Tiah Beautement's Blog, page 95
August 8, 2013
On Finding Soutbek
Karen Jennings, Finding Soutbek - Parts of the upper town now lay uninhabited, left to the rummaging of dogs and rats. In the scattered landscape these heaps took on a sense of permanence. - - Yet all around her the terrible noise of the living was continuing. - - Their hunger was not the same as those from the upper town; only the knowledge that they had been deprived, that they might have suffered had they been poor, drove them to such behaviour. - - He came to believe that history was not about dates and people. It was about...
August 6, 2013
On going places
If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else. - Yogie Berra
August 5, 2013
On making the grade
Messud uses the verb "scoff" at one other point, when she recalls a first-person piece she read in a magazine, some years ago, while killing time in a waiting room. It was about a woman who had only just realised that you weren't graded at the end of your life. At first it seemed a ridiculous notion but as she read on, it began to dawn on Messud that she half-identified with it. Now, she says, "I still believe on some level that at the end somebody will say: you get an A-minus for your life. And it's not true....
August 4, 2013
On The Sportswriter
Richard Ford, The Sportswriter - I believe I have done these two things. Faced down regret. Avoided ruin. And I am still here to tell about it. - - Sometimes we do not really become adults until we suffer a good whacking loss, and our lives in a sense catch up with us and wash over us like a wave and everything goes. - - I wouldn't like it to take forever. . . That'd be too long. - - Towns aren't even towns anymore...Dallas wasn't ever one, when you get right down to it. It's just a suburb looking...
August 1, 2013
On being saved
'nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing. - Charles Bukowski
July 31, 2013
On work
5 years ago I returned to South Africa. Each year I write a blog post. This year's is currently on BookLive, which I will post here a bit later on. For now, if you wish to read it please click HERE.
July 30, 2013
On cricket
A 1998 game between Dorchester Third XI and the Parley Montys from Wimborne was held up when an irate wife drove her car on to the pitch. Jennifer Christian then hurled her car keys at the man fielding in the gully before running off, leaving their two children in the vehicle. . . The altercation is believed to have stemmed from a promise he made to look after the children that afternoon. - Geoff Tibballs, No-Balls and Googlies
July 29, 2013
July 28, 2013
On When in broad daylight I open my eyes
Greg Lazarus, When in Broad Daylight I Open my Eyes - She thinks sometimes that if laughter produces an expansion of gesture, sorrow mostly brings contraction; the sad are like soft-bellied creatures who have lost their shells. - - 'I said to myself: maybe there isn't even a me. . . Maybe there are just feelings. ' - - Beware of smiley faces and kind words. - - If there are choices to be made even in prison, there are choices everywhere. Even giving up, even lethargy, is a kind of choice. -
June 20, 2013
On the shortest day of the year
Happy Short Story Day http://shortstorydayafrica.org/ Twitter @shortstoryAFR and on Facebook : Short Story Day Africa Reserve your copy of the anthologies SSDA is putting together by this year by donating to their Indiegogo Campaign.
