The Guardian's Blog, page 93
November 25, 2014
Love letters to libraries: Alexander McCall Smith
A tiny library opened in 1680 in the Perthshire countryside has inspired the devotion of the Scottish writer
Inspired? Share your tribute to your favouriteThe Scottish writer and academic Alexander McCall Smith is the second author to feature in our Book Week Scotland series in which writers celebrate their favourite library by writing a love letter to it. The creator of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has written this letter to Innerpeffray Library, the oldest lending library in Scotland, founded in 1680 and still open to the public.
A letter to Innerpeffray Library
Dear Innerpeffray Library,
Have you noticed how big everything is these days? Big roads, big buildings, big libraries … The world gets smaller in one sense while it gets bigger in another. And all the while, we humans remain very much the same size, with much the same needs as we have always had. One of these needs is for small rooms with bookshelves that go up to the ceiling, with chairs tucked away in corners, and with just enough space to sit and read.
It is possible, I think, to love one thing while you also love another: the heart grows bigger if one shares in that way
I very rarely come to see you even if I belong to something called The Friends of Innerpeffray Library. But at least you know that you have these friends, and that they love you, in particular, and all libraries in general. It is possible, I think, to love one thing while you also love another: affections can be shared, and indeed the heart grows bigger, I think, if one shares in that way.
You are a very old library indeed. You have been there since 1680, tucked away in that lovely bit of Perthshire countryside, at the end of a Roman road lined with hedges and fields that put one in just the right mood for old square rooms and tiny staircases and books on all sorts of obscure subjects. There you are, in your beautiful little building, with its ancient kirk to keep it company. There you are – a building on a truly human scale, designed for one or two people at a time, reminding us how things were before the world became so big and impersonal.
People who come to read in your building think they have been there before, even if they have not. This, I think, is because they have seen you in one of those dreams in which they imagine a holy place, an ideal place, and they see something very much like you.
There you are – a building on a truly human scale, reminding us how things were before the world became so impersonal
You have no computers – or none that I have seen. So many libraries today have become sheds for computers, with books being edged out, put away. You have none of that. Let books who are exiled by computers seek refuge here in your little reading room. You are there to receive them, to comfort them in a world that is turning against the book.
You are so generous. You were a free library back in the seventeenth century, and you still are. In keeping alive this tradition you are reminding us of what libraries are all about. You are about knowledge and the open and generous sharing of knowledge. You are about the good that comes from the written word in an age when there are so many lies around.
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November 24, 2014
Baddies in books: Robert Wringhim, a great sinner
More Guardian writers’ favourite baddies in books
It was an odd delight to have to choose a favourite villain in literature. Reading the choices made by fellow contributors has, to an extent, brilliantly confused rather than dully clarified my thoughts. Are we talking about the scope of their megalomania – a Sauron or an Ahab? Or is it the nastiness of their behaviour – a Patrick Bateman or a Humbert Humbert? Or is it the slyness of their villainy – Bertha from Jane Eyre or Mrs Danvers from Rebecca? Henry de Montherlant observed that “happiness writes in white ink on white paper”, and it’s certainly true that villainy thrills on the page in a manner decency struggles to realise.
The best villains, to my mind, are the ones most like us. Personally, I have no deep desire to dispatch with Sherlock Holmes, like Moriarty; bend the Universe to my will like Star Trek’s Khan Noonien Singh, the AntiMonitor, or oh-so-many others. So instead of inscrutable wickedness, personal vendetta, simple cruelty or being the Adversary of God, I choose Robert Wringhim from James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. It’s only a slight cheat since whether or not his friend Gil-Martin is the Devil is the book’s horrific, troubling aporia.
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Open thread: what signed books do you own?
Barnes & Noble wants you to brave the Black Friday crowds for signed copies of books in an effort to compete with Amazon
For bibliophiles like myself, nothing can quite replace a physical book. Ebooks may be more convenient for long commutes or sneaking a quick read during a lull at work, but there are many things ebooks will never have over real books – and one of them is author’s signatures.
Barnes & Noble is counting on bibliophiles and lovers of signed books across the United States to brave the crowds on Black Friday for the chance to purchase an autographed copy of books ranging from crowd pleasers like Dan Brown and EL James to former presidents (or future candidates) like George W Bush and Hillary Clinton. The 100 authors participating signed approximately 5,000 books each, amounting to 500,000 signed copies in total. As Mary Amicucci, vice-president for adult trade and children’s books at Barnes & Noble, told the New York Times, “The goal was to find an exciting reason for people to come to Barnes & Noble early in the morning and get something that they can’t get on any other day of the year.”
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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.
We really enjoyed finding out more about authors and books about life in China, past and present, from AggieH:
I didn’t expect Yiyun Li’s Gold Boy, Emerald Girl to live up to the critical praise. I was wrong. It is a great collection, both in terms of literary quality and contemporary cultural insights.
I didn’t get on quite as well with Zhu Wen’s I Love Dollars and other Stories. I can’t explain it properly, but there was a disjointedness about the writing that I found jarring. But still some very interesting writing & thinking.
I want to express myself, even if a little abstractedly.
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By Kurt Skeels
19 November 2014, 15:57
Flanagan is good at showing (without overtly commenting on it) how the atrocities continued by all sides after the war. This feels like a worthy winner of the Man Booker. [...] It’s one of those books that just stays with you. Flanagan is very good at showing (rather than simply telling) how those who survived could never be the same again. His book has made me very aware, too, of how random life is – the pot luck of having a relatively comfortable life or finding yourself living through a complete nightmare. It made me feel quite terrified about life actually. It’s very graphic in places but I forced myself not to skim. And he gets the balance right – it’s not endless chapters of unremitting violence. I wouldn’t have been able to read that. It’s interspersed with life before and after the war, which makes it more poignant. I won’t say any more – don’t want to spoil it for you.
It’s an absorbing little volume, if a little odd as well. While marketed as fiction, it’s more a semi-fictionalised account of the author’s investigation into the case of a Jewish schoolgirl who went missing during the Nazi Occupation of Paris. The geography and architecture of the city, both past and present, plays a central role in the story, as the narrator recounts his wanderings through haunted streets, piecing a story together with what little information he can gather. The Search Warrant is whetting my appetite for more Modiano.
I am actually listening to wonderful reissues of great American authors reading selections from their own works. Originally recorded 50 years ago and now reissued are literary icons including James Baldwin reading "Giovanni's Room", Philip Roth reading"Letting Go", William Styron reading " Lie Down in Darkness and James Jones reading "From Here to Eternity". There are more wonderful classics to hear. Anyone who loves literature should check out the collection.
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By holly124
18 November 2014, 16:29
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Poem of the week: Canada by Katherine Stansfield
Canada, from Katherine Stansfield’s lively first collection, Playing House, has some of the restless vocal complexity of a Baroque fugue. A more obvious literary relative would be the sestina. In fact, Canada seems to adapt a few sestina-like techniques, while firmly announcing that, no, it’s not a sestina, nor would wish to be. For a start, there are five rather than six-and-a-half stanzas, each with seven lines rather than six: the lines vary in length so, visually, the poem has an un-sestina-like rugged (mountainous?) outline. It sings more than most sestinas. But both fugue and sestina are forms constrained by fixed rules of repetition. Canada has multiple repetands, but no obvious symmetrical plot for their appearance (unless sharper ears than mine can discern one).
The patterns flow and change. For example, some form of the verb, to run, appears in every stanza, in lines two, seven, five, one, six, whereas the forms of pine, which features both as noun (“pines” as in pine-trees) and verb (“pining”) appear in lines three, four, five, four, four. The first line of the first stanza comes back as the last, with a new grammatical twist – but that twist, involving a full-stop and a single word beginning a new sentence, stops short of becoming a repeated last-line device. The random element seems important, in keeping with the organic nature of the imagery. Words and meanings are at liberty to dissolve like snow, or maintain their shape for longer, like rock.
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Love letters to libraries: AL Kennedy
The Scottish writer kicks off a celebratory week in which leading authors will write a love letter to their favourite library, which the Guardian will publish exclusively
Inspired? Share your tribute to your favouriteAs library closures grow ever more prevalent, the Scottish Book Trust has chosen to focus Book Week Scotland on a campaign to illustrate what these temples of free culture mean to readers. High-profile authors have joined thousands of borrowers in writing love letters to their favourite library, where they will be displayed.
During the week, we will be publishing letters that top authors have written. If you also want to share your appreciation for a library, you can do it here.
Dear Library,
Thank you for being the first place I realised how beautiful books were, how many books there were and for teaching me that they should all be available to me, that I could learn whatever I wanted and go wherever I wanted to in my mind. Thank you for opening the world to me.
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November 21, 2014
Creative writing: when characters are difficult to get on with
Even authors as seasoned as Stephen King often struggle to fully imagine their inventions and once they have, the relationship can remain very uneasy
Characters don’t always do what you want. Sometimes they cause mischief, take on lives of their own, or even work against you. It’s not just a problem for inexperienced writers: George RR Martin recently admitted it was a struggle to write from Bran’s viewpoint, while Roald Dahl said he got Matilda so “wrong” that when he’d finished his first draft he had to start again from scratch.
Of course it’s not the characters’ fault. The problem lies with the author. Take Stephen King, who confessed to Neil Gaiman that writing protagonists in blue-collar jobs is more difficult nowadays because his own circumstances have changed. “It is definitely harder,” King said. “When I wrote Carrie and Salem’s Lot, I was one step away from manual labour.”
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November 20, 2014
YA fiction treads carefully in the Arab world
The boom in young adult fiction has left the Arab publishing world playing catch-up, as authors try to compete with Twilight and The Hunger Games without breaking cultural taboos.
“There are too many taboos on what to write and how to write it,” says Taghreed Najjar, who has twice been shortlisted for the YA category of the new Etisalat prize for Arabic children’s literature. “It’s easier to sell books for younger children under the guise of educating them or strengthening their moral fibre. People who bought these kind of books were parents and teachers. But YA has to appeal to young adults to sell well, hence the dilemma.”
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Self-publishing’s vices and virtues
Almost any discussion of self-publishing seems to attract an immediate hostility quite unlike the amused tolerance that greets those who, say, exhibit their indifferent watercolours, or seek to try out their wine-making skills on their friends. The discussion (I would hesitate to call it a debate) invariably and speedily descends to consideration of the literary merits of 50 Shades of Grey (whose author in any case disputes that it ever was self-published).
A report of research I presented to a recent publishing conference, challenging misapprehensions as to what sort of people are now self-publishing, provoked just such a lively correspondence. Of those interviewed for my study, 65% of self-publishers were women. Nearly two-thirds were aged 41 to 60, with a further 27% aged over 61. Half were in full-time employment, 32% had a degree and 44% a higher degree. According to my research, self-publishers tend predominantly to be educated and busy, and not self-publishing in retirement, bitter from a lifetime’s disappointment from the traditional industry.
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I quit: why I won’t be finishing my history of the book | Rick Gekoski
Nobody likes a quitter, right? It’s weak to give up: you’re supposed to tough it out. Otherwise you’re a bad person and a bad role model. Sportsmen, politicians and motivational speakers alike are keen on this subject. (Many of them are American, where the cultural default position is the exhortation.) Good ol’ Bill Clinton is typical: “The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit,” though even he might have benefited from some judicious withdrawals.
Indelible images of sporting failure: Paula Radcliffe sitting on the kerb in tears at the 2004 Olympic marathon, the boxer Roberto Durán slumped in his corner whispering “No más” . Both serve, for me, as examples of the triumph of sense over cliché. The pain is impossible to bear? It’s nature’s way of telling you that you’ve had enough. Quit.
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