The Ghost of Christmas Past, Hilary Mantel, Aubrey Beardsley, Mince Pies

London is as freezing as Boston but it's wonderful to be back home seeing family and friends. There's also a mist lurking outside which makes me think of Dickens' The Ghost Of Christmas Past.
Having just about finished my present-shopping, I snuggled up and dug into the papers. I forgot how much I missed my British supplements. The articles and columns are so much more irreverent than in the States which is so refreshing and makes me feel even more at home.
As always, I feel compelled to make note of a few of them.
A) In The Review section of The Guardian (Sat 22.12.07) there was a fantastic commentary by Hilary Mantel arguing that "Journalism is as fast as the turnover in Topshop, but fiction should be couture." She starts by quoting Martin Amis, "who was pondering the balance that writers seek between journalism and fiction. "I think of writing journalism and criticism as writing left-handed," Amis said, "where the connection isn't to the part of me that novels come from."" I particularly liked the last paragraph of Mantel's article: "Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths. It multiplies ambiguity. It's about the particular, which suggests the general: about inner meaning, seen with the inner eye, always glimpsed, always vanishing, always more or less baffling, and scuffled on to the page hesitantly, furtively, transgressively..."
B) In The Guardian Weekend magazine (22.12.07) there was a very moving, raw excerpt about old age by Diana Athill from her memoir Somewhere Towards The End, to be published by Granta next month. In this magazine there was also a profile of Tang Wei, the upcoming star of Ang Lee's acclaimed new erotic thriller, 'Lust, Caution' which I look forward to seeing. To quote the article: "Lee says the film is a companion piece to Brokeback Mountain. "That was about a lost paradise," he says, "and this is more like hell.""
C) In Times 2 (Nov 27 07), there was a fascinating article by Rachel Campbell-Johnston previewing The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their contemporaries at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The subheading reads "A new exhibition reveals how the erotic images from the imagination of Aubrey Beardsley were soon diluted into the tamer fantasies of children's fairytales," and the article goes on to describe how "at their strongest, the works in this show draw you ever more deeply into a peculiar imaginative place...Some have an almost dizzying force... The balance shifts from the disturbing to the decorative, the perverse to the pretty, the erotic to the merely coquettish... And all we can do is look back slightly giddily at that wierd world we have just walked through, and wonder."
It's dark outside now. I'm off upstairs for some tea and mincepies.
Merry Christmas!

Mount Snowdon, Diaz, Enchanted, Gawande

My study at home is like the Alps. I have so many white mountains of essays to look at that I might start needing a pair of skis. Still, the weather is so gloomy I don't mind being cosy inside sipping chamomile tea.
At least I cleared one mountain range in the living room. I had a Mount Snowdon of Sunday NYTimes newspapers and New Yorkers which I managed to munch through this week, procrastinating from marking. Articles of interest from the Sunday NYTimes were:
a) Movie Deals, an essay in the book review by Rachel Donadio highlighting how some publishers are partnering with film companies eg HarperCollins with Sharp Independent, Random House with Focus Features: "Now, Random House and HarperCollins will get a cut of the box office sales, as well as revenue from DVDs, cable TV and other media. And the authors involved will get more say in choosing screenwriters, actors and directors."
b) A Good Mystery: Why We Read, by Motoko Rich. I like the last paragraph: "But books have outlived many death knells, and are likely to keep doing so. 'I'm much more optimistic than I think most people are,' Mr [Junot] Diaz said. Reading suffers, he says, because it has to compete unfairly with movies, television shows and electronic gadgets whose marketing budgets far outstrip those of publishers. 'Books don't have billion-dollar publicity behind them,' Mr. Diaz said. 'Given the fact that books don't have that, they're not doing a bad job.'"
c) Friending, Ancient or Otherwise by Alex Wright describing how some academic researchers are "exploring the parallels between online social networks and tribal societies. In the collective patter of profile-surfing, messaging and 'friending', they see the resurgence of ancient patters of oral communication.... 'If you examine the Web through the lens of orality, you can't help but see it everywhere,' says Irwin Chen, a design instructor at Parsons..., 'Orality is participatory, interactive, communal and focused on the present. The Web is all of these things.'"
d) The Line Between Homage and Parody by Brooks Barnes, about the Walt Disney Musical Comedy 'Enchanted' - which I look forward to seeing: "Projects like 'Enchanted' indicate that Mr. Iger's [chief executive of Disney] team is trying to take a route down the middle: resisting adding modern touches but referencing them in fresh settings and winking at their old-fashioned charismas. 'It's a very smart approach,' said Robert K. Passikoff, a.. brand consultant in New York. 'Losing a bit of the preciousness keeps these franchises relevant and alive.'"
The Dec 10 edition of The New Yorker had an exceptional array of essays. I particularly enjoyed Alexandra Styron's Reading My Father and Atul Gawande's The Checklist: Intensive care can harm as well as heal, but there's a simple way of improving the odds. My eyes always light up when I see that Gawande has a new article. A surgeon and professor at Harvard Med, he's an exceptional, insightful, compassionate writer. Also, I really enjoyed Louis Menand's essay Woke Up This Morning: Why do we read diaries? There were some very well-articulated observations here eg "The memorializing of the mundane is part of the flattening of foreground-background contrast that makes diaries different from memoirs and other forms of historical narrative. It's also a sign of the diary's absolute fidelity to the present...The just-the-facts elimination of perspective, discrimination, and reflection, and the sense of bathos and non sequitur that sometimes results, fits certain personality types beautifully...", "...And the superego theory [about why people write diaries], of course, is the theory that diaries are really written for the eyes of others. They are exercises in self-justification." This article got me thinking about why I keep a blog. For me, it is a means not only of recording all the wonderful articles I have come across, but also to impose a [however illusory] sense of organization on my life. My life seems more organized if I can write about it, however occasionally and cursorily, if I can put some of my thoughts into neat sentences.
Well, the Alps are staring at me. Better tuck into those portfolios of student essays. I've also got my last class tomorrow for Creative Non Fiction, and we're going to be discussing The Beat Generation.
Happily holidays.

Mabinogion, False Unicorn, Frankincense, Troy

It’s been a misty, wet week but at least we’ve got a turkey in the fridge ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I did manage to get a batch of writing and research done. My novel research took me from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass to the medieval Mabinogion to a revisitation of The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (which I studied at university). I also learnt all about The Akashic records and some super names of herbs of which I was only half familiar eg False Unicorn, Cat’s Foot, Shepherd’s Purse.
For a travel magazine assignment, I also looked into Omani Frankincense. Oman was at the center of Arabia’s famous frankincense trade. This aromatic resin is now mainly used in aromatherapy and perfumery, but in the ancient world it was more important than gold. Every major civilization bought frankincense from the region, Omani frankincense being the best in the world. It was among the three gifts the Magi bought the infant Jesus, as everyone knows.
Other notes: I’m eager to read Peter Ackroyd’s new novel The Fall of Troy, which was favorably reviewed in last week’s New York Times Book Review. The novel fictionalizes the story of the obsessive 19th-century archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann.
I also picked up the free women's magazine "Skirt" in Blockbusters, of all places, and was pleasantly surprised. It's published in a few cities around the US and it was packed full of uplifting pieces - many of them very thoughtful and surprising. Perfect for snuggling up with in bed on a weeknight, after a bubble bath. You can also read it online: http://www.skirt.com.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Eisteddfod NY 2007, Andrei Platonov

If any of you are in New York this weekend, do check out the NY Eisteddfod - a showcase of folkmusic from around the world. Unlike the famous annual National Eisteddfod of Wales, there won't be a strong druidic flavor, but they've got an impressive scope of talented folk artists including the "Karelian Ensemble", a trio from the Russian-Finnish border that performs old shepherd melodies on wooden trumpet and local dance tunes on accordians. You can view the preview I wrote for Time Out NY here:
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/article/music/24196/eisteddfod-ny-2007
As for Andrei Platonov, I recently discovered him in the New Yorker. They published his recently translated story "Among Animals And Plants." I'm definitely going to read more of his work. I love the line in the opening paragraph: "At this time of year, a whiff of mist hung in the forest - from the warmth and moisture of the air, the breath of developing plants, and the decay of leaves that had perished long ago."

Hansel and Gretel/Dark Chocolate/Manga/Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work

Well, the gloves and scarfs are out. Winter definitely sharpened its claws in Boston this week. But the sun's shining, and the sky's a smooth swish of blue, so I'm not complaining - yet.
Last night I snuggled up on the sofa and munched through the pile of newspapers/magazines which I hadn't got around to reading properly the past fortnight. I particularly enjoyed Bill Buford's profile in the Oct 29 edition of The New Yorker: "Extreme Chocolate: Searching for the perfect bean, in Bahia", about Frederick Schilling who opened a chocolate factory and founded Dagoba Organic Chocolate. It's a great story, which includes a description of how Schilling was convinced he was visited by Xochiquetzal, the Aztec goddess of cacao. Other note-worthy articles I happened upon were "How Manga [comics/print cartoons] Conquered The US: A graphic guide to Japan's coolest export" by Jason Thompson in Wired magazine, and, in the Nov 5 edition of The New Yorker, a superb portfolio of evocative pictures inspired by the fairytale Hansel and Gretel: seventeen artists were asked by the Metropolitan Opera to offer their own interpretations of the story to mark the new production of Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel" (the original artworks can be viewed at the Metropolitan Opera House's Gallery Met).
I've also discovered a new writer - Jason Brown. His short story collection "Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work" caught my eye in Barnes and Noble and when I started reading his story "Trees", I couldn't put it down. His voice is very distinct - haunting, raw, unexpected. One of his stories ends "He turned around and looked up, as if at a mountain peak or a descending plane, but there was nothing above except a line of high white clouds pulling up over the valley like a cold sheet."
Well, I'm off to write now. I've been a bit stuck on one section of the novel for a couple of days and I talked it over with Christian who came up with some magical ideas within seconds. I got incredibly excited. Anyway, I'm all set to go back to the lake and forest again now.

Welcome, and Mulberry Tree/Pyramus and Thisbe

Hello! So you've tumbled down the rabbit hole and found yourself here. I can't promise a tea party, but hopefully you'll find something which will tickle your interest. Yikes, how to start a blog? Perhaps I'll begin by describing where I'm writing from, my study (or burrow as my husband likes to call it), surrounded by a treasure of magical books (favorites include The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr, How To Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Completely Unexpected Tales by Roald Dahl, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake). On the wall in front of me are sketches of forests in Wales by my grandmother (a painter and cartoonist), all kinds of Post-Its which are supposed to remind me of a variety of things - like joining the Boston mycological society, that I want an owl and mist in the next section of my new novel, Into The Lake, that I should read the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which has repeatedly been recommended to me.
Yesterday, in honor of Halloween, my husband and I ate ghost-shaped biscuits and watched the movie, A Dark Place, a very loose adaptation of The Turn Of The Screw, directed by Donato Rotunno. It was an interesting script, with some evocative shots and moments, and the children actors were fantastic - the way they kept smiling was distinctly creepy. Tara Fitzgerald also gave a stellar performance as the house-keeper. However, the plot conclusion was unsatisfying.
I'll leave it there for the moment - I haven't eaten breakfast yet and I'm off to make myself some oatmeal with chopped banana. Then I'll work on Into The Lake for an hour of so before heading to BC. My students are exceptionally bright this year, an absolute treat to teach. On Tuesday we discussed the essays "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me" by Sherman Alexie and "On Keeping A Notebook" by Joan Didion, and today we're workshopping some of their own pieces.
Sophie
p.s. I titled this post so because I fell asleep last night thinking of the mulberry tree which grew in a shadowy corner of our garden, growing up. My mother baked the most delicious cakes from its fat, succulent fruit but always dreaded the time when the mulberries ripened. We would inevitably stain our clothes whenever we climbed the old, gnarled tree to pick the deep-purple berries. But how exquisitely delicious they were... on a different level of scrumptiousness even to the best blackberries. You can check out Ovid's Metamorphoses (Bk 4) to learn the Classical myth about how the tree came to grow these blood-red berries.