlers: Philip Marlowe encounters numerous dead bodies in the City of Angels. Its unrealistic even in LA! But nobody complains about it, as without it, how could the story happen? Thats my point. / And so many coincidences happen in my real life. Many strange coincidences have happened in many junctures in my life.
It comes naturally. When writing fiction, I need something musical, and the songs come automatically to me. I have learned so many things from music harmony, rhythm, improvisation. Rhythm is important to me you need it to get the readers to keep writing. Usually I listen to music when Im writing, and thats where the songs in the books tend to come from.
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August 21, 2014
Mary Renault's Alexander: history and fiction both
More from the Reading group on Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy
Those who have already read all three novels in Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy will have to forgive me for pointing out the blindingly obvious: these books are seriously good. As we draw towards the end of the Reading Group month with Mary Renault, and I'm cracking the spine of Funeral Games, and the perspective on Alexander and his legacy broadens and deepens, I feel like I'm just beginning to understand their worth.
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August 20, 2014
Unexpected sequels: Writers' happy and unhappy returns
Audrey Niffenegger spoke at the World Science Fiction Convention on Friday about the sequel to her mega-bestseller The Time Traveler's Wife that she's currently working on - the book started out as a little extra for the digital edition, but according to a Reddit Q&A Niffenegger did earlier this year, she "got a bit obsessed" and "decided to keep working on it".
The author has said that the sequel will be based on the life of the daughter of the original time traveller, Henry. Alba, she's said, will be "mostly" an adult in the book, which is "about her relationships (she is married to two very different men) and her family life and her struggles with making music". Society now knows about "Chrono-Displacement" - the ability to time travel she told Reddit: "Oliver, one of Alba's husbands, is from the second half of the 21st century, so he has seen much more evolution in society's ideas about time travel."
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