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!
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
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.
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.
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