The Guardian's Blog, page 7
May 18, 2016
Lucia Berlin: 'Conversational, confessional snapshots into domestic life'
Sketching lives very similar to her own, Berlin’s stories of hardscrabble lives resemble Raymond Carver’s – while also invoking some of Proust’s spirit
“It’s not that I’m worried about the future that much”, explains an ageing woman in Lucia Berlin’s story A New Life. “It’s my past that I can’t get rid of, that hits me like a big wave when I least expect it.” The waves of memory crash again and again in Berlin’s work as she, and a variety of narrators who typically share many of the details of her biography, relate episodes that together form a body of work that is part memoir, part auto-fiction, and part single, extended story cycle.
Related: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin review – an acute talent that deserves to be celebrated
Berlin instinctively recoils from moments that threaten sentimentality
I don’t like Diane Arbus. When I was a kid in Texas there were freak shows and even then I hated the way people would point at the freaks and laugh at them. But I was fascinated too. I loved the man with no arms who typed with his toes. But it wasn’t the no arms that I liked. It was that he really wrote, all day. He was seriously writing something, liking what he was writing.
If Berlin is at her best when exploring character, she is at her weakest when concocting plot
Related: A brief survey of the short story: David Foster Wallace
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May 16, 2016
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
Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, with lots of poetry – from Mary Oliver’s approachable words to Emily Dickinson’s obsession with gardens –, a “brilliantly” funny book about race in America, and readers forgetting what they’ve read.
booksnourishcarole praised the poetry of Mary Oliver:
Mary Oliver is my favorite poet in the spring, when everything comes alive again and awes us with the Earth’s beauty and bounty. Her poetry is accessible and always makes me more alert to my surroundings and I see with more appreciative eyes.
“Still, what I want in my life / is to be willing / to be dazzled – to cast aside the weight of facts / and maybe even / to float a little / above this difficult world. / I want to believe I am looking / into the white fire of a great mystery.” (excerpt from The Ponds)
... which is my new favourite among the texts of his that I’ve read, and is certainly the most readable. For me, the first page alone is worth more than all of The Ambassadors combined. It’s essentially what I had been looking for in James’s work, something with the wit and intelligence of What Maisie Knew, without compromising its appeal with misty abstractions. The plot is essentially about the incestuous romances of an aristocratic American family when two European cousins come to stay, back in a time when that was an unremarkable occurrence. It sounds innocuous, but it’s a sharp satire. I’m now leaning towards James’s shorter and earlier works, so I’ll add The Spoils of Poynton to my list.
... narrated by a “mixed-race” man who discovers that he has an 17-year old “white” daughter. For those who don’t want to read a serious book that deals with race in America – how about if that serious book made you laugh your a## off? Johnson’s discussions about race, and gender, and self-identity are sharp and funny, the very best kind of satire that slices you open while you’re busy guffawing. He’s a hell of a writer.
About twenty pages in, déjà vu struck, and I realized I must have read this before … a certain scene brought back a strong mental image of the moment I had at the time of first reading it. I’m now about the third the way through, I still cannot remember the outcome of the novel. I got me to thinking about how I remember novels. Some people I know can reel of the entire narrative of books, while I struggle to be articulate, but nonetheless have a strong set of mental images and somewhat ineffable emotions feelings. I have the same thing looking back over my life. Some people can spin long yarns about past experiences, and again I’m completely inarticulate.
Anyway, I just wondered about the differing way people remember books they have read.
Continue reading...Bookslut was born in an era of internet freedom. Today's web has killed it
The books community that my site joined was driven by enthusiasm not clicks, goodwill and not money – and that culture has gone
I miss the internet. I know that, technically, the internet still exists. It’s the Facebook-, Twitter-filtered series of algorithms designed to put cat videos, think pieces, and advertisements in front of you. But I get nostalgic for the days before money invaded the internet – the early 2000s, in particular, when I created the literary blog and webzine Bookslut.com.
Back then, nothing you did mattered. And that gave you freedom. Back then, the online book culture was run mostly by enthusiasts and amateurs, people who were creating blogs and webzines simply for the pleasure of it, rather than to build a career or a brand. I know that nostalgia is a stupid emotion, but still I regret the day money found the internet. Once advertisers showed up, offering to pay us to do the thing we were doing just for fun, it was very hard to say no. Or understand exactly what the trade-offs would be.
The most disappointing revelation about the books world: even an intellectual is susceptible to clickbait
You click on it, you own it.
Related: Jessa Crispin: 'We're not allowed to say the Paris Review is boring'
Continue reading...Poem of the week: To a Nightingale by RF Langley
With precision-engineered language to match its sharp-focused observation, this is an electric nature poem
To a Nightingale
Nothing along the road. But
petals, maybe. Pink behind
and white inside. Nothing but
the coping of a bridge. Mutes
on the bricks, hard as putty,
then, in the sun, as metal.
Burls of Grimmia, hairy,
hoary, with their seed-capsules
uncurling. Red mites bowling
about on the baked lichen
and what look like casual
landings, striped flies, Helina,
Phaonia, could they be?
This month the lemon, I’ll say
primrose-coloured, moths, which flinch
along the hedge then turn in
to hide, are Yellow Shells not
Shaded Broad-bars. Lines waver.
Camptogramma. Heat off the
road and the nick-nack of names.
Scotopteryx. Darkwing. The
flutter. Doubles and blurs the
margin. Fuscous and white. Stop
at nothing. To stop here at
nothing, as a chaffinch sings
interminably, all day.
A chiff-chaff. Purring of two
turtle doves. Voices, and some
vibrate with tenderness. I
say none of this for love. It
is anyone’s giff-gaff. It
is anyone’s quelque chose.
No business of mine. Mites which
ramble. Caterpillars which
curl up as question marks. Then
one note, five times, louder each
time, followed, after a fraught
pause, by a soft cuckle of
wet pebbles, which I could call
a glottal rattle. I am
empty, stopped at nothing, as
I wait for this song to shoot.
The road is rising as it
passes the apple tree and
makes its approach to the bridge.
The Man Booker International prize: a celebration of translation
The prize, together with the increased visibility of books by writers such as Elena Ferrante and Karl Ove Knausgaard, may be behind the rising popularity of translated fiction
On Monday evening, the inaugural winners of the new Man Booker International prize will be named, rewarding the best translated novel of the year, a high-profile acclamation with a generous prize pot split evenly between translator and original author. And as part of this welcome focus, the MBIP has commissioned research from Nielsen into how the increasing number of works of translated literature actually sell. The headline data is still only partial, but promising: in the past 15 years, while the overall fiction market has stagnated, translated fiction sales have apparently increased by 96%. And today’s translations actually sell on average better than non-translations. But should we really be surprised?
All too often we translators discuss “translated fiction” as though it appeals only to a discerning but limited readership. A niche interest. Yet what we’re really talking about is every book from all of continental Europe and Latin America, from much of Africa and most of Asia. That’s quite some niche.
Continue reading...May 13, 2016
Follow the breadcrumbs: why fairytales are magic for modern fiction
Breaking the conventions of literary and genre storytelling, these narratives have appealed to writers from Angela Carter to Helen Oyeyemi
Everything old is remixed until it’s new again. This seems to be the defining trait of our current culture: our cinemas and books are full of reboots, relaunches, and reinventions. Audiences gobble up endless superhero franchises, devotees recreate Harry Potter and Doctor Who in fan fiction. In such a cultural landscape, it’s not surprising that so many writers are turning to one of the oldest forms of literature for reinvention: the fairytale.
While we all know fairytales from our childhoods, they follow us into our adult reading: Italo Calvino compiled Italian Folktales in the 50s while writing his own fabulist novels; 60s postmodernists like Donald Barthelme played with the form in novels like Snow White; and 70s feminist writers such as Anne Sexton with Transformations and Angela Carter with The Bloody Chamber created subversive works from classic tales. But in recent years, the use of the genre’s techniques and forms in American and British literature has rocketed.
Related: Topography of short stories: Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel
Related: Helen Simpson on Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber
Continue reading...May 12, 2016
The British Book Industry awards: all must have prizes
The so called ‘Bafta’s of the book trade’ has increased the number of awards it gives, making for a long night of applauding and guzzling – and prizes for everyone
In a year when the Samuel Johnson prize (now the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction) has dumped Samuel Johnson and the Man Booker International prize has reinvented itself as an annual award for books (instead of a biennial one for authors), the so-called “Baftas of the book trade” has been transformed too. Formerly the Bookseller industry awards, the prizegiving was relaunched on Monday as the British Book Industry awards; a change that involves taking part of the name of the National/British book awards, aka the Nibbies – last held in 2014, and currently comatose – and moving on to its turf by adding five prizes for 2015’s top titles to the existing ones for retailers and publishers. The nib symbol that gave the Nibbies its name seemed to have been sneakily appropriated too in the logo for the as yet acronym-lacking ceremony (the Bribbies? The Bribos?).
The new awards came last, which could be seen as a laudable assertion that books matter most – they were top of the bill, with the unveiling of the overall book of the year as the long evening’s climax – but also meant that (as prizes Nos 20-24) they were announced when the audience, and perhaps host Mariella Frostrup, were at their most impatient for the BBIAs to be over so they could hit the bar or go home.
Related: Andrew Michael Hurley: 'There is no place more terrifying than your own mind'
Continue reading...Egyptian writer Ahmed Naji’s crime isn't what he wrote – it is that he is alive
Over 600 Egyptian writers have signed a statement in support of the Egyptian author, who is serving a two-year sentence for ‘injuring public modesty’ with his graphic novel, The Use of Life
Philip Roth, Patti Smith and Woody Allen join protest at jailing of Egyptian writerAhmed Naji, 30, is a novelist and wide-ranging essayist. He is part of a group (a movement, maybe) of young artists who work across art forms and borders and are producing the most dynamic and innovative art coming out of Egypt. But, today, Naji is on day 86 of a two-year prison sentence.
The ostensible cause of his jailing is a striking graphic novel, The Use of Life, produced in collaboration with the artist Ayman Zorkani. It is a subtle exploration of the ennui of life in a dystopian city and shows a tremendous knowledge of the history and architecture of Cairo. It is also clearly rooted in classical Arabic literary idiom – including the classics’ straightforward descriptions of body parts and their uses.
Related: Egypt must not try to legislate imagination – it must free Ahmed Naji
Related: Philip Roth, Patti Smith and Woody Allen join protest at jailing of Egyptian writer
Continue reading...Food in books: the tomato sandwiches in Harriet the Spy
England finally smells like summer. Kate Young writes in praise of Louise Fitzhugh’s children’s classic – and English tomatoes
By Kate Young for The Little Library Café, part of the Guardian Books Network
What was sickening about a tomato sandwich? Harriet felt the taste in her mouth. Were they crazy? It was the best taste in the world. Her mouth watered at the memory of the mayonnaise.
Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh
Related: Food in books: fish and chips from The Bear Nobody Wanted by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
Continue reading...Sci-fi media coverage dominated by men, survey shows
Annual figures show reviews remain disproportionately by men, about men – although there are some signs of improvement
In early 2011, the American group Vida published the first iteration of its now-annual Vida Count, finding a striking gender imbalance in literary press coverage. Far more books reviewed in the previous year were by men than women; most of the reviewers were men.
Vida focused, understandably, on the best known general literary journals. As the editor of a magazine devoted to science fiction and fantasy – genres that tend to be covered only infrequently by, say, the LRB, but which have their own active critical culture – I wanted to know what the situation looked like in my corner of the literary world. The result was the Strange Horizons SF Count, now in its sixth year.
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