Emails from Colombia (as posted on the Words Without Borders website)

The past few weeks I have been in a fascinating email dialogue with Hernan Torres, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the Universidad del Cauca in Popayán, Colombia. Previously a Fulbright Scholar and Research Fellow at Washington University in St Louis, he is now in charge of editing Cuadernos de Antropologia y Poética, an interdisciplinary publication on poetics and interpretive anthropology. He also translates English, French and German poets into Spanish. He explained that his reasons for translating were rooted in his work as an interpretive anthropologist: “I have always been very interested in symbols and their multiple meanings. I have attempted to employ poetic translations—language into language—as a metaphor to better explain the various problems and complexities involved in the process of translating cultures.”

Torres is also the grandson of Guillermo Valenica (1873-1943), the significant Colombian poet and translator who was one of the leaders of modernismo. This experimental movement in Spanish literature was distinguished by its exotic imagery and its rejection of the materialist world of the day. It provoked a striking intellectual awaking in Latin America and its effects could be felt even in politics and economics. Notably, although Valencia’s poetry dealt predominantly with the fate of the poet in an indifferent world, he led an active political career as a statesman and diplomat and was twice a candidate for the presidency of Colombia. He is best known for his first volume of poetry, Ritos (1898, rev. ed. 1914), which contained both original poems and free translations from French, Italian and Portuguese. In his later years he abandoned original poetry almost entirely, concentrating on translations. Unfortunately his work has not been formally translated into English, although you can view some of his poems online in Spanish: http://www.los-poetas.com/e/vale.htm.

Torres also mentioned to me that he himself writes poetry and is putting together “a small text” which he plans possibly to name Homo Poeta (antología minima). His son-in-law, Andre Torres, who is friends with my husband, tells me that he is exceptionally talented. I look forward to reading it. I also hope to continue our email dialogue and further, to understand the merits and constraints of translation from an anthropological perspective.

A Yemeni poet: Muhammad al Sharafi (as posted on the Words Without Borders website)

And here I am, behind my cloak
An ardent hope and a burning fever
I thirst for meeting with you,
My beloved
But there is my veil, my curse,
O my beloved.
—(M. al Sharafi, 1970, translation Carla Makhlouf)

A week ago, I came across the book “Changing Veils” (1979), an absorbing study of women and modernization in North Yemen (the former, pre-unification Republic Of Yemen). The author, Carla Makhlouf, is an anthropologist by training who currently works for the World Health Organization. Although the book was written nearly 30 years ago, Makhlouf’s study still has relevance today; moreover as one of her sources she draws on some of the provocative work of contemporary Yemeni poets, mainly the controversial Muhammad al Sharafi, who died five years ago. I read her book straight through in one afternoon; I could not put it down.

A detailed profile of Sharafi’s life and work can be viewed in his obituary in the Yemen Times. Firm in his belief in “the emancipation of the Yemeni individual—female as well as male,” Sharafi was a groundbreaking poet who courageously championed the female cause. Some of his poems address women directly, others are written from the point of view of the woman herself. His first book, Tears Of The Veil, generated a social and religious uproar and his later books, too, display a refreshing audacity as they explore the plight of the Yemeni female. Working in one of the most conservative and restrictive societies in the world, Sharafi opposed the traditions that limited the female voice and he subverts convention by using his work to shed light on the female experience. His brave convictions and powerful poetic talent combine to produce exceptionally striking and heart-breaking poems. I only wish that his work received more international exposure.

Indeed, there is a lack of international awareness of Yemeni poetry in general, despite its abundance and rich cultural heritage (an abundance at least of poetry written by Yemeni men). I was struck by Makhlouf’s statement in Changing Veils that “before the Revolution of 1962, education for the female was restricted to reading the Koran and did not include writing, except for a few upper-class women.” But she points out that since then things have slowly been changing. She forwarded me an article on a pilot project launched by a New York-based anthropologist, Najwa Adra, to combat illiteracy among Yemeni women. Adra’s program, Literacy Through Poetry, “seeks to teach rural and urban women literacy skills through writing and documenting their own poetry and that of other women in the community.” The project was initially supported by the World Bank and is now administered by the Social Fund for Development in Yemen. You can view the article here.

It was a treat to have been plunged into such a different world, after I stumbled upon Changing Veils. Makhlouf makes a convincing argument that the veil, and the lifestyle it is part of, empowers women as much as it might seem to restrict and circumscribe them. Her concluding chapter includes some wonderful translations of Sharafi’s most moving and controversial poetry. Sharafi is unafraid of expressing the frustration and intensity of suppressed female passion. His writing is fearless and arresting, raw and angry. Underneath their veils his women are not usually sweet or serene. Rather they are fiercely-feeling, complex individuals, bubbling cauldrons of intense emotions and sexual desires. No wonder his work didn’t sit easily in his homeland. Indeed it no doubt scared the life out of many Yemeni males who perhaps for the first time were exposed to the unveiling of their country’s enduring female hearts.

Let him see me without a veil
Smell my perfume and reap my fruits
I am a woman, in my blood is
A violent spring which fears autumn nights.

Pen World Voices 2008: Writing Sexuality (As posted on the Words Without Borders website)

I’ve just returned from New York where I attended the panel discussion ‘Writing Sex and Sexuality’, one of the many and varied events hosted by PEN as part of their festival of international literature. I was particularly interested in this event since my novel The Mushroom Man included some sexually explicit scenes which provoked quite a few comments from readers, and recently I had an essay on sex forthcoming in the upcoming anthology Behind The Bedroom Door until I chickened out and withdrew it. I decided that some things were precious (my real life) and that whilst I was quite happy writing fictional sex scenes, writing autobiographical sex scenes was not something I felt entirely comfortable about airing in the open.

Catherine Millet, on the other hand, author of the shocking, bestselling memoir The Sexual Life of Catherine M. does not seem to have any inhibitions about dishing the dirt. This Parisian founder and editor of the modern art magazine Art Press was one of the four panelists on the discussion, the other three being Amanda Michalopoulou, a prolific Greek author and journalist, Anja Sicking from Holland, author of The Silent Sin, and Yael Hedaya from Israel, author of the acclaimed novel Accidents. The event was skillfully moderated by Rakesh Satayl, an editor at HarperCollins and author of the forthcoming novel Blue Boy.

It was a very engaging and stimulating debate. Particularly noteworthy was to learn how significantly these authors’ ideas of sexuality as children had been influenced by books (Hedaya cited Lady’s Chatterley’s Lover and Lolita). This is in contrast, the panel agreed, with the way it is now with their own children who are rather absorbed by the internet and film. This led to the panelists articulating exactly what sex scenes in books can do that sex scenes in other media (eg film) cannot do. For example Michalopoulou mentioned the beauty of how the writer can communicate exactly what each person engaging in the sex scene is thinking, whereas in film these intimate cogitations can only be suggested. There was also some lively conversation about different nationalities’ attitude towards, and comfort about, talking about sex. Sicking made the amusing observation that cultures which were very happy speaking about it so freely and plastering it all over their media (eg Americans) were often more prudish and inhibited when it came to the actual practice of it (”if they speak about it so much they probably aren’t getting it so much”). Generally it was agreed that national stereotypes regarding sex were unhelpful. Millet mentioned that she expected her book to do really well in Italy (Italians stereotyped as being sexually uninhibited). However, the contrary proved true—it did much better in countries traditionally known to be more conservative. It was, perhaps, the panel agreed, more a generational issue, older generations being more reluctant to accept explicit language.

When the panel was opened to the floor, I asked the four writers about their experience of translation regarding sex in their works. Since they were all foreigners who were fluent in English and therefore could be decent judges, what did they make of the English translation of their writing? Had things been lost/gained in the translation of the sex scenes originally written in their native language? Hedaya gave a very encouraging answer. She said that she felt that it was actually in the English translation that she felt her sex scenes were properly expressed. She explained how modern Hebrew is a relatively new language and how the range of words to describe sex is very limited: “they are either too slutty or the vocabulary of a gynecologist.” She spoke of how it was a challenge to describe a sex scene in her native language but that in English what she meant to communicate became clear.

I left the discussion feeling that it was an hour and a half very well spent, and it also encouraged me not to shy away from explicit description of sex in my own writing—in my fiction at least. The uniqueness and beauty of fiction is its ability to enter deep into the individual’s interior world. To shy away from describing sex, which has a significance for most individuals, is to shy away from fully exploring a character. Fearless writing is the only interesting writing.

I’d just like to add a couple of thing before signing off. Two excellent articles caught my eye recently: A profile on the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany in the Sunday New York Times magazine (04.27.08), and a profile on the young Belarusian Poet Valzhyna Mort in Poets And Writers Magazine (May/June). Both are well worth a read.

Peter Island, The Bell Ringer, sea jellies, Mabinogi blog

Finally, I’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole again. It’s been a bit of a grim past three months as I was sick, but I’m very much on the mend and I had many magical experiences on the way which makes me wonder whether this wasn’t such a horrid experience after all. My family have been a host of angels, and it confirmed that I do indeed have the most incredible, loving and wise mother in the world (not that I needed it confirming but…). Last week, my father was working in the British Virgin Islands and I went down to visit him and my mother for a week on Peter Island (a treat to help me get well – sunshine and maternal pampering being the best healing combo I discovered). My brother also took time off work to come for a few days. It was one of the most special, wonderful times of my life. The island was one of the most beautiful, tranquil places on earth and I will never forget the walks I took with my mother and brother when we talked about so many things.
To get down to the articles that caught my eye:
1. The Sunday NYTimes book review (4.6.08) of Benazir Bhutto’s ‘Reconciliation’ by Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International: “..Written while she was preparing to re-enter political life, it is a book of enormous intelligence, courage and clarity. It contains the best-written and most persuasive modern interpretation of Islam I have read.”
2. The Sunday NYimes book review (3.30.08) of Parag Khanna’s “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order”: “Now a young..foreign-policy scholar, Parag Khann, suggests…that we are on the cusp of a new new world order – ‘a multipolar and multicivilizational world of three distinct superpowers competing on a planet of shrinking resources.’ The three are the US, the European Union and China. The contest now is primarily for the world’s limited resources and it will be waged in Khanna’s second world… And since each of the new empires has nuclear weapons, ‘economic power is more important than military power’.”
3. The Sunday NYTimes book review (4.6.08) of Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short stories “Unaccustomed Earth”: “The eight stories..expand upon Lahiri’s epigraph…by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which suggests that transplanting people into new soil makes them hardier and more flourishing. Human fortunes may be improved, Hawthorne argues, if men and women ‘strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.’ ..But Lahiri does not so much accept Hawthorne’s notion as test it. Is it true that transplanting strengthens the plant? Or can such experiments produce mixed outcomes?”
4. The Sunday NYTimes book review (4.6.08) of Siri Hustvedt’s “The Sorrows of an American”. The character Erik in this novel says: “It’s odd that we’re all compelled to repeat pain…but I’ve come to regard this as a truth.”
5. "Soft Cell”, from the Sunday NYTimes Mag (4.6.08) – about a web site which creates (and profits from) a community for the family and friends of the incarcerated. (Gaia Online, Prison Talk)
6. “The Real Work: modern magic and the meaning of life” by the ever-prolific Adam Gopnik from the New Yorker (03.17.08).
7. “The Bell Ringer” by John Burnside from the New Yorker (03.17.08). I am often disappointed by the short stories in the New Yorker (they are often the lesser good stories of very well known writers), but this was one of the best pieces of fiction I have read in a while: “It was dark, out on the narrow lane that ran past the sawmills, dark and very green, the boundary wall a dim colony of moss and ferns, the shadows under the trees damp and still. To most people, it seemed gloomy, but for Eva it was as close to the landscape of home as she could imagine – especially now, with the new snow settling on the pines and on the ridges of the drystone wall, so that the land resembled nothing so much as a children’s-book illustration, the snow steady and insistent in a kingdom that had succumbed to the bad fairy’s spell and slept for a hundred years in a viridian web of gossamer and thorns.” (WOW)
8. “Out of Print: The death and life of the American newspaper” by Eric Alterman, the New Yorker (03.31.08).
9. “Ghost Writer: Pat Parker’s haunted imagination” by Kennedy Fraser from the New Yorker (03.17.08). (Pat Parker’s “Regeneration” trilogy won her the Booker Prize in the late 1990s). I like her words “As metaphor – and similes are trivial, but metaphors go to the heart of what human beings are – there is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of ghosts haunting the living… It is simply a statement about our relationship to the past, and to the parts of the past we haven’t managed to cope with. I thank the Lord I grew up in a setting like that.”
10. “Can Cellphones Help End Global Poverty?” by Sara Corbett (The New York Times Mag 03.13.08)
I look forward to reading Kurt Vonnegut’s posthumous book of essays “Armageddon in Retrospect.” To quote from the collection (a rule for writing a short story, and advice he applied to non-fiction too): “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”
Also, one of my students wrote about sea jellies in her essay on visiting the Boston Aquarium, which I marked today. Apparently they have no brains or bones… She said they reminded her of white blood cells (she’s a pre-med student). It was quite a wonderful essay. As she wrote, “Nature truly is amazing, and also our body.”
Valete, I better swim back up out of Wonderland to Boston now.

p.s. I paste below my first blog for Words Without Borders. I talk about the Mabinogi, a classic of Medieval Welsh literature.

Mabinogi
by Sophie Powell
10 March 2008

Wales has a vast and vibrant literary heritage, though among Americans this rich tradition remains a bit in the shadows. One of the most seminal Medieval Welsh texts is The Mabinogi, also a great classic of European literature. The Mabinogi, also known as The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, is a set of four tales written in Wales in the late eleventh century, by an unknown master of Welsh prose. John K. Bollard, an American, has recently produced a superb translation, published by Gomer Press, Wales’ largest independent publisher. He presents to the reader an accurate and close rendering, reflecting with elegance and energy the original Medieval Welsh text in a modern English idiom. My parents bought me Bollard’s new translation for Christmas. I was deeply impressed by the way Bollard managed to preserve the original storyteller’s voice in the Welsh original whilst still making the verses sound natural and accessible. Previous, older translations I had read sounded too archaic and stiff. In addition, Bollard’s translation is accompanied by evocative photographs of the places mentioned in it, allowing the reader a glimpse of the magical landscape of Wales where the tales are set. Bollard is an academic with a unique and diverse background. I emailed him out of the blue and he wrote back a very warm email, answering my questions with enthusiasm and patience. I’m sharing parts of our email exchange here:

SOPHIE: Why should people read The Mabinogi?

BOLLARD: The Mabinogi is the jewel in the crown of Welsh literature. It is a written work derived from traditional oral sources with their roots in Celtic myth, and it is a masterpiece of the storyteller’s art. It is also a work that explores the nature of our humanity, providing a moral view of life and human interaction without being dogmatic. While the origins of these tales lie in a mythic Celtic past, the tales and characters have been skillfully woven together to deal with such important questions as “What is friendship?”, “How should we respond to hostile or unfriendly words or actions?”, “What is the role of marriage as a social bond?”, “What is the role of women”, “How should women be treated?”, and perhaps most importantly — “How do we stop this seemingly endless round of feuds and wars, destruction and death?” Any work that addresses such themes with understanding is worth reading in any age.

SOPHIE: How did you, an American native, become interested in Medieval Welsh?

BOLLARD: I was an English major at the University of Rochester (some years ago), concentrating in medieval and especially Arthurian literature. Frequent references and footnotes to the Welsh sources suggested to me that it would be good to find out first hand what these sources were like in the original. Before I knew it I was setting out to do graduate work at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. There I got increasingly fascinated with medieval Welsh language, literature and history and have remained so ever since.

SOPHIE: When translating The Mabinogi, did you look at previous translations? How did you want to make your translation different/unique?

BOLLARD:I didn’t set out to make my translation “different” or “unique;” I just started translating as best I could, staying as close to the meaning and intent of the Welsh as I could manage without becoming too stilted or archaic in my English, recognizing that the result would be distinct from other translations. I was, of course, familiar with other translations, and I was undoubtedly influenced by them through that long familiarity, but I made no particular attempt either to agree or to disagree with them. My greatest hope was to capture some of the author’s tone, some of the liveliness and spirit of the medieval storyteller’s art, so that the reader might hear at least an echo of his voice. Whether I have succeeded is up to the reader to judge.

SOPHIE: What is the linguistic origin of Medieval Welsh? How far does Medieval Welsh deviate from modern Welsh?

BOLLARD: Medieval Welsh is the descendant of the Brythonic language that was spoken in much of Britain before the Romans arrived in the 1st century BCE—and after they left in the fifth century. Thus, it is a Celtic language most closely related to Cornish, spoken in Cornwall into the 18th century, and to Breton, still spoken in Brittany / Bretagne in northwestern France, and somewhat more distantly related to Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. The spelling of Medieval Welsh is different from that of Modern Welsh, but the language has not changed as much as English has in the past thousand years. To a native Welsh speaker, reading Middle Welsh (as it is called) might be analogous to an English speaker reading something between the language of Shakespeare (Early Modern English) and that of Chaucer (Middle English). Comprehensible, if somewhat archaic in vocabulary and structure.

SOPHIE: Are there any other books in the original Welsh that you think non-Welsh readers should be aware of?

BOLLARD: There are many Welsh books that should get a wide audience. For those interested in early literature, I recommend The Gododdin, a fascinating elegiac poem celebrating the heroes who fell in the battle of Catraeth around the year 600 CE. (I did say ‘early’, mind!) There is an excellent facing translation by A.O.H. Jarman. A bit later and on a lighter note, I highly recommend the poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym. Dafydd, an older contemporary of Chaucer, was the greatest Welsh poet and one of the greatest of European love poets from any age. His poetry ranges from the lyrical to the satirical, and his self-effacing persona is at times hilarious. There are several translations; I recommend those by Rachel Bromwich, with a facing Welsh text that will give a visual sense of the poetry of the language even if you can’t read it.

Among modern works I particularly recommend two important novels of Islwyn Ffowc Elis—Cysgod y Cryman “Shadow of the Sickle” and Yn Ol i Leifior “Return to Lleifior”—which have been translated by Meic Stephens. The stories of Kate Roberts are also available in English.

***

I'll be discussing the work of Islwyn Ffowc Elis and Kate Roberts in later blogs. For the next couple of months, I'd like to focus on modern Welsh authors writing in the original Welsh. Wales and its literature are much neglected despite its incredibly rich historical and cultural value.

Gomer has also issued a companion edition to The Mabinogi, Companion Tales To The Mabinogi, translated by Bollard which is equally engaging and beautifully presented with photographs. Bollard said he'd be pleased to send signed copies of his books to anyone who would like to get one from him directly, as stated on his book website: http://themabinogi.googlepages.com. For more information on Bollard also see the link http://jkbollard.googlepages.com.

Pop hwl! (Welsh for Ciao) for the time being,

Words Without Borders, John K Bollard, Polar Bears

I’m very excited about the blog I’m writing for the online magazine Words Without Borders (http://www.wordswithoutborders.org). I met some of the editors (Dedi Felman, Rohan Kamicheril) earlier this month in New York and we decided I would focus on writers writing in Welsh to start with. My first blog will be about John K Bollard’s wonderful new translation of the Mabinogi that’s just come out, and later I will move to contemporary novelists and poets writing in Welsh.
Here’s a synopsis of things that caught my eye the past month:
i) The Jan/Feb edition of Poets And Writers had some great profiles of Susan Choi (American Woman, A Person of Interest), Manil Suri (a math professor turned writer whose second novel The Age of Shivra is out this month) and the London-based Tahmima Anam, whose first novel A Golden Age has just come out to huge attention in the US (it first came out in the UK a year ago). The book is “the first installment in an ambitious trilogy that will span the history of Bangladesh, from the sunset of colonial India to the present” (Nicole Pezold, PW). PW have also started a new series of interviews with “publishing’s heavy hitters” and the interview with agent Lynn Nesbit was very informative and candid.
ii) “Screams in Asia Echo in Hollywood” by Terrence Rafferty (Sunday NYTimes, Arts, Jan 27), about transplanting/remaking Japanese (and Korean to some extent) horror movies for a US audience. I liked Rafferty’s perception that “Horror is by its nature a good deal friendlier to a cross-cultural transplantation than most movie genres, because fear is universal in a way that, say, a sense of humor is not: what we dread is far less socially determined than what we laugh at. (If you had to choose between remaking a French romantic farce or a Japanese ghost story, the latter would be much the safer bet, as movie history pretty conclusively demonstrates.)”
iii) “Great Literature? Depends Whodunit” by Charles McGrath (Sunday NYTimes, Feb 3), about how genre writing is unfairly perceived as lower-brow than literary writing: “…is the assumption that genre fiction – mysteries, thrillers, romances, horror stories – is a form of literary slumming. These kinds of books are easier to read, we tend to think, and so they must be easier to write, and to the degree that they’re entertaining, they can’t possibly be serious. / The distinction between highbrow and lowbrow – between genre writing and literary writing – is actually fairly recent. Dickens…wrote mysteries and horror stories, only no one thought to call them that. Jane Austen wrote chick lit… What we look for in genre writing, [John] Updike suggested, is exactly what the critics sometimes complain about: the predictableness of a formula successfully executed. We know exactly what we’re going to get, and that’s a seductive part of the appeal…such books are reassuring in a way that some other novels are not./ Does that make them lesser, or just different? Probably both on occasion. But it doesn’t necessarily make them easier or less worthwhile to write.” I want to quote the whole article! It’s a very articulate piece.
iv) Penguin has just come out with a paperback edition of Robert Fagles’ translation of The Aeneid (with an introduction by Bernard Knox). Couldn’t resist slipping this news in as a Classicist. It’s a seriously brilliant, utterly magical text. Ever since I first started learning Latin at 11, I’ve been hooked.
Spring better be here soon. Otherwise the Polar Bears will be immigrating to Boston.

Oman, cellphone novels, Beyond the Burka, Carver and Lish, Gods Behaving Badly

We just returned from a week in [the Sultanate of] Oman, a very civilized desert kingdom on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Only recently opened up to tourism since the forward-looking Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, it has a fascinating history, striking, unspoilt landscapes and a remarkably modernized infrastructure. You can read more about our trip in the Spring edition of Town And Country Travel.
Here goes the articles which caught my eye the past month:
1.“Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular” - on the front page of today’s New York Times – about the super-burgeoning genre of 'cellphone novels', which are coming to dominate the best-seller list: “Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels [in Japan], five were originally cell-phone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels.”
2.“Beyond the Burka. Muslim women are being heard. But which ones?” by Lorraine Adams in the excellent “Islam” edition of The New York Times Book Review (Jan 6) – about how perception of Muslim literature remains distorted since much of contemporary literature remains unpublished in English translation: “Literature in translation, regardless of origin, has trouble finding American publishers. The languages of Islam, unlike European languages… are not often spoken by American editors. “When you have a book proposal, you have to have at least two chapters and a synopsis in English,” explained Nahid Mozaffari, an Iranian historian… “But there’s no money to pay for translation…”” The piece concluded with a thought-provoking quote by Dedi Felman, a book editor in New York and an editor of Words Without Borders, an Internet magazine that publishes literature in translation (in fact I will be their guest blogger starting next month): “In essence, we are asking people to recognize the Other not for what they want it to be or anticipate it to be, but for what it is. And as with all attempts to negotiate divides, that is neither an easy not a simple place in which to put oneself.”
3. “Rough Crossing: Raymond Carver’s letters to Gordon Lish and unedited versions of Carver’s stories reveal an extraordinary battle of wills between an author and his editor.” by Paul Rudnick in The New Yorker ((Dec 24 and 31). This exposé was followed by the unedited version of Carver’s Story 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love' (which Carver originally titled 'Beginners'). I drastically prefer Carver’s original version. I always thought 'What We Talk About' lacking in some way and Carver’s far longer, more developed version is so much richer and more moving. I particularly don’t understand why Lish chopped Carver’s original ending. It’s so wonderfully haunting and poignant: “…I stood at the window and waited. I knew I had to keep still a while longer, keep my eyes out there, outside the house, as long as there was something left to see.”
3. More briefly: “Guinea-Pigging: Healthy human subjects for drug-safety trials are in demand. But is it a living” by Carl Elliott in The New Yorker (Jan 7) – a disturbing chronicle of the risky tests many people subject their bodies too for the sake of quick and easy cash. “Gone Missing: ‘The Orphanage’” – Anthony Lane’s superbly-written review of the young Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona’s film. The review was a treat to read, with some wonderful similes eg “A team of paranormal inquirers come to the orphanage, led by a figure clad in black, as slender as a child’s stick drawing”, “Aurora’s pupils gleam hotly in the jungle-colored darkness, like those of a nocturnal leopard, caught by a naturalist’s camera as it slinks to a watering hole.” He also makes the astute point: “A scary movie...is meant to be infested with implausibilities, and what counts is whether we allow them to nip and needle us throughout or whether… we learn to relish their powers of suggestion”.
4. I’m keen to read Marie Phillips’ first novel 'Gods Behaving Badly', in which Greek Gods have taken up residence in modern-day London. It received a good review by Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times Book Review (Jan 13): “But for the most part her nonchalant transposition of the ancients into post-postmodern life is seamless, amusing and blessedly unpretentious. It may not be ambrosia, but it’s some pretty good trail mix.”
See you soon!