Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog, page 17

Creativity, pain & twittwoo

In the current New Statesman TS Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Julia Copus - who suffers from endemetriosis - makes the point that there is more made of the connection between creativity and mental illness than creativity and physical illness. The link with the physical is just as significant, she says. She speaks specifically of the link between creativity and excruciating pain: 'But always after the pain comes the gradual, miraculous release from pain, and with it the sense that my stay in in...

Who controls the story?

I've been not particularly well this last week and reading Joseph Anton in bed, it's a long book - 600 pages, which on a Kindle can seem endless, you don't get the same sense of progress you get with a paper book - but compelling even though Salman can be a bit up himself. Whatever you think of the man, he can write, and this book is like a banquet of Michelin food and junk food (the bitchiness, the gossip), on which you gorge and have indigestion afterwards and need to take a break. It is al...

Gems (2)

I've been dipping into 'How Fiction Works' by James Wood.  I got it in May 2011 and skim it now and then. Written in very short sections, there are some gems, though sometimes it's a little hardgoing,  a lot of detail about texts I haven't read. And quite a bit on Flaubert and  style indirect libre,  which I vaguely recall from French lectures.

Speaking about the writer Henry Green's attitude to dialogue, Wood says: 'Green argued that dialogue is the best way to communicate...

Trivia quiz on your own book

Am smiling that someone - an American reader, I think (use of 'mom') - has put up a trivia quiz for The State of Me on Goodreads. I got 7 out of 10 and really must look up the others, I have no idea what Chekhov called his dogs. There was a time when I knew my book off by heart.

A game, a film & a book (The Lighthouse)

I woke with a brutal sinus headache (I'm prone since an over zealous use of mothballs triggered inflammation many years ago) and took a handful Nurofen, the only thing that begins to shift it. I've hardly been out this last week, you begin to feel like a mole, and my muscles are fucked from the exertion of the holidays but I had a ball with my nephews, or 'wee meerkats' as I call them. They got a boardgame called Pandemic which I still don't understand, I don't think any of us did, the list o...

A game, a film & a book

I woke with a brutal sinus headache (I'm prone since an over zealous use of mothballs triggered inflammation many years ago) and took a handful Nurofen, the only thing that begins to shift it. I've hardly been out this last week, you begin to feel like a mole, and my muscles are fucked from the exertion of the holidays but I had a ball with my nephews, or 'wee meerkats' as I call them. They got a boardgame called Pandemic which I still don't understand, I don't think any of us did, the list o...

A Norwegian novel & a knighthood

I love the time between Christmas and New Year. It feels like the whole world is resting. A Norwegian friend told me about this novella: The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am by Kjersti A. Skomsvold. The writer  has had ME, my understanding is she has more or less recovered, but I do not know the details of her illness, how long she was ill for. Norway is ahead of the game, so maybe she rested adequately from the start, giving herself a better chance of recovery. I'm told she was in a nurs...

Manto & translation, & Pakistani fathers; & 2013...

This is Saadat Hasan Manto's 50 Mottled Colours, Penguin India, which has an exquisite cover, it came the other day.  The art is by NS Harsha and the painting is 'Melting Wit', you can see the clowns' faces close up here - I'm not sure if they are bleeding or melting. Harsha says: 'I fill my work with gaps and loose ends; I want to lead and mislead the viewer. Ambiguity makes a picture very exciting'.

I've already read 'Toba Tek Singh' online - the first story in this anthology -  an...

Goats going by ambulance

I loved this extract, 'The Saint of Pakistan' - from Benjamin Gilmour's 'Paramédico', published by The Friday Project - in which much-needed goats are delivered by ambulance to poor communities. I had not heard of the remarkable Edhi Foundation, which started with only Abdul Sattar Edhi and an old van - 'the poor man's van' - in the late fifties in Sindh. The extract is, at this time, available as a free download, so go on, go on, go on. And here's more on the truly saint-like Edhi.

Tinsel and Heated Rollers

This is the micro story I contributed to Caroline's fundraising ebook in late spring, 100 RPM. Every story had to be one hundred words or less:
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