Nava Atlas's Blog, page 13
January 16, 2024
All Souls & The Eyes: Two Uncanny Stories by Edith Wharton
A surprising number of women authors, some of whom may be better known for writing more homelike novels, also wrote very “unhomelike” short stories. One was Edith Wharton, who understood that before leading us into the world of the tense and unsettling, the author first has to make us feel calm and settled.
Wharton said that this can be done by starting with a modern clean, electric-lit environment at least as well as with a gloomy old castle.
Sigmund Freud’s famous essay about weird literature is usually translated as The Uncanny. But the German word “unheimlich” literally means “unhomelike.”
No Direction Home by Francis Booth (©2023, from which this essay is excerpted, by permission) traces how uncanny literature takes us from the familiar, the reassuring, the homelike, into a world of the unfamiliar, the unsettling and the unhomelike.
Following is an introduction to Edith Wharton’s uncanny short stories, “All Souls’” and “The Eyes.”
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No Direction Home by Francis Booth
is available on Amazon U.S*. and Amazon U.K.
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I read the other day in a book by a fashionable essayist that ghosts went out when electric light came in. What nonsense! The writer, though he is fond of dabbling in a literary way, in the supernatural, hasn’t even reached the threshold of his subject. As between turreted castles patrolled by headless victims with clanking chains, and the comfortable suburban house with a refrigerator and central heating where you feel, as soon as you’re in it, that there’s something wrong, give me the latter for sending a chill down the spine!
Edith Wharton story “All Souls’” starts, as does Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” and many other uncanny tales do, by claiming to contain just simple facts related by a friend or relative of the person to whom the uncanny experience happens.
Queer and inexplicable as the business was, on the surface it appeared fairly simple — at the time, at least; but with the passing of years, and owing to there not having been a single witness of what happened except Sara Clayburn herself, the stories about it have become so exaggerated, and often so ridiculously inaccurate, that it seems necessary that someone connected with the affair, though not actually present — I repeat that when it happened my cousin was (or thought she was) quite alone in her house — should record the few facts actually known. . . So I have written down, as clearly as I could, the gist of the various talks I had with cousin Sara, when she could be got to talk — it wasn’t often — about what occurred during that mysterious weekend.
[“All Souls” is not yet in the public domain, so it’s difficult to find in full online. It’s part of several anthologies, and the lead story in Ghosts, a collection of her spooky stories collected by Wharton herself, not long before her death in 1937, the same year this story was written.]“The Eyes” by Edith Wharton (1910)
In another, earlier Edith Wharton story, “The Eyes” is a tale presented as having been told by a member of a group of educated, rational friends sitting round a convivial but spooky fireplace in the dark, swapping ghost stories, which perhaps refers to the “dark and stormy night” when Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’sThe Vampyre were both conceived. Read “The Eyes” in full.
We had been put in the mood for ghosts, that evening, after an excellent dinner at our old friend Culwin’s, by a tale of Fred Murchard’s — the narrative of a strange personal visitation. Seen through the haze of our cigars, and by the drowsy gleam of a coal fire, Culwin’s library, with its oak walls and dark old bindings, made a good setting for such evocations; and ghostly experiences at first hand being, after Murchard’s brilliant opening, the only kind acceptable to us, we proceeded to take stock of our group and tax each member for a contribution. There were eight of us, and seven contrived, in a manner more or less adequate, to fulfill the condition imposed. It surprised us all to find that we could muster such a show of supernatural impressions.
The first person perspective in uncanny stories
Uncanny stories – including virtually all of Poe’s – are often told in the first person, rather than by an omniscient narrator, because no individual can ever know the whole truth and can never offer a complete, rationalised version of events seen from all points of view.
A Jane Austen-style omniscient, judgemental narrator would have to come down off the fence. This authorial judging is why her Northanger Abbey is not uncanny (nor is it meant to be: it is meant as a spoof of the uncanny).
“Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it.”
Edith Wharton’s novels of manners, except for the rather uncanny Ethan Frome, with its frame narrative, are told in the third person with as stern a moral tone as Austen’s, whereas her uncanny short stories are mostly first-person. Uncanny stories are often told in the first person, because a single narrator cannot know everything as an omniscient narrator purports to.
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Contributed by Francis Booth, the author of several books on twentieth-century culture: Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive); Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde; Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-Twentieth Century Woman’s Novel; Text Acts: Twentieth-Century Literary Eroticism; Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938; High Collars & Monocles: 1920s Novels by British Female Couples; and A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary.
Francis has also published several novels: The Code 17 series, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s and featuring aristocratic spy Lady Laura Summers; Young adult fantasy series The Watchers; and Young Adult fantasy novel Mirror Mirror. Francis lives on the South Coast of England.
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January 14, 2024
Sophie Calle and Double Game: Is Artistic Voyeurism Ethical and Relevant?
In 1992, the American writer Paul Auster used the French conceptual artist Sophie Calle as a thinly disguised character in his novel, Leviathan. Unlike Calle, who famously plunders the lives of others in service of her art, he asked her permission to do so. Delighted to be a character in a novel, she agreed.
And so this became a kind of game that ultimately takes the cliché of art imitating life — and vice versa — to dizzying new heights.
In his description of the character, who he calls Maria, Auster accurately describes some of Calle’s real life projects, and in other cases, he makes up projects that sound as if they could have been done by here. His description of the fictional Maria gives the viewer insight into the real Sophie Calle:
“Maria was an artist, but the work she did had nothing to do with creating objects commonly defined as art. Some people called her a photographer, others referred to her as a conceptualist, still others considered her a writer, but none of these description was accurate and in the end I don’t think she can be pigeonholed in any way.
Her work was too nutty for that, too idiosyncratic, too personal to be though of as belonging to any particular medium or discipline. Ideas would take hold of her, she would work on projects, there would be concrete results that could be shown in galleries, but this activity didn’t stem so much from a desire to make art so much as from a need to indulge her obsessions, to live her life precisely as she wanted to live it.”
Calle decided to turn Auster’s writings into a project as well as a kind of game — she collected all the projects she had actually done, and that he described, into an exhibit as well as a book, juxtaposing the pages, with the appropriate paragraphs outlined in red, with the projects, and in other cases, where Auster himself made up the projects, she took his cues and executed the project as a new undertaking.
Life imitates art imitates life …
The result is a provocative blend of fact, fantasy, and fiction with a unique twist — though it does not encompass all of Calle’s important projects (notably absent are Exquisite Pain and The Appointment). It becomes a retrospective of diverse works in one neat package.
Fascinated by the relationship between public and personal lives — her own and others’ — Calle has often crossed boundaries of privacy. Frances Morris, commenting in Art Now, wrote that this fascination (or obsession):
“… Has led Calle to investigate patterns of behavior using techniques akin to those of a private investigator, a psychologist, or a forensic scientist. It has also led her to investigate her own behavior so that her live, as lived and as imagined, as informed many of her most interesting works.”
I like to imagine that Sophie Calle fictionalizes her life in some ways — not to dupe the viewer, but to gain the courage to behave in ways to advance her art. She may well have an alter ego — though the alter ego’s name is still Sophie Calle — that allows her to play a stripper, poke through strangers’ belongings, stalk acquaintances and then publicize the results, or create performances based on the private lives of others.
“Voyeurism, exhibitionism, and a needling strain of sadism course through Calle’s work, which is inescapably fascinating even as it’s ethically disturbing — and often quietly melancholic. She’s the artist as stalker, delving fearlessly into the minutiae of other people’s lives long before popular culture took up similar material in “reality” TV shows …” (David Rimanelli, Artforum)
The question becomes whether an artist who is so inventive and bold can remain relevant in the era of social media, in which everyone puts their own life up for grabs — or, as noted by David Rimanelli, above — reality TV, blogs, Instagram, TikTok, and other spaces in which private and public lives blur in today’s times.
Calle’s diaristic impulses foreshadowed the kind of self-revelation common to personal blogs and visual platforms like Instagram. These forms of social media allow anyone who wishes to participate to be both voyeur and exhibitionist; and they’ve become so pervasive in our culture that the subtle shock value of work like Calle’s, or any other artist whose works or performances deal in self-revelation may not seem like such a big deal to a new generation of viewers.
Of course, one might argue that blogs aren’t art, and appeal to a different audience, but they do epitomize the blurring of the private and public. Then, when art is presented purportedly doing the same thing, it may not seem as unique or thought-provoking as it once was.
It’s Calle’s aesthetic as a conceptualist that keeps her work stimulating for me. I love the bold grids of framed text juxtaposed with images, whether in installation or in the pages of a book. The idea matters, particularly in conceptual art, but ideas can become dated once their initial freshness, uniqueness, or even shock value diminishes.
The Detective, The Blind, and Exquisite Pain
The Detective, for example, doesn’t resonate with me as much as it did when I first encountered the series. That the arrangement of reams of text and pictures aren’t strikingly arranged doesn’t help. There’s little engagement to be had apart from the project’s concept, which, frankly, seems trivial and lacking in emotional content.
I react differently to the series of The Blind, however. There’s something compelling in the display of the words and images, and so much compassion in the photography of the sightless subjects. The concept of beauty, as presented in this series, comes off as simple, soothing, and universal.
Interest in artist’s books and fine editions is certainly strong and in this context, Calle’s work shines. Books on her work are a unique blend of monograph and finely produced limited edition. As described by Anna Gerber in The International Review of Graphic Design, the book version of Double Game “was that rare thing, an artist’s monograph that was actually a work of art in and of itself, a furthering of Calle’s vision rather than ‘just’ another exhibition spin-off.”
The book version of the conceptual exhibit Exquisite Pain can be described similarly. Photos I’ve seen of the exhibition installation seem quite striking, but it’s equally pleasurable to hold this chronicle of a broken heart in one’s hands. Yes, it’s a confessional, but like The Blind, has a sends of universality — who among us has not suffered a broken heart, and felt awfully sorry for ourselves over it? Calle’s interviews of people detailing the moment when they most suffered doesn’t trivialize the pain of a broken heart, but helps put it in perspective for herself and the viewer.
Delving into Double Game was for me a very rich and stimulating experience, but since it covers so much ground, it can be rather overwhelming to consider as a whole.
It’s more satisfying to think about Calle’s projects individually; less so through the all-encompassing lens of “Maria.” Though Maria comes off as bizarre and compulsive, Calle seems completely delighted to complete a circle of life imitating art that imitates life. Or vice versa.
Sophie Calle’s Double Game and Beyond
As that is somewhat the point: In Double Game, it’s hard to tell where life leaves off and art begins, and at what point art and life merge. In hear art and life Calle plays characters, some of whom are not who she is, but at other times, she’s playing a character whose persona is Sophie Calle. She’s not trying to dupe the viewer, but simply shooing different aspects of herself.
In a New York Times review of the Double Game exhibit, Grace Glueck wrote that “as a diarist, Ms. Calle’s amusingly deadpan, obsessively detailed reports on her activities have a certain fascination. But unfortunately she is no great shakes as a photographer, and the long sequences of shots documenting her actions are less than compelling.”
The latter, I suspect, describes The Detective, and Suite Venetienne, which I agree aren’t her strongest concepts or presentations. Other critics have described her photography as unremarkable, but then, Calle doesn’t pretend to be an accomplished photographer.
Glueck also suggests that someone who lives so vicariously is to be pitied, perhaps momentarily forgetting that this is not Calle’s life but her art, and that sometimes her life is her art. It’s as if there is no longer a real Sophie Calle, but merely a Sophie Calle simulacrum.
If Calle’s work can be put in a nutshell, it might be the exploration of public lives and private selves. Though an age-old idea, it resonates because we all long to connect with other human stories. Much as I admire her work, I found myself a bit more uncomfortable with some of her projects than I was when I first encountered them.
At a time when all of us are faced with disturbing governmental and corporate intrusions into privacy, somehow, I didn’t findThe Address Book,Suite Venetienne, or The Hotel as clever and amusing as I once did. I don’t want the government prying into my private life; why is it better when done in the name of Art?
I haven’t kept up with Sophie Calle for some time, aside from retrospectives and the continuing travels of Exquisite Pain. I’m curious to see what will come next, as she is a great talent and remarkably inventive.
Has she had to step back and pause to consider how to proceed in an era when self-revelation is commonplace and spying is considered reprehensible? More likely, she’s working on a way to reinvent the persona of Sophie Calle so that she can do what she seems to love best — indulge in her obsessions.
Find views and lives outside the strictly literary realm in Other Voices on this site.
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January 7, 2024
Jeanne Goosen, Author of We’re Not All Like That
Jeanne Goosen (July 13, 1938 – June 3, 2020) was a South African author, poet, and journalist. Her novel We’re Not All Like That (1990) explored the average Afrikaner household, pushing the boundaries of what could be said in fiction through the lead character of Doris van Greunen.
At the age of twelve, Goosen published her first short fiction in the Afrikaans lifestyle magazine Rooi Rose (Red Roses).
Goosen cited Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky as her first writing inspiration; she said that this book shook her deeply.
Jeanne Goosen’s first publicationsIn 1971, Goosen published her debut poetry collection An Owl Flies Away (`n Uil vlieg weg), followed by Organ Pipes (Orrelpunte) in 1974. At the same time, she worked as a journalist for the Paarl Post, Tempo, and other local newspapers.
Goosen also worked in fishing and on a citrus farm to supplement her writing income. In the 1980s, she moved to the coastal Kwazulu-Natal province. She was also a frequent traveler and spent a substantial amount of time in Gauteng and the Cape.
A Cat in the Bag (`n Kat in die sak) collected approximately a decade’s worth of stories in 1986, including the eponymous story of a stray cat foundling in a tied up bag.
Many of her stories explored human life from an animal perspective, or from people living around animals. Animals were integral to her life, and she was almost always surrounded by her pets. Goosen would say that dogs are kind enough to “trade their souls for a piece of dried sausage.”
We’re Not All Like That (1990) is her only fully translated work. The novel “tells the story of how Doris van Greunen tries to break free of her world: with her job as an usherette at the bioscope, with her Cavallas, with friends like Aunt Mavis and Uncle Tank – and with Barnie, the swank.”
The book describes life in a small, average Afrikaner family, a topic seldom touched upon even for Afrikaans authors of the time. About the novel, she said:
“I almost laughed myself to death over the manuscript, because I thought that it was funny. Because I thought how people are going to react to it, with this that it thundered against everything written in Afrikaans literature at the time.”
Goosen loved pushing boundaries with her work, developing a love for surreal situations intermingled with relationships between friends, families, and their pets.
Goosen’s publications in the 1990s
Goosen was an award-winning author throughout her career but found herself conflicted about literary prizes. In 1991, she won R50,000 (approximately 2,700 USD) for the M-Net Prize, calling it “horribly wonderful.”
She also admitted that literary prizes came with an edge, and gave “others an excuse to shit on your head.”
In 1992, she received the Helen Martins Prize, using the money to live in playwright Athol Fugard‘s home in Nieu-Bethesda for thirty days. (Sarie, 2021) Next, Goosen wrote the one-act play Kitchen Blues (Kombuisblues), which was performed internationally in London, Brussels, and other locations.
Goosen was known for eccentricities and quirks by friends and literary acquaintances. In an interview for Vrye Weeksblad, she was greeted by the interviewing journalist – and a six-pack of Amstel Lager beers.
Daantjie Dreamer (1993) was her next work of longer fiction, academically praised for its focus on liminality (or transitional stories, like coming-of-age tales). Again, Goosen returned to the setting of an average Afrikaner family, this time in the 1950s, through the perspective of Bubbles, who questions the values and traditions of her household.
She continued writing poetry and essays in her lined notebooks, including the translated “Hoedlied” (“Hat Song”).
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6 Notable South African Poets
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In 2001, Goosen moved “between Brits and Pretoria North,” seeking a pet-friendly home to accommodate her beloved dogs.
Goosen had learned the piano at eight years old, and later the clarinet, though would only continue playing for her own entertainment (and once or twice for a friend’s book release as a rare appearance). Music remained an important part of authorship. She co-wrote a cabaret titled Thief of Hearts (Hartedief) with Deborah Steinmair, performed in 2004. Thief of Hearts explored the story of conjoined twins who could both carry a tune.
A Pawpaw for My Darling (`n Pawpaw vir my darling), published in 2006, explored the suburb of “Damnville.” It was based on the real-life area of Danville in Pretoria. Bits of the story are told through the perspective of the family dog, who gives its thoughts as an external observer.
In a 2007 interview, Goosen noted, “Humor is part of a person’s survival kit. It makes everything more tolerable.” In the same interview, she quipped that she “liked animals more than people” because they cheered her up.
More poetry appeared in 2007, called on duty elsewhere (elders aan diens). On rare occasions, the poem My Mum’s Bonkers (My ma is bossies) has been translated and adapted.
A Pawpaw for My Darling was adapted to film in 2015. The film is in Afrikaans, but subtitled for English-speaking viewership (Review, News24).
Plants Can Talk (Plante kan praat, 2010) continued her exploration of surrealist themes blended with everyday situations. She joked that some critics had been gossiping about her mental state after its publication: “First, Jeanne’s animals started talking, and now her plants!”
Loose Thoughts (Los Gedagtes) was compiled by Petrovna Metelerkamp in 2019 from some of her most personal writing notebooks.
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The legacy of Jeanne GoosenJeanne Goosen died in 2020 at age 81, in Melkbosstrand, Cape Town. After her death, some of her notebooks were discovered and published as Snow in the Karoo. The volume also contains writings by her aid Agnes Morao, published alongside the novel as Agnes’ Book. Research on publication showed that Agnes died in 2003.
Goosen was also a prolific letter writer; some of her correspondence and photographs were compiled by Petrovna Metelerkamp for A Life Full of Sentences (`n Lewe vol sinne).
Today, Jeanne Goosen remains one of the most prominent surrealist authors and poets in South African literature.
Contributed by Alex Coyne, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.
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December 31, 2023
Enid Blyton’s Top 5 Series: Mystery, Adventure & More
Enid Blyton (1897 – 1968) is one of the world’s most successful and prolific children’s authors. She wrote some seven hundred full-length books, many of which have never been out of print. Here is a selection of Blyton’s top 5 series.
Despite controversy over the literary merit of some of her work, including the use of outdated and offensive language, she remains one of the world’s most popular fiction authors, coming sixth in an all-time bestselling list by estimated sales (behind William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Danielle Steel, Harold Robbins, and Dr. Seuss, and well ahead of J.K. Rowling at number 10).
Her books were intended for children between the ages of about three and twelve, and many were part of a series — one of the most popular being “The Famous Five.”
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Learn more about Enid Blyton
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Blyton aficionados will have personal favorites; these are some of the many titles continuing to be reprinted and enjoyed today (and are a good place to start if you’re new to Blyton’s books).
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The Famous Five
“The Famous Five” are Julian, Dick, Anne, and their cousin George (full name Georgina — but don’t ever call her that!), along with Timmy the dog.
Their adventures began in 1942 with Five on a Treasure Island, and a further twenty thrilling escapades followed until the final book in the series, Five Are Together Again, was published in 1963. Blyton also wrote several short stories featuring the same characters.
The children spend their holidays camping and exploring by themselves, finding plenty of mysteries along the way — and, of course, always with a good supply of sandwiches and ginger beer.
The places in the books are based largely in the southwest of England, from Dorset to Cornwall, and feature Kirrin Island, Smuggler’s Top, Demon’s Rocks, as well as remote farms, ruined castles, and caves.
The original books were illustrated by Eileen Soper; more recent editions have been illustrated by Pippa Curnick and Sir Quentin Blake.
Minor amendments have been made to the text over the years as part of an editorial process aimed at eliminating or altering the offensive and outdated language in the original versions (especially with regard to race and gender). Still, the books have never been out of print, and the series still sells around 250,000 copies per year.
Several television adaptations have also been made, and a new miniseries based on the books (titled The Curse of Kirrin Island) was broadcast on the BBC in December 2023. In addition, continuation novels have been written by Claude Vollier and Mary Danby; in 2000, six “Just George” books were published, written by Sue Welford.
Other spin-offs include The Famous Five Adventure File, The Famous Five Diary, and The Famous Five’s Survival Guide, along with various puzzles and games and a Famous Five Treasury.
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The Secret Seven
The Secret Seven Society is made up of Peter and his sister Janet, along with their friends Jack, Colin, George, Pam, and Barbara (and golden spaniel Scamper).
Together they investigate unusual goings-on in the local community— burglaries, missing people, and stolen animals. They’re experts in hunting for clues, shadowing suspicious people, and keeping watch.
All Secret Seven meetings take place in a shed with S.S. on the door; admission is only granted with the correct password, and membership badges must be worn.
The first in the official series of fifteen books, The Secret Seven, was published in 1949, although Peter and Janet had appeared in two earlier stories, At Seaside Cottage (1947) and The Secret of the Old Mill (1948).
In the 1970s and 1980s, Evelyne Lallemand wrote several continuation novels, and in 2019–2020 two new Secret Seven mysteries were published, written by Pamela Butchart: The Mystery of the Skull and The Mystery of the Theatre Ghost.
Original illustrations were by George Brook, Bruno Kay, and Burgess Sharrocks. Since 2013, editions have been released by Hachette with illustrations by Tony Ross.
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Malory Towers
This ever-popular school series was first published in 1946. The original series consisted of six books, one for each year of heroine Darrell River’s time at Malory Towers boarding school. A further six continuation novels were published in 2009, written by Pamela Cox.
Malory Towers is a girls’ school set on the cliffs in Cornwall: a picturesque castle with four round towers, a courtyard, and a seawater-filled swimming pool surrounded by the rocks.
Darrell (named after Enid Blyton’s second husband, Kenneth Darrell Waters) desperately wants to make a success of her time at the school, but between her hot temper and the antics of her classmates — clever and funny Alicia, spiteful Gwendoline, dependable Sally, and meek Mary-Lou — things don’t always go as planned.
It’s a world of midnight feasts in the dorms, lacrosse games, practical jokes, friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of school.
In 2019, Hachette published a book called New Class at Malory Towers containing four short stories by different authors (Narinder Dhami, Patrice Lawrence, Lucy Mangan, and Rebecca Westcott). In 2020, CBBC produced a television adaptation of the original books.
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Noddy
Noddy is still probably the most famous character to be associated with Enid Blyton, although he admittedly does have something of the ‘Marmite effect’ — people either seem to love him or loathe him.
Noddy is a little wooden toy created by Old Man Carver. He’s sent off to Toyland, where his adventures promptly begin along with other toys: Big Ears, Tessie Bear, Bumpy Dog, and PC Plod. Noddy has a house of his own and a stylish little red and yellow car, while his best friend Big Ears lives under a perfect spotted toadstool.
The first Noddy book, Noddy Goes to Toyland, was published in 1949 (illustrated by Harmsen Van Der Beek), and a further 24 original books were published before the last, Noddy and the Aeroplane, appeared in 1963.
Over the years, there has been a wealth of Noddy merchandise including Noddy soap, Noddy bedlinen, Noddy toothbrushes and toothpaste, Noddy pajamas, and Noddy bedside lights, as well as varying spin-off books including hard books and pop-up books.
There have also been several television series made (the image of which generally bears little resemblance to Blyton’s original work and the original illustrations).
Like “The Famous Five” the Noddy books have never been out of print, but have undergone a clean-up process of changing or eliminating some of the racist and sexist language in the originals.
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The Faraway Tree
The Faraway Tree is a huge tree in the middle of the Enchanted Wood, laden with fruit of all kinds and home to the fairy folk. The uppermost branches of the tree lead to the ever-changing magical lands above the clouds.
When Jo, Bessie, and Fanny come to live at the edge of the wood, they discover the Faraway Tree and make friends with Moon-Face, Mister Watzisname, Silky the Fairy and the Saucepan Man.
Days are spent climbing the tree – which involves avoiding the dirty water that Dame Washalot pours down the trunk, and trying to ignore the Angry Pixie – and exploring the Land of Take-What-You-Want, the Land of Topsy-Turvy, the Land of Spells, and the Land of Goodies.
The Faraway Tree made its first appearance in The Yellow Fairy Book (now published as The Magic Faraway Tree: Adventure of the Goblin Dog) in 1936, and the first in the main trilogy, The Enchanted Wood, was published in 1939. It was followed by The Magic Faraway Tree in 1943, and The Folk of the Faraway Tree in 1946.
At some point in the editorial process, the names of the children were changed from Jo, Bessie, and Fanny (and their cousin Dick) to Joe, Beth, Frannie, and cousin Rick. These changes have been kept throughout subsequent editions of the books.
In 2022, celebrated children’s author Jacqueline Wilson wrote a new book in the series, The Magic Faraway Tree: A New Adventure, featuring three contemporary children Milo, Mia and Birdy, who follow in Jo, Bessie, and Fanny’s footsteps in discovering the Faraway Tree.
Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find her online at Elodie Rose Barnes.
A few more Enid Blyton series
Enid Blyton wrote an enormous number of series for different ages, so if none of the above takes your fancy then maybe another will! Others still in print include:
The St, Clare’s books, which follow the school adventures of twins Pat and Isabel O’Sullivan.The Naughtiest Girl books, in which spoiled Elizabeth is sent away to Whyteleafe school, and makes up her mind to be the naughtiest pupil ever.The Mystery Series, in which Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip, Bets, and Buster the dog solve mysteries much like the Secret Seven.The Secret Series, in which adventure and mystery go hand in hand for Jack and his friends Mike, Peggy and Nora.More about the Blyton controversies
Why it’s Important to Note Enid Blyton’s Failings, Not Erase Her Work When the Past Clashes with the Present: Reminiscences of Enid Blyton English Heritage Has No Plans to Remove PlaqueThe post Enid Blyton’s Top 5 Series: Mystery, Adventure & More appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
December 27, 2023
The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder are autobiographical series of novels for children reflecting her life on the American frontier. Though beloved by generations of young readers, they haven’t been without controversy, as we’ll soon discover.
Wilder (1967–1967) wrote these vivid tales — nine in the Little House series — that immediately appealed to readers of all ages. The books were an immediate critical and popular success, winning numerous awards and making their way into readers’ hearts with their message of endurance, simple living, and love of family.
Born in a log cabin on the edge of an area called “Big Woods” in Pepin, Wisconsin, Laura’s real-life experiences were the inspiration for her novels, and richly informed her memoirs as well.
The Ingalls family traveled by covered wagon through Kansas and Minnesota with all that they owned, until finally settling in De Smet, Dakota Territory. The family loved the open spaces of the prairie. They moved around quite a bit, and though it wasn’t an easy life, it gave Laura a rich trove of memories and experiences to draw upon when she began writing.
The first of the Little House books, Little House in the Big Woods, was published in 1932; Laura was in her mid-sixties at the time. The best known volume of the series, Little House on the Prairie, was published soon after.
The family depicted in the stories was an idealized version of the one she grew up in. The Little House books tell of this family, not unlike her own, pioneering the Great Plains in the mid-1800s.
In the 1920s, Laura got encouragement from her daughter Rose as well as the time she needed to start writing.Though presented as fiction, the author insisted, “I lived everything I wrote.”
The books were the basis of the long-running TV series titled Little House on the Prairie.
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Learn more about Laura Ingalls Wilder
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Accusations of racial insensitivity have been leveled at the Little House books and their author. In an article in Smithsonian magazine timed for Laura’s 150th birthday — “Little House on the Prairie was Built on Native American Land” —it’s suggested that “It’s time to take a critical look at her work.”
Many readers are unhappy about this, suggesting that she was merely “a woman of her time.” But the article argues:
“Portrayals of Native American characters in this book and throughout this series have led to some calls for the series to not be taught in schools.
In the late 1990s, for instance, scholar Waziyatawin Angela Cavender Wilson approached the Yellow Medicine East school district after her daughter came home crying because of a line in the book, first attributed to Gen. Phil Sheridan, but a common saying by the time: ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’ Her story gained national attention.”
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Photo by Anna Fiore
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Here are the books in the series, described by the publisher, Harper Trophy, in order of publication:
Little House in the Big Woods (1932)
Meet the Ingalls family—Laura, Ma, Pa, Mary, and baby Carrie, who all live in a cozy log cabin in the big woods of Wisconsin in the 1870s. Though many of their neighbors are wolves and panthers and bears, the woods feel like home, thanks to Ma’s homemade cheese and butter and the joyful sounds of Pa’s fiddle.
Little House on the Prairie (1935)
When Pa decides to sell the log house in the woods, the family packs up and moves from Wisconsin to Kansas, where Pa builds them their little house on the prairie! Living on the farm is different from living in the woods, but Laura and her family are kept busy and are happy with the promise of their new life on the prairie.
On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937)
The Ingalls family lives in a sod house beside Plum Creek in Minnesota until Pa builds them a new house made of sawed lumber. The money for the lumber will come from their first wheat crop. But then, just before the wheat is ready to harvest, a strange glittering cloud fills the sky, blocking out the sun. Millions of grasshoppers cover the field and everything on the farm, and by the end of a week, there is no wheat crop left.
By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939)
Pa Ingalls heads west to the unsettled wilderness of the Dakota Territory. When Ma, Mary, Laura, Carrie, and baby Grace join him, they become the first settlers in the town of De Smet. Pa starts work on the first building of the brand new town, located on the shores of Silver Lake.
The Long Winter (1940)
The first terrible storm comes to the barren prairie in October. Then it snows almost without stopping until April. With snow piled as high as the rooftops, it’s impossible for trains to deliver supplies, and the townspeople, including Laura and her family, are starving. Young Almanzo Wilder, who has settled in the town, risks his life to save the town.
Little Town on the Prairie (1941)
De Smet is rejuvenated with the beginning of spring. But in addition to the parties, socials, and “literaries,” work must continue. Laura spends many hours sewing shirts to help Ma and Pa get enough money to send Mary to a college for the blind. But in the evenings, Laura makes time for a new caller, Almanzo Wilder.
These Happy Golden Years (1943)
Laura must continue to earn money to keep Mary in her college for the blind, so she gets a job as a teacher. It’s not easy, and for the first time she’s living away from home. But it gets a little better every Friday, when Almanzo picks Laura up to take her back home for the weekend. Though Laura is still young, she and Almanzo are officially courting, and she knows that this is a time for new beginnings.
The First Four Years (1971))
Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder have just been married! They move to a small prairie homestead to start their lives together. But each year brings new challenges—storms, sickness, fire, and unpaid debts. These first four years call for courage, strength, and a great deal of determination. And through it all, Laura and Almanzo still have their love, which only grows when baby Rose arrives.
Often added to the series is this entry, based on her husband’s early years, which was actually the second book published:
Farmer Boy (1933)
As Laura Ingalls is growing up in a little house in Kansas, Almanzo Wilder lives on a big farm in New York. He and his brothers and sisters work hard from dawn to supper to help keep their family farm running. Almanzo wishes for just one thing—his very own horse—but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.
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You may also enjoy:
Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller
The post The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
December 18, 2023
Kathleen Raine – British Poet, Scholar, and Mystic
Kathleen Raine (June 14, 1908 – July 6, 2003) was a British poet, scholar, and mystic. She is also remembered as a William Blake scholar, and wrote extensively on W.B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor as well.
She fought against the materialism of her time and turned toward the artists, writers, and mystics. In her later life, she founded the Temenos Academy, a school that offers courses and lectures on philosphy, the higher arts, and contemplation.
Kathleen believed that the purpose of great art and literature was to illuminate mankind to higher states of the soul, and that the inner experience far more than the outer.
She believed that the imagination was the true source of the great writings by authors such as Blake, Plato, Yeats, Dante, Samuel Coleridge, and Thomas Taylor. She saw art from the imagination as a gateway to other worlds beyond the veil of the human consciousness. She felt herself to be part of the other world and rebelled at this one.
“Alone I was all the earth as far as the horizon and the depth of the sky. Lacking nothing, desiring nothing but to be forever in that place of all the earth that was mine …”
“Children sense how precariously the phenomenal world is held together how thin the texture of its appearances how easily torn to let in nothingness.” (Farewell Happy Fields)
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Early life of Kathleen RaineKathleen Raine was born in Ilford, Essex in England. She was the only child of George Raine, a schoolmaster, and Jesse (nee Wilkie), who was Scottish. When she was very young, her mother taught her many Scottish poems and nursery rhymes.
Kathleen felt a kinship with the land of the north of poetry and fairy stories that never left her. She felt that her mother and she were outsiders compared to others around them, belonging to the wild moors – like the Brontë sisters. Her mother told her that when she was young and walked on the moors, she discovered they were very much alive!
“I have never told anyone before, but I think you will understand.” It was simply that sitting among the heather near Kielder, Jesse Raine told her daughter, “I saw the moor was alive” That was all. But I understood that she had seen what I had seen. (The Land Unknown )
Kathleen truly found herself when she lived with her schoolteacher aunt in Northumberland for some of the World War I years, sent there due to the danger of war and food rationing. Kathleen fell in love with the landscape of her surroundings. She had written poems about the desolate space beginning with “Let in the wind, Let in the rain, Let in the moors tonight” (Northumbrian sequence poems)
“In Northumberland I knew myself in my own place; and I never ‘adjusted’ myself to any other or forgot what I had so briefly but clearly seen and understood and experienced.” (Farewell Happy Fields)
She never forgot Northumberland; the landscape stayed with her all her life. Her quest became a journey to get back to the place she knew as a child.
University and early writings
Kathleen attended college at Cambridge and studied science instead of literature because she felt to understand literature all one had to do was read the great books. Science kept her close to her other love, which was nature.
At first, she was very excited to be on her own, meeting other educated people. She attended a lecture by Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and thought that she had never seen such beautiful women. She loved Shelly, Keats, and Coleridge, though these writers weren’t being studied at the time.
When Kathleen read “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot she knew the college and some of the places she had lived had been a wasteland. She wrote:
“It was a shock to many of us who in his wasteland recognized our world, when it presently began to be whispered that T.S. Eliot was a Christian, what to us was mere reality to him the hell of Dante, the state and place of those cut off from God.” (The Land Unknown)
Secretly, Kathleen wanted to be a poet and explore life and consciousness, as her favorite writers had done. She had a difficult time balancing a vocation as a poet with having a career. “I had never clearly thought about the difference between vocation and career or the practical problems of how to relate the two. I had not thought about a career at all.” (The Land Unknown)
She had a terrible time when she graduated from Cambridge, unsure of what to do next. She even went on an interview with Virginia Woolf, trying to get work at the Hogarth Press. She wasn’t hired.
“Whereas I wanted to soar, to be a poet, to live as a poet, to think the thoughts of a poet. I had not realized that Cambridge was no more of a place where such a vocation could be realized than was Ilford.” (The Land Unknown)
A complicated marriage and family lifeKathleen dreaded moving home after graduation and married more out of necessity than love. Her new husband, Charles Madge, was a socialist writer, and the couple had a son and daughter. She knew marriage to be a mistake, but felt like there were no other options.
Kathleen left Charles when she fell in love with another man. A Scottish writer Gavin Maxwell, was someone to whom she felt connected as a spiritual brother with her whole being. He loved Kathleen, but not romantically, because he was homosexual.
She wrote about her love for Gavin in great detail in her book, The Lion’s Mouth. Their love felt like destiny, though he loved her as a friend. It brought her to great heights and tragic depths.
Kathleen left her children with a friend when she moved to London to try and find literary work. At this difficult time, she lived in a dingy boardinghouse, feeling separate from her true self and all that she loved. Kathleen felt herself to be on Dante’s journey to the underworld with no path before her.
“I lived as an outcast. Yet I did believe that every life is a way; that we are given each our own clue to unwind, a clue to lead us through the labyrinth so long as we never lose it. Never relinquish the living thread.” (The Land Unknown)
When T. S Eliot rejected her poems, Kathleen was devastated. However, she was able to find another publisher that loved her poetry. A Tamil poet who went by the name of Tambi, he was an editor and writer who started the magazine Poetry London.
Tambi encouraged her to continue writing her beautiful poems. Her first published book of poetry, Stone and Flower (1943), was illustrated by the noted British artist Barbara Hepworth.
Kathleen had to get a paying job and got work in the war department. She had a kind manager who respected her as a poet. She met Graham Greene and his wife, Antonia White. She also met Manya Harari, who helped publish Boris Pasternak and Teilhard de Chardin and was a great translator.
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Discovering William BlakeAntonia White convinced Kathleen to become a Catholic. This only worked for a short time, as it was a religion that didn’t suit her. She realized she made a terrible mistake and knew that her heart was with Neoplatonism, Kabbala, and theosophy. When she discovered William Blake, he became her spiritual teacher: “Blake Now became my Virgil and my guide.” (The Land Unknown)
Kathleen went to the British Museum every morning to study the art of William Blake. The poet W.B. Yeats loved Blake as well, and saw him as a prophet and seer, not merely a painter. Yeats helped the rediscovery of William Blake; his research put him on the map. The study of Blake helped Kathleen come back to her true self.
“With amazement and joy I followed the windings of that mainstream of tradition and some of its tributaries; working upstream as Yeats had done before me, in the British Museum where I now spent my days. In the North Library where I had at the time a desk piled high with strange books. I felt the golden string forming under my writing fingers as they copied wisdom.” (The Land Unknown)
Kathleen wrote several books on William Blake as well as books and journals on Yeats, Thomas Taylor, and Samuel Coleridge.
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Later years and legacyIn her later years, she started The Temenos Academy, an educational facility. To this day, the school offers many lectures about spiritual ideas, philosophy, great artists, and higher consciousness. Anyone who is interested in these topics can join; there is a tuition fee.
Kathleen traveled to India and met with great teachers and sages there. She wrote a book about her experience in India titled India Seen Afar, which was to be her last autobiography.
Kathleen believed that every soul regardless of religion has a mission and that is to get back to the garden. She felt the human race is living in Milton’s fallen paradise, T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland,” and Dante’s Inferno searching for home.
Among the many honors she received were several honorary doctorates from Universities in the U.K., U.S., and France, as well as numerous distinguished awards for both her poetry and prose.
Kathleen Raine wrote that she took many bypaths, shortcuts but something was guiding her. The true garden is the garden of beauty and love. This is the place that poets and painters dream of finding. The garden is everyone’s destiny.
Contributed by Mame Cotter, who blogs at The Illumination of Art: “My name is Mary Cotter but just call me Mame. I am starting a blog again to find others who share my interests. I am into the arts such as painting, film, theatre and literature. I love children’s books and many of their illustrations. I love walking , daydreaming and thinking about our existence. My favorite filmmakers are Tarkovsky, Bergman, and Dreyer. There are many incredible books, art and films that explore reality and higher dimensions. I am a secret bohemian artist that lives for art, spirit and nature.” See Mame’s piece on Margaret C. Anderson, Founder of The Little Review.
More about Kathleen RainePoetry Collections
Stone and Flower (1943)The Lost Country (1972)The Oracle in the Heart (1979)Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine (2001)Scholarly Volumes & Blake studies
Blake and Tradition (two volumes, 1968 – 1969)From Blake to Vision (1979)Galgonooza, City Of Imagination (1991)The Inner Journey of the Poet (1982) Yeats: The Tarot and the Golden Dawn (1972)W.B. Yeats and the Learning of the Imagination (1999)Autobiographies
Farewell Happy Fields (1973)The Land Unknown (1975)The Lion’s Mouth (1978)India Seen Afar (1994)Biography
No End to Snowdrops: A Biography of Kathleen Raineby Philippa Bernard (2010)
More information
Poetry Foundation Kathleen Raine lectures (YouTube) BritannicaThe post Kathleen Raine – British Poet, Scholar, and Mystic appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
December 13, 2023
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (1983)
Praisesong for the Widow is widely regarded as Paule Marshall’s most eloquent statement of the need for African Americans to understand and embrace their heritage even as they pursue equality and success.
Praisesong was initially published in 1983 and reissued in 2021 in a handsome edition by McSweeney’s as the second volume in its Diaspora series.
Praisesong is the first of Marshall’s novels to feature a middle-class Black American woman at its center, a woman who experiences what was also a defining moment in Paule Marshall’s own life: the Big Drum ceremony on the tiny Caribbean island of Carriacou.
The witnessing of the Big Drum ceremony, recounted in Triangular Road, Marshall’s 2009 memoir, allowed her to break through writer’s block to write The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969). It constitutes the climactic moment in Praisesong for the Widow.
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Learn more about Paule Marshall
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Compared with Marshall’s earlier novel, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, which has a broad array of characters with complex interrelationships and an intricate plot that unfolds over a period of months, the plot of Praisesong is a simple one.
Avey Williams Johnson, the protagonist, is a middle-aged African American widow with adult children. She lives in a large and comfortable suburban home in prosperous North White Plains, a suburb of New York City. A supervisor in the state motor vehicle department, she dresses well, eats well, and enjoys all the pleasures of a hard-won upper-middle-class lifestyle.
Avey embarks on an expensive Caribbean cruise on the Bianca (white) Pride with two friends, also widows, and six pieces of matched luggage filled with her well-chosen wardrobe, but a few days into the cruise she succumbs to her feeling of increasing unease and decides, for reasons she cannot explain, to jump ship off the coast of the island of Grenada. She plans to fly back to New York as soon as possible.
A few days earlier, she had dreamt about her great-aunt, whom Avey visited on Tatem Island in North Carolina during childhood summers. The old woman told stories of the landing of enslaved people. Avey is disturbed by the dream, but she doesn’t connect it to her sudden impulse to abandon her cruise and the ship.
Arrival on Grenada
Avey arrives in Grenada to find “a crowd of perhaps two hundred men, women and children … clearly from the more respectable element on the island” who pay her no attention as they stream onto a waiting line of schooners and sloops. She learns that there are no more flights to New York until late the next day; her taxi driver tells her that the people she saw boarding boats were headed for Carriacou, an island “so small scarcely anybody has ever heard of it.”
Avey checks into the best tourist hotel in Grenada and the next day she goes for a walk along the beach. Finding herself disoriented and lost, she encounters an old man, Lebert Joseph, who is about to embark on the same expedition to Carriacou as the people she saw the day before.
Although Avey insists she is a tourist, the old man recognizes something in her that she has yet to discover in herself and he eventually overcomes her resistance and convinces her to join him on the trip to Carriacou to witness the Big Drum ceremony.
Journey to Carriacou
Despite her objections, Avey delays her flight again and makes the journey to Carriacou with a boatload of people, including two old women who nurse her through a bout of vomiting that she attributes to seasickness, but which readers will recognize as a metaphorical purging.
Once on the island of Carriacou, she is initially disappointed when she sees the “large denuded dirt yard” where the dance is to be held. But as the dance proceeds, women from different “nations,” or ethnic groups, take their turns to dance. Avey begins to “feel the reverberation” of the dancers’ powerful tread.
Eventually, “…an arm made up of many arms” reaches out to draw her in and soon she is also “doing the flatfooted glide and stomp with aplomb … in the company of these strangers who had become one and the same with people in Tatem.” Later, Lebert Johnson and his daughter Rosalie tell Avey that after watching the way she danced and after considering her height and the way she carries herself, they have determined that she is descended from the Arada people.
Avey has a history, and the costs of her success
By the time she heads back to New York, Avey knows what she is going to do: she will pass this history along to the “young, bright, fiercely articulate token few for whom her generation had worked the two and three jobs,” sell her house in North White Plains, and restore her great aunt’s house.
She makes plans to turn it into a place where she can bring her grandchildren to tell them the stories of their people.
An immensely readable and straightforward story, Praisesong for the Widow takes place over just a couple of days. Yet Marshall incorporates so much into this account: Avey and her husband Jerome’s endless work to move from a cramped and cold apartment in Brooklyn to the comfortable home in North White Plains; the costs of that striving to her marriage and relationship with her children; the brutality of the racism that always surrounds them as she and her husband watch helplessly (in this era before cell phone cameras) from the window of their Brooklyn apartment as police drag a Black man from his car and beat him until he bleeds; the joyous childhood outings among her Harlem neighbors setting out for a summer picnic.
We see the yearning of Avey’s youngest child, Marion, to share her struggle for equality and the history of their people with her mother and Avey’s refusal to acknowledge that history for fear of losing what she and her husband have worked so hard to attain.
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The Chosen Place, the Timeless People
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Much of this story is mirrored in Marshall’s own life. Though she wasn’t on a cruise, in 1962 she was living on the island of Grenada, having gone there as a single mother intending to write after receiving a Guggenheim grant.
Despite her preparations for the opportunity—stacks of research—and the ideal conditions—Grenada’s beauty and the money that allowed her to hire a housekeeper, a cook, and a nanny, and rent a house with large rooms and tall windows—she found herself suffering, for the first time in her life, from a paralyzing case of writer’s block.
When a couple of friends insisted that she make the trip to Carriacou (a smaller island two hours away by schooner) to witness The Big Drum/Nation Dance, she reluctantly agreed to go.
“The drums,” she wrote, “were nothing more than a few hollowed-out logs with a drumhead of goatskin. The drummers themselves were elderly men who couldn’t possibly, it seemed, open their stiff, work-swollen hands to beat a drum.”
The men drum throughout the night as aged women dance. “Who we is, oui!” the dance caller cries. “Where we’s from in truth! Our true-true nation: Manding, Arada, Cromanti, Congo, Yoruba, Igbo, Chamba.”
As Marshall watched the dance, she recalled James Weldon Johnson’s description of the Ring Shout in his memoir of growing up in segregated Florida, Along This Way. Inspired, Marshall joined the dancers, and when she returned to her study the next morning, she packed up her steno pads of research notes and locked them away.
It was only then that she was able to begin writing the novel that would become The Chosen Place, the Timeless People:
“… finally understanding, fledgling that I still was, that as a fiction writer, a novelist, a storyteller, a fabulist … my responsibility first and foremost was to the story … the old verities of people, plot and place; a story that if honestly told and well-crafted would resonate with the historical truths contained in the steno pads.”
Contributed by Lynne Weiss: Lynne’s writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review; Brain, Child; The Common OnLine; the Ploughshares blog; the [PANK] blog; Wild Musette; Main Street Rag; and Radcliffe Magazine. She received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has won grants and residency awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Millay Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She loves history, theater, and literature, and for many years, has earned her living by developing history and social studies materials for educational publishers. She lives outside Boston, where she is working on a novel set in Cornwall and London in the early 1930s. You can see more of her work at LynneWeiss.
You may also enjoy Lynne’s piece, Inspiration from Classic Caribbean Women Writers.
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The post Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (1983) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
December 11, 2023
Bangalore Literature Festival 2023 – Observations and Inspiration
It’s such a wonderful feeling to be part of the Bangalore Literature Festival, to know that you’re among kindred spirits — devoted book lovers. Here are some observations and personal reflections on Bangalore Literature Festival 2023.
We are all smiling at one other and find ourselves sharing thoughts with whomever is sitting next to you. It’s enchanting being at the sessions and as the authors talk about their books, you feel that you want to read each and every one of them.
And more than ever, you’re thinking of that book sitting inside your head waiting to be written and feeling inspired to give it a go.
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Our correspondent Melanie Kumar
at Bangalore Literature Festival 2023
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From the Festival organizers:
“The Bangalore Literature Festival celebrates the creative spirit of Bengaluru and commemorates the literary diversity it offers, bringing it in conversation with the best minds in the world of literature. The 2023 edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival is a two-day literary extravaganza that will bring together some of the biggest names in literature – within and outside India.
The objective of the Bangalore Literature Festival is to put together a literary experience that brings writers – both established and aspiring, readers, publishers, students and young professionals and other stakeholders of the city together on a common platform and create a compelling space for engaging and thought-provoking discussions on literature and life.”
Stories from Everywhere (parts 1, 2, & 3): The Moderator, Nilanjan Choudhury, is brilliant in the way he draws in the authors and makes them speak about their stories. These are an eclectic bunch of writers drawn from across the country who have employed the short story format, which according to Nilanjan encapsulates brevity at its best.
The Kashmiri author who has translated from her uncle Harikrishna Kaul’s stories says that the stories come out of one square mile of space and deal with abandonment, alienation, repression of female sexuality and could be termed every person’s story.
The author who has been translated from the Telugu comes from an agricultural family of Dalits (oppressed class and lowest in India’s caste hierarchy) is an activist and feminist and hence is able to look at gender and caste through a different lens.
Another author in the panel says that she opted for a different genre, involving fantasy elements, which she wrote based on her family stories. She says that the emotional impact of these stories, poured out from her in fiction form, over a decade. She did not stress too much about how they would link together in an anthology.
The author from Orissa was different in that she is a serving bureaucrat. Coming from a family where both parents wrote in Oriya, she says that she is better known for her writing than her profession. She says that she thinks that stories are love affairs and she wants to be in one all the time.
The Manipuri author hailing from a conflict zone says that she needs to tell stories that combine genres and also reflect the reality of the society that she lives in. Her very pertinent observation is about how she feels a connection with all the authors in the panel, as if she knows them all from their stories.That to me is the magic of storytelling.
Not Above the Law Session: The journalist/author Manoj Mitta is known to do painstaking research and his latest book on caste brings out the structural inequality of judgements in India and the impunity with which upper castes get away with crimes including rape. The denial of justice to marginalized communities is the thrust of his findings and one can feel the empathy in his arguments.
The others on the panel are lawyers and academics and, in their views, occasionally sound like how they may be speaking in the courts. This panel leaves one with a feeling of disappointment, as they don’t seem to hold out much hope for ordinary citizens in an authoritarian regime.
Meter and Magic, Poetry Reading Session: This is a different kind of session, as the poets come up and perform, some doing so with a great deal of aplomb. Some of the interesting lines that I jotted down:
“Spotless in lifeless.”
“Their hold is real, much more than words reveal.”
“I protest metaphors of love … I protest the question, ‘why do I write’?”
“Your strength is in your silence, mine in my words.”
“Weighed down by the cargo of the past … a room that is not weighed down by yesterday’s conversations.”
“What is the point of it all?”
“What you call reality, is virtual reality?”
“Why are words like this?”
“What if I had no skin, what if I am the barometer?”
“Poetry silenced–died of a heart attack.”
Winners and runners-up of the Deodar Prize: A new prize was instituted this year in partnership with the Bangalore Literature Festival, The Bombay Literary Magazine and Hammock.
Winner: Srividya Tadepalli for “Funeral for a Demon.”
Runners-Up: Samruddhi Ghodgaonkar- “Bats of Paradise.”
Ratul Ghosh: “Ants.”
Plotting Emotion; the Alchemy of Words: The Moderator, Udayan Mitra of Harper Collins, said that his panel had four of the most exciting authors to read.
A first-time woman author in her non-fiction book based on interviews said that she discovered that politics in India is not about binaries and that she wrote keeping these complexities in mind.
The doctor author in the panel said that she started with writing for children and then short stories. She had no idea about publishing and her then Editor had no notion about Coorg, the place that she first located her stories in.
A senior author cum academic spoke about her early struggles when she had to deal with rejections and learnt to pare down her words till Faber finally accepted her novel. She also spoke that whilst being at publicity events was unavoidable, her greatest joy lay in sitting in a room and writing and that she never wrote with a readership in mind but because she had something to say.
A U.S.-based academic and author, spoke about how he tries to blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction and how each day of one’s life is a little story.
Ad Man/Mad Man: Prahlad Kakkar, who had a very successful career in advertising launched his autobiography at BLF 2023. The interview was irreverent, and the book promises to be a laugh riot. “Learn to laugh at yourself,” is the advice that he doled out to the audience.
I Hate Love Stories: The most interesting thing that emerged from this panel is the changing landscape of the characterization of an Indian woman. A sports journalist author spoke about how the right mentor can lift up your writing, while the opposite can happen too.
Another author in this panel lamented on how authoritarianism is crushing society and how digital connectivity has made one realize the similarities that exist across the world. An author who has written about a bisexual woman spoke about how writing this book helped her to have this difficult conversation with her own orientation.
One author spoke about how she liked to challenge herself by bringing in aspects like French philosophy or magical realism. One interesting comment on character formation brought in this line “wanted to kill the Alpha male forever.”
The authors also spoke about creating grey women characters and even having a woman protagonist, who is disliked — quite a change from the earlier days of creating women who had to be liked by all, just as it is in real life.
Mirch Masala: On the Indian food trail: All the authors here seemed to agree that authenticity in cooking is a fraught term, as recipes travel from borders to kitchens and across states too and evolve in the process. Another interesting focus was on how foods that are used in India presently like red chilies and potatoes are actually imports.
Creating Worlds: Curating Art and Literature: The curators in this panel, narrated their experiences with bringing forth aspects of India, which is a land of stories and telling these stories employing different formats.
What emerged also was the need to showcase the raw edges of art, without the need for camouflage and application of an inter-disciplinary approach. There was also a valid suggestion to not let festival panels become TikTok memes by restricting the time to just half an hour.
Listen, I Will Tell You: This session involved a free-flowing chat with award-winning Author and Academic, the 87-year-old, Chandrashekhara Kambar with fellow academic and author, Basavaraj Kalgudi. Kambar read excerpts from his novel with a great deal of emotion.
Fields of Fire: Conflicts around the world are discussed, with retired diplomats and an academician in conversation with a journalist. Understandably, with two retired diplomats and an academic on the panel, a lot of heat was generated on this panel.
The conflict in Gaza seemed to hold sway with Israel coming in for a huge amount of criticism over its pounding of Palestine’s civilian population. The international community has no fig leaf to protect itself from the flouting of all established laws and norms.
The Secret History, On Writing Fiction: Lead on by an accomplished Moderator, the feminist publisher, Urvashi Butalia, this panel served up many insights. The vulnerabilities of women who write and their courage came up for discussion.
Also of importance was mention of international award-winning writers like Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai, who helped to gain acceptance for writing Indian English that no longer needed foot-noting to explain local nuances and expressions.
Sakina’s Kiss: Kannada author and English translator interviewed- An informative session on the conversation between a successful Kannada novel being translated into English and the process that actually creates two different novels.
The Tharoor Connection: Author/politician in conversation with his sister. This session had the audience lapping up every word, as author/diplomat and Member of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor, chatted with his sister, Smitha, about their love for the English language and the written word.
They claimed that their father was the original inventor of the popular Wordle game, as he threw clues at them on long car journeys. The hall was jam-packed with people squatting on the floor and on the aisle, making Shashi the rock-star author of BLF 2023.
Hindi bole toh bole ke ganwar hai: Translating as “If I speak Hindi. I am considered a bumpkin.” A singing performance in Hindi by Kavish Seth, with funny and philosophical lyrics and a reminder of the diversity of India with its many languages of which English is just one.
Contributed by Melanie P. Kumar: Melanie is a Bangalore, India-based independent writer who has always been fascinated with the magic of words. Links to some of her pieces can be found at gonewiththewindwithmelanie.wordpress.com.
The post Bangalore Literature Festival 2023 – Observations and Inspiration appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
Bangalore Literary Festival 2023 — Observations and Inspiration
It’s such a wonderful feeling to be part of the Bangalore Literary Festival, to know that you’re among kindred spirits — devoted book lovers. Here are some observations and personal reflections on Bangalore Literary Festival 2023.
We are all smiling at one other and find ourselves sharing thoughts with whomever is sitting next to you. It’s enchanting being at the sessions and as the authors talk about their books. You feel that you want to read each and every one of them.
And more than ever, you’re thinking of that book sitting inside your head waiting to be written and feeling inspired to give it a go.
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Our correspondent Melanie Kumar
at Bangalore Literary Festival 2023
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From the Festival organizers:
“The Bangalore Literature Festival celebrates the creative spirit of Bengaluru and commemorates the literary diversity it offers, bringing it in conversation with the best minds in the world of literature. The 2023 edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival is a two-day literary extravaganza that will bring together some of the biggest names in literature – within and outside India.
The objective of the Bangalore Literature Festival is to put together a literary experience that brings writers – both established and aspiring, readers, publishers, students and young professionals and other stakeholders of the city together on a common platform and create a compelling space for engaging and thought-provoking discussions on literature and life.”
Stories from Everywhere (parts 1, 2, & 3): The Moderator, Nilanjan Choudhury, is brilliant in the way he draws in the authors and makes them speak about their stories. These are an eclectic bunch of writers drawn from across the country who have employed the short story format, which according to Nilanjan encapsulates brevity at its best.
The Kashmiri author who has translated from her uncle Harikrishna Kaul’s stories says that the stories come out of one square mile of space and deal with abandonment, alienation, repression of female sexuality and could be termed every person’s story.
The author who has been translated from the Telugu comes from an agricultural family of Dalits (oppressed class and lowest in India’s caste hierarchy) is an activist and feminist and hence is able to look at gender and caste through a different lens.
Another author in the panel says that she opted for a different genre, involving fantasy elements, which she wrote based on her family stories. She says that the emotional impact of these stories, poured out from her in fiction form, over a decade. She did not stress too much about how they would link together in an anthology.
The author from Orissa was different in that she is a serving bureaucrat. Coming from a family where both parents wrote in Oriya, she says that she is better known for her writing than her profession. She says that she thinks that stories are love affairs and she wants to be in one all the time.
The Manipuri author hailing from a conflict zone says that she needs to tell stories that combine genres and also reflect the reality of the society that she lives in. Her very pertinent observation is about how she feels a connection with all the authors in the panel, as if she knows them all from their stories.That to me is the magic of storytelling.
Not Above the Law Session: The journalist/author Manoj Mitta is known to do painstaking research and his latest book on caste brings out the structural inequality of judgements in India and the impunity with which upper castes get away with crimes including rape. The denial of justice to marginalized communities is the thrust of his findings and one can feel the empathy in his arguments.
The others on the panel are lawyers and academics and, in their views, occasionally sound like how they may be speaking in the courts. This panel leaves one with a feeling of disappointment, as they don’t seem to hold out much hope for ordinary citizens in an authoritarian regime.
Meter and Magic, Poetry Reading Session: This is a different kind of session, as the poets come up and perform, some doing so with a great deal of aplomb. Some of the interesting lines that I jotted down:
“Spotless in lifeless.”
“Their hold is real, much more than words reveal.”
“I protest metaphors of love … I protest the question, ‘why do I write’?”
“Your strength is in your silence, mine in my words.”
“Weighed down by the cargo of the past … a room that is not weighed down by yesterday’s conversations.”
“What is the point of it all?”
“What you call reality, is virtual reality?”
“Why are words like this?”
“What if I had no skin, what if I am the barometer?”
“Poetry silenced–died of a heart attack.”
Winners and runners-up of the Deodar Prize: A new prize was instituted this year in partnership with the Bangalore Literature Festival, The Bombay Literary Magazine and Hammock.
Winner: Srividya Tadepalli for “Funeral for a Demon.”
Runners-Up: Samruddhi Ghodgaonkar- “Bats of Paradise.”
Ratul Ghosh: “Ants.”
Plotting Emotion; the Alchemy of Words: The Moderator, Udayan Mitra of Harper Collins, said that his panel had four of the most exciting authors to read.
A first-time woman author in her non-fiction book based on interviews said that she discovered that politics in India is not about binaries and that she wrote keeping these complexities in mind.
The doctor author in the panel said that she started with writing for children and then short stories. She had no idea about publishing and her then Editor had no notion about Coorg, the place that she first located her stories in.
A senior author cum academic spoke about her early struggles when she had to deal with rejections and learnt to pare down her words till Faber finally accepted her novel. She also spoke that whilst being at publicity events was unavoidable, her greatest joy lay in sitting in a room and writing and that she never wrote with a readership in mind but because she had something to say.
A U.S.-based academic and author, spoke about how he tries to blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction and how each day of one’s life is a little story.
Ad Man/Mad Man: Prahlad Kakkar, who had a very successful career in advertising launched his autobiography at BLF 2023. The interview was irreverent, and the book promises to be a laugh riot. “Learn to laugh at yourself,” is the advice that he doled out to the audience.
I Hate Love Stories: The most interesting thing that emerged from this panel is the changing landscape of the characterization of an Indian woman. A sports journalist author spoke about how the right mentor can lift up your writing, while the opposite can happen too.
Another author in this panel lamented on how authoritarianism is crushing society and how digital connectivity has made one realize the similarities that exist across the world. An author who has written about a bisexual woman spoke about how writing this book helped her to have this difficult conversation with her own orientation.
One author spoke about how she liked to challenge herself by bringing in aspects like French philosophy or magical realism. One interesting comment on character formation brought in this line “wanted to kill the Alpha male forever.”
The authors also spoke about creating grey women characters and even having a woman protagonist, who is disliked — quite a change from the earlier days of creating women who had to be liked by all, just as is it real life/
“Merch Masala” and “On the Indian food trail”: All the authors here seemed to agree on authenticity in cooking is a fraught term, as recipes travel from borders to kitchens and across states too and evolve in the process. Another interesting focus was on how foods that are used in India presently like red chilies and potatoes are actually imports.
Creating Worlds: Curating Art and Literature: The curators in this panel, narrated their experiences with bringing forth aspects of India, which is a land of stories and telling these stories employing different formats.
What emerged also was the need to showcase the raw edges of art, without the need for camouflage and application of an inter-disciplinary approach. There was also a valid suggestion to not let festival panels become TikTok memes by restricting the time to just half an hour.
Listen, I Will Tell You: This session involved a free-flowing chat with award-winning Author and Academic, the 87-year-old, Chandrashekhara Kambar with fellow academic and author, Basavaraj Kalgudi. Kambar read excerpts from his novel with a great deal of emotion.
Fields of Fire: Conflicts around the world are discussed, with retired diplomats and an academician in conversation with a journalist. Understandably, with two retired diplomats and an academic on the panel, a lot of heat was generated on this panel.
The conflict in Gaza seemed to hold sway with Israel coming in for a huge amount of criticism over their pounding of Palestine’s civilian population. The international community has no fig leaf to protect themselves from the flouting of all established laws and norms.
The Secret History, On Writing Fiction: Lead on by an accomplished Moderator, the feminist publisher, Urvashi Butalia, this panel served up many insights. The vulnerabilities of women who write and their courage came up for discussion.
Also of importance was mention of international award-winning writers like Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai, who helped to gain acceptance for writing Indian English that no longer needed foot-noting to explain local nuances and expressions.
Sakina’s Kiss: Kannada author and English translator interviewed- An informative session on the conversation between a successful Kannada novel being translated into English and the process that actually creates two different novels.
The Tharoor Connection: Author/politician in conversation with his sister. This session had the audience lapping up every word, as author/diplomat and Member of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor, chatted with his sister, Smitha, about their love for the English language and the written word.
They claimed that their father was the original inventor of the popular Wordle game, as he threw clues at them on long car journeys. The hall was jam-packed with people squatting on the floor and on the aisle, making Shashi the rock-star author of BLF 2023.
Hindi bole toh bole ke ganwar hai: Translating as “If I speak Hindi. I am considered a bumpkin.” A singing performance in Hindi by Kavish Seth, with funny and philosophical lyrics and a reminder of the diversity of India with its many languages of which English is just one.
Contributed by Melanie P. Kumar: Melanie is a Bangalore, India-based independent writer who has always been fascinated with the magic of words. Links to some of her pieces can be found at gonewiththewindwithmelanie.wordpress.com.
The post Bangalore Literary Festival 2023 — Observations and Inspiration appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
December 10, 2023
South African Author Dalene Matthee: A Daughter’s Tribute
South African author Dalene Matthee (1938 – 2005) was best known for her four “Forest novels” presenting stories of the Cape Knysna Forest and its inhabitants. In 2023, I had the good fortune of interviewing Hilary Matthee, one of Dalene Matthee’s three daughters, for an issue of the Afrikaans magazine Taalgenoot.
Matthee’s writings have been translated into multiple languages, including French, German, Icelandic, and English. Matthee would usually translate the first versions of her work into English, believing that it was important to make sure the emotion came across in a “reserved” language.
In 1970, Matthee published her debut children’s novel The Twelve o’ Clock Stick. She published a collection of short stories next, The Judas Goat, in 1982. Several of her works have been adapted to film, including Circles in a Forest (1989), Fiela’s Child (1988 and 2019), and Dreamforest.
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An interview with Hilary Matthee, daughter of Dalene MattheeParts of this interview were translated into English, and then kept in the original language for the piece. Presented here is a reworked version of the original interview.
Dalene Matthee began writing children’s stories for broadcast on radio, sometime after getting married at 18, says Hilary. “Later, she started writing short stories for Sarie and Huisgenoot to fill in the family’s income.”
“She wanted to write a short story like Jack London’s To Build a Fire. Charles Kingsley’s Water-babies also had a large impact on her, and she considered it a large metaphysical work.”
Dalene wrote a series for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), but it was rejected by the television network. “She reworked the two series’ into books, which became Petronella van Aarde, Mayor and A House for Nadia.”
At this time, Matthee found a tree in the middle of the forest – here, the Circles in a Forest that would form the inspiration for the first of four Forest Novels. According to Hilary, Matthee would call the first Forest novel her attempt to write a “glorified fairy tale.”
Hilary remembers sitting around the kitchen table, asking her mother what her favorite characters might have gotten up to today. For 15 years, Hilary joined Matthee assisting in research and odd jobs.
“Dalene always said that writing is an incredibly lonely job; nobody can help you, and you have to be very disciplined,” says Hilary. “Her study had to be organized and clean.”
Matthee also refused the presence of alcohol anywhere near her study. “She used to say that she doesn’t get driven by whims like many other writers, getting up to write in the middle of the night with a glass of wine in hand.”
She wrote her first three forest books by hand, says Hilary. “It had to be a yellow pencil, inlined classroom books. After this, she typed out the manuscript.”
The manuscript for Circles in a Forest was typed on a portable Olivetti typewriter in the days before computers, Hilary notes.
After publishers rejected the original title (Where the Loerie Cries), they settled on Circles in a Forest instead. Loeries, for their call, are also named “go-away birds” — the Knysna Lourie is a prominent feature in the forest that formed much of her inspiration. The Circles in a Forest hiking trail is named in Matthee’s honor, with a memorial to her located at one of her favorite spots in the forest.
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Dalene Matthee’s “Forest Novels”
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Dalene Matthee had once studied music; at Graaff-Reinet she spent time as a music teacher. She also happened to be an avid golfer. Hilary says that her mother never touched a piano again after writing Circles in a Forest – the association between ivory keys and elephants, one would guess.
“Dalene’s research would take an incredible amount of time, up to three years for one book,” Hilary explained.
Fiela’s Child published in 1985, tells the story of Benjamin Koemoetie, an Afrikaner boy adopted by a coloured woman from the Cape, first portrayed by actress Shaleen Surtie-Richards for the 1988 film.
Hilary remembers the process would start with interviews. The interviews would be recorded, after which Dalene would start making notes.
“She spent a lot of time in the Cape Archives, museums, old newspaper clippings, ship records, and letters.” Some of her research took her abroad, such as a trip to Italy (for The Mulberry Forest), or Mauritius (for Pieternella, Daughter of Eva).
The Mulberry Forest (1987) is set in the 1800s, when immigrants from Italy settle in the Knysna Forest in what soon becomes a struggle for their survival against very unfamiliar elements.
“She said research is like gambling: you just can’t stop. Because you never know quite when you’ll find the piece of information that’s worth gold.”
Facts mattered: “Dalene wanted to be known as a responsible researcher. She checked all sources to make sure, because if someone could doubt one fact, they could easily cast doubt on the entire novel.”
The same opinion carried into her personal life. “She could handle a lot, but you could never lie to her. She would always say truth is stronger than lies – and the truth plays a huge role in her stories.”
She never considered herself “famous,” even though her work sold millions of copies internationally. According to Hilary, she once remarked when asked about her fame: “What does it help having the world at my feet, but losing my soul – when my soul is what I’m writing with?”
Dalene donated her life’s work and notes to the National Afrikaans Literary Museum and Research Centre (NALN) in Bloemfontein.
Today, the Circles in a Forest Hiking Trail is a monument to her memory – one of Dalene’s favourite places, and the creative spring that gave rise to many of her thoughts. “It takes you to the heart of the indigenous forest, going past Outeniqua–yellowwood trees that are hundreds of years old.”
Further reading
Dalene Matthee Official Website Visit Knysna: Dalene Matthee Hiking TrailContributed by Alex Jansen, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.
The post South African Author Dalene Matthee: A Daughter’s Tribute appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
