Zina Rohan's Blog, page 2
December 14, 2012
More on Amazon
Well, it turns out that independent booksellers in the UK are reporting an upturn in their sales as people shun Amazon in outrage over its failure to pay tax in the UK, despite its huge profits. How much shunning will be necessary?
December 3, 2012
Boycott Amazon?
Three multinationals are in trouble in the UK: Google, Amazon and Starbucks. Why? Because they make gazillions here but don't pay tax. Starbucks tried to make out that this was because they weren't making a profit...until they were caught out boasting to their shareholders how much they HAD made. Amazon and Google do it by holding their money off-shore in tax havens.
Starbucks is now in discussions with the revenue because customers are beginning to boycott their set-up. This is easier to do than boycotting Amazon and Google.
Ideas, anyone?
Starbucks is now in discussions with the revenue because customers are beginning to boycott their set-up. This is easier to do than boycotting Amazon and Google.
Ideas, anyone?
November 12, 2012
Bursts of Intensity
I'm readingBrief Interviews with Hideous Men. I'm not sure if these were written before he wrote Infinite Jest, after or during. But some of these scenes, sketches, observations - whatever you like to call them - reappear in different guise, and often truncated in the long novel. They are so intense I cannot read straight through, but by god this man had an eye and an ear. And the longish piece about a clinically depressed girl who works in a call centre, from where she phones what is referred to as her "support system" - those unfortunate girl friends her therapist has recommended she contact in moments of greatest need.
The language of the therapist, the level of the girl's despair, her ability to see herself as her support system might see her while being unable to do anything about it...all this is written without mercy, by someone who clearly knew about it better than he can have wished. Some of this book is of course very funny. But you can only take it in short bursts. Amazing, astonishing bursts!
The language of the therapist, the level of the girl's despair, her ability to see herself as her support system might see her while being unable to do anything about it...all this is written without mercy, by someone who clearly knew about it better than he can have wished. Some of this book is of course very funny. But you can only take it in short bursts. Amazing, astonishing bursts!
October 15, 2012
Not Enough Happiness for Me
I'm not sure what to say. I have heard that Alice Munro is one of the great short story writers of our day, and I had read nothing until now although I had seen the wonderful film, Away From Her, that was based on one of her stories. But this collection, Too Much Happiness,has puzzled me.
There is something turgid, although deeply competent, about the writing; and a similarity in structure to all the pieces in the volume. Start with a moment, then long flash back and back story, then return to the moment and move on from it.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed them, but I am not sure I would want read more of her stories. Will someone please tell me I am wrong?
There is something turgid, although deeply competent, about the writing; and a similarity in structure to all the pieces in the volume. Start with a moment, then long flash back and back story, then return to the moment and move on from it.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed them, but I am not sure I would want read more of her stories. Will someone please tell me I am wrong?
October 11, 2012
What Writers Do or Ought to
An old friend, and the man who was my first (and second) publisher before he left publishing, moved to New York, married a literary agent and started producing non-fiction books of his own, has been showing me some chapters from the one he's working on, about creative writing. For anyone interested, this is Richard Cohen By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions, who has also edited Madeleine Albright's and Rudy Giuliani's autobiographies.
The latest chapter he's put my way is from the upcoming book - the creative writing one. It's about Openers: how to start a book (you can surely tell from the first sentence of this blog that I haven't learned much). He gives lots of examples of different ways novelists have begun their books and why they did so: why some of these work, some don't, and some no longer do for modern readers although they did once.
He includes a part of the preface to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn thus: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Disingenuous? Just neat? It certainly establishes the voice, most wonderfully. But did Twain wish to be taken seriously? There's been some slightly heated discussion in the Bookish group about Huck Finn...these lines give me pause.
The latest chapter he's put my way is from the upcoming book - the creative writing one. It's about Openers: how to start a book (you can surely tell from the first sentence of this blog that I haven't learned much). He gives lots of examples of different ways novelists have begun their books and why they did so: why some of these work, some don't, and some no longer do for modern readers although they did once.
He includes a part of the preface to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn thus: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Disingenuous? Just neat? It certainly establishes the voice, most wonderfully. But did Twain wish to be taken seriously? There's been some slightly heated discussion in the Bookish group about Huck Finn...these lines give me pause.
September 29, 2012
eBooks and Memory
I was listening to a BBC radio programme yesterday evening about Edith Wharton. Various people were talking about various of her novels, all of which I had read. But I couldn't remember, just from the titles, which was which. Is it my poor memory, I wondered (it could well be), or has it to do with her titles, or could it be that I had read them all on my Kindle? There are no running headers on a Kindle, and no cover on the book you pick up each day to imprint on the mind's eye.
Mind you, back in the day when Penguin covers were all the same, was this a problem?
Mind you, back in the day when Penguin covers were all the same, was this a problem?
September 16, 2012
280 Million writers? Eek!
I've just been to a weekend masterclass (100 pupils) on self-publishing. My previous publisher, Portobello, are no longer publishing any English-language fiction. Other publishers, not unreasonably, are toying with panic at the possible collapse of book-selling if the Waterstone's chain should fail; at the recession; at the power of Amazon and the court case in the US that has just found in favour of Amazon (despite its growing monopoly) and against a cohort of publishers who wanted to be able to fix the prices of ebooks. For writers who are not instant money-spinners, traditional publishing for fiction now seems closed. Therefore...
The masterclass was interesting. Not necessarily a cause for great optimism, but made me think it's worth the try. Meanwhile, a statistic they came up with: in the US, there are 280 million people who feel they have a book in them, and intend at some point to write it. Now that WOULD make for a crowded market.
The masterclass was interesting. Not necessarily a cause for great optimism, but made me think it's worth the try. Meanwhile, a statistic they came up with: in the US, there are 280 million people who feel they have a book in them, and intend at some point to write it. Now that WOULD make for a crowded market.
August 13, 2012
Books! Beware!
I was at a cafe this afternoon. At the next table, two young women:
Woman 1: Do you like books?
Woman 2: No way! Books killed my dad.
Woman 1: But you're studying English, aren't you?
Woman 2: Yeah. Why else would I have Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in my bag? (she pulls it out as evidence)
Woman 1: Well, do you like that?
Woman 2: No, it's awful.
I was left wondering how her dad died? What was he reading at the time? Or did the bookshelf fall on him?
Woman 1: Do you like books?
Woman 2: No way! Books killed my dad.
Woman 1: But you're studying English, aren't you?
Woman 2: Yeah. Why else would I have Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in my bag? (she pulls it out as evidence)
Woman 1: Well, do you like that?
Woman 2: No, it's awful.
I was left wondering how her dad died? What was he reading at the time? Or did the bookshelf fall on him?
July 18, 2012
Infinite Jest
‘A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy…’ said Hamlet of Yorick by Ophelia’s grave. But in David Foster Wallace’s novel the infinite jest is the name of a lost film made by the now self-deceased father of Hal Incandenza, tennis junior star, brilliant young mind but also, junkie. This film turns out to be the ultimate upper (or downer) but whatever you can’t be without it. Watch it once and you’ll drool your life away, anything so long as you can watch it again, and then again and then again.
Strands of plot are after this film for reasons of state, international fractured relations, terror at the hands of sectarian breakaway Quebecois wheelchair assassins, but also the deniable nonspecific forces of the newly-formed O.N.A.N (the Organisation of North American Nations) of which the US has become Interdependently a part along with the despised Canadians, the Concavity to the US Convexity (or the other way round).
ONAN: what’s it make you think of? Wankers? Or an anagram of ANON as in anonymous as in AA or NA because, believe you me, the US part of O.N.A.N is addicted to the hilt – not only young Hal (Hamlet?) ((There are echoes of Hamlet that get raised then dropped – but no matter)): booze, drugs, cooked and cooked-up, but ways of wasting pointless lives too. Mega-pap and corporate nonsense so that even Time has been put out to tender to the highest bidder, sponsored, bought, branded year by year - The Year of the Adult Depend Undergarment, or the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad , or the Trial Size Dove Bar etc etc ( a somewhat medicalised, none-too-fragrant- sounding calendar).
At the top of the hill, somewhere near Boston, is the Ennet Tennis Academy for upscale smooth-skinned tennis-show-pro wannabes, all hormones and diets and players’ superstitions, locker rooms and shower room stinks. Down the hill is the Ennet junkies’ half way house recovery centre where the (mostly) underclass have crawled in their final desperation, for 12-step or 13-step sampler cliché proto-religious homilies to keep coming back, take it day by day.
A resident staffer at the Ennet House recovery centre is big Don Gately, and by big I mean big, erstwhile professional burglar, one of whose burglings went seriously if inadvertently wrong. He’s the most realised character of the lot and hogs the tale as the pages march goes by. But he’s only one of a cast-list of hundreds, many of them getting their maps gruesomely eliminated, or planning the same for others, altogether a cartographer’s nightmare.
It would be a spoiler to give away the plot. Actually that was just an excuse because although I read this more or less straight through in the sense that I didn’t do much else, I couldn’t summarise the plot even without having my knuckles rapped by a moderator. I’m not sure I really know what happened at all. What’s more I couldn’t care less because I don’t think it matters.
In 1996 when the book came out, the New York Times observed that ‘while there are many uninteresting pages in this novel, there are not many uninteresting sentences.’ Yes. Indeed. At over 1000 pages (a lot fewer than he, DFW, originally handed in, this book is too long by some hundreds of them. But which ones? If you’re looking at structure by any usual measure you might, I suppose, strip out enough to make the thing clear. But clear in what sense, for what purpose, and for whom?
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite so detailed, where every marvellous sentence describes so minutely a world of such ugliness. There is not one image of beauty. Not one. And only one trusting individual, and one moment of genuine love – though a number that might like to be taken as such.
Infuriating, confusing, completely compelling, deeply, deeply sad. Dave Eggers insists in the forward that DFW is a normal guy. He has to be kidding, Dave Eggers.
Strands of plot are after this film for reasons of state, international fractured relations, terror at the hands of sectarian breakaway Quebecois wheelchair assassins, but also the deniable nonspecific forces of the newly-formed O.N.A.N (the Organisation of North American Nations) of which the US has become Interdependently a part along with the despised Canadians, the Concavity to the US Convexity (or the other way round).
ONAN: what’s it make you think of? Wankers? Or an anagram of ANON as in anonymous as in AA or NA because, believe you me, the US part of O.N.A.N is addicted to the hilt – not only young Hal (Hamlet?) ((There are echoes of Hamlet that get raised then dropped – but no matter)): booze, drugs, cooked and cooked-up, but ways of wasting pointless lives too. Mega-pap and corporate nonsense so that even Time has been put out to tender to the highest bidder, sponsored, bought, branded year by year - The Year of the Adult Depend Undergarment, or the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad , or the Trial Size Dove Bar etc etc ( a somewhat medicalised, none-too-fragrant- sounding calendar).
At the top of the hill, somewhere near Boston, is the Ennet Tennis Academy for upscale smooth-skinned tennis-show-pro wannabes, all hormones and diets and players’ superstitions, locker rooms and shower room stinks. Down the hill is the Ennet junkies’ half way house recovery centre where the (mostly) underclass have crawled in their final desperation, for 12-step or 13-step sampler cliché proto-religious homilies to keep coming back, take it day by day.
A resident staffer at the Ennet House recovery centre is big Don Gately, and by big I mean big, erstwhile professional burglar, one of whose burglings went seriously if inadvertently wrong. He’s the most realised character of the lot and hogs the tale as the pages march goes by. But he’s only one of a cast-list of hundreds, many of them getting their maps gruesomely eliminated, or planning the same for others, altogether a cartographer’s nightmare.
It would be a spoiler to give away the plot. Actually that was just an excuse because although I read this more or less straight through in the sense that I didn’t do much else, I couldn’t summarise the plot even without having my knuckles rapped by a moderator. I’m not sure I really know what happened at all. What’s more I couldn’t care less because I don’t think it matters.
In 1996 when the book came out, the New York Times observed that ‘while there are many uninteresting pages in this novel, there are not many uninteresting sentences.’ Yes. Indeed. At over 1000 pages (a lot fewer than he, DFW, originally handed in, this book is too long by some hundreds of them. But which ones? If you’re looking at structure by any usual measure you might, I suppose, strip out enough to make the thing clear. But clear in what sense, for what purpose, and for whom?
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite so detailed, where every marvellous sentence describes so minutely a world of such ugliness. There is not one image of beauty. Not one. And only one trusting individual, and one moment of genuine love – though a number that might like to be taken as such.
Infuriating, confusing, completely compelling, deeply, deeply sad. Dave Eggers insists in the forward that DFW is a normal guy. He has to be kidding, Dave Eggers.
