New Yorker Fiction Podcasts
Now I've written that title there's not much more to say really is there. They've just started doing them. And it's my new favourite thing.
oceans and oddballs
Oceans.
'You don't know what it will become, what it will bring you, and that is precisely why you must accept it. Otherwise you are only half alive, you are living like a nonswimmer wading near the shore, while the ocean is not really the ocean until you are out of your depth.'
Oddballs.
'Oddballs have an easy life when they succeed in making people respect their oddballness', said Olga.
how to read
I discovered Doris Lessing in Brazil. She wasn't there in person (that I know of) but I did take the Golden Notebook, which blew my mind. I'd been meaning to read her for ages and finally got round to it.
And isn't this on how to read, wonderful? I wish someone had said all this to me when I was 12. I kind of got there by myself in the end, but in a half hearted unarticulated kind of way. Which is now a fully corroborated rubber-stamped-by-Doris-Lessing way.
lovely old books
2 new books my house got for
Christmas. Both genius. Both heralding an odd embracing of 50's
housewifeliness in me that frankly no one could have predicted.
The first is the genius Margaret Briggs'ingeniously titled Bicarbonate of Soda: A Very Versatile Natural
Substance. I am not kidding: this book
changes your life. My household surfaces are sparkling like Doris Day's teeth from this
funny paste you can make mixing soda and water (with a touch of vinegar for the
really stubborn stuff). In fact my teeth are sparkling like Doris Day's
after brushing with the stuff. My cupboards are stacked with the stuff. I'm
baking soda bread... quick-bake homemade pizza. Enjoying
housework. (Not the last bit. That's untrue.)
You can even make old fashioned lemonade (that you have to drink before the fizz goes) and sherbert fountains with this stuff. How did I not know this? Why do I care? Is it some general zeitgeist-y embracing of traditional values? Is being married just screwing my brain? God knows, but god knows I love it. The funny clipped tone, the motherly advice. Can't get enough.
And the second is the (again superbly titled) Thank you Mr Columbus by the impressive Ruth Chier Rosen.
She was practically a celebrity chef before celebrity chefs. That biog gives Nigella a run for her money.
It comes in a box.
It has an easy-thumb index system.
The food photography is breathtaking.
There's even a bit on safety in the home at the back.
Which makes me wonder if people used to be more stupid. Come on. Look at that cable. Who does that? And who feels the need to tell women not to do that?
Excellent publications both.
sort of update
So I just
finished this. And it was a whole 400
page load of disappointment. I mean it was good and everything. Just not for
me. But I persisted because I'd liked Death of an Ordinary Man so much. Definitely a dip in my fledgling relationship
with Glen. I'm undeterred in my plan to take up Faris' recommendation
of I Lucifer at some point. But a
break's in order first.
Since it's been such a while since I've caught up with Sort of Book Club, here's a quick roundup of the biggest finds.
Alice Munro's Runaway gave me a glorious few days a while back. The kind of writing that makes me wonder. And then wonder whether maybe I could do it.
Finally I
found an Ian McEwan book I liked without
reservation. And I think it was because
Chesil Beach is set in the 60's that his funny self-referential tone seems to
have left him.
But the
real knockout highlight has been The Master by Colm Toibin. Not read any of his stuff before, but this
was simply magnificent - if a little painful at times to read about my all time
hero being less than perfect. This has
sparked a whole new phase of my obsession with the Jameses (Henry and
William).
indexed gets published
A Perfect blog/book crossover. I'm buying.
expanding, seeking, repeating
I read this book recently and a couple of things are sticking in my head. One is that you can divide people into two categories: Expanders and Seekers. Expanders make the most of the bird in the hand. They're generally more content. Seekers are always looking for something more. Meaning, people, experiences. And the two kinds go well together. Nothing else to say about that, just thought it was interesting.
The second thing was one of characters (a Seeker) saying that to repeat your choices (of curry, books, experiences) was anti life. I'm not sure about this. I wonder if habit, and meaning through habit is one of the most pro life (as in not anti life - obviously not in the family planning sense), human things there is.
Anyway. It's a good book.
in print
I always
dreamt of having my name on a book. The idea was that I'd have written it, which is far from the case
here, but still. Here it is (along with lots of other far more talented souls who were involved).
star struck
I was out on a bookshopping assignment with young Jason (not this Jason - I have another one at my new work) last week, when in Foyles I came face to face with an all time hero of mine.
There in the same aisle, looking less small than I remembered, a bit flustered and very lovely, was Kazuo Ishiguro. I've seen him before at a talk he gave at a festival, and generally pride myself on not getting star struck about anyone, but. But. Nothing prepared me for this.
So obviously I pretended to ignore him. And when he'd passed by ran over to Jason (quietly poring over the photography section) and scream-whispered 'Oh my god do you know who Kazuo Ishiguro? No?! One of my all time heroes. I don't usually get star struck at all but I really am. I don't know what to do!'
'Talk to him?' Jason carefully suggested.
'Oh god I don't know what to say. I'll just sound like everyone else.'
But he's right, I thought. Just tell him how much you love him - no! Not him...his work.
I strolled back to the music section and started thinking through what to say. By the time I'd composed something that didn't sound psychotic, or that didn't start with 'You're Kazuo Ishiguro aren't you?' he'd left the building.
And I wish I'd just said how much his writing means to me. Just that. I think if I was a writer I'd never get tired of people saying that after all. Even if they were in some febrile mess. What stuck in my head was a glimpse of the hunted in his eyes when he recognised my stifled recognition. I think that I'd probably get tired of.
Anyway, wherever you are Mr Ishiguro, the girl was me, and I wish I'd said something.
the summer book notes
The Summer Book is a beautiful one.
Not least because of the attention to its spirit shown by this particular edition.
It reminded me of my grandparents. Codes and rules and patterns outside of my own first home, that were a little foreign, unsaid, comforting, and right. The little girl liking the hours her father put in at his desk because it meant she knew where he was. I understand that. A Scandinavian way of living. A certain peculiar (to us) sense of hospitality and warmth. The norms and rules of the sea. All of these things were familiar and lovely to me. Wrapped in the microcosms of a tiny family, an island, a childhood.
The tolerance of eccentricity in a child is seen as a virtue, unconsciously. Not seeing eccentricity as eccentricity is the key. The honesty that can be found between the very old and the very young. The natural (not intellectual) attraction. The resentment, annoyances, grievances and frustrated entitlement. The luxury, as a child, of being able to say 'I hate you' as well as 'I love you.' Of course it's a book written by someone who understood children very well.
The old lady's predicament is striking too. The waves of apathy a vital woman suffers as she grows from old to very old. A dawning realisation that nothing matters: it is all swallowed by time, and time is all the same. It made me think how frantic we are to make...something. But it all fades. And there is something beautiful about glimpsing this realisation, and yet not fully realising it. If we did, we'd stop. And as we don't, we continue, with a little more perspective after reading things like this.
And a very strange thing I noticed: the publisher. 'Sort Of'. It's a nice coincidence.
My favourite bits:
"Do you know what it feels like when you dive?"
"Of course I do," her grandmother said. "You let go of everything and get ready and just dive. You can feel the seaweed against your legs. It's brown, and the water's clear, lighter towards the top, with lots of bubbles. And you glide. you hold your breath and glide and turn and come up, let yourself rise and breathe out. And then you float. Just float."
"And all the time with your eyes open," Sophia said.
"Naturally. People don't dive with their eyes shut."
---
Only farmers and summer guests walk on the moss, What they don't know - and it cannot be repeated too often - is that moss is terribly frail. Step on it once and it rises the next time it rains. The second time, it doesn't rise back up. And the third time you step on moss, it dies.
---
Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking rasperries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only white.
---
What he did like was harder to put your finger on, but perfectly understandable. His attention and his sudden wishes raced here and there across the water like ocean breezes, and he lived in a perpetual state of quiet excitement.
The big events always take place far out in the skerries, and time is often of the essence. Only small things happen in among the islands, but these, too - the odd jobs that arise from the whims of the summer people - have to be dealt with...A person can find anything if he takes the time, that is, if he can afford to look. And while he's looking, he's free, and he finds things he never expected.
Eriksson was the man who fulfilled these dreams. No one knew exactly what he found for himself along the way - probably a lot less than people thought. But he went on doing it anyway, perhaps for the sake of the search.
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