Twitter Poetry

I occasionally write a bit of twitter poetry- the aim of which is to start with a single image and construct a verse around it of 140 characters or less. I really enjoy doing this, more as a little mind exercise than anything else although I appreciate that some work better than others. Although it's easiest to write the poems in a twitter message (because then I can keep tabs on the pesky character number which spends more of its time red and with a minus next to it than I'd care to admit), I've decided to collect them here as well and will add to them as I write. These are all the ones I could find that I've written in the last nine months or so.

I'm always on the look out for new words as I find an external source makes for the most interesting constructions so if you'd like to please suggest a word (and I will have a go at pretty much any word), it would be really helpful to me!

Shimmering 23/10/15

Nightly the land lies

Besotted by an inky heat.

Above

A heavy moon

Dips towards water

To watch it shimmering-

And finds relief

Autumn 23/10/15

Joyous rage!

The earth atomwise

Becoming Icarus

In the flames.

Consumed

She falls

And stoops-

Reclaiming quietly

A smoky haze.

Bustle 23/10/15

At 8:50

The clouds charge by

Forgotten in the sky

By those beneath.

Until the rain

Reminds them

Of the blueness

In between.

Rust 23/10/15

Unfathomed strength

To bear unnatural load

She lists & bows.

Onward

Through tears

As flakes of burnished snow

cascade& drown

A Plate of Cherries 02/06/15

Shiny hearts

So gorgeous

In the sun-

I discarded stones

Let juices run.

But cooler now

I wait the fall

Perhaps they

Weren't sweet

After all.

Twilight in Winter

As breath rose

Through silhouetted branches

Like fingers

Entwined&

Reaching up

Toward an ink-spill sky,

We walked.

Untitled 05/01/15

I Long for Spring!

Apple-bright & clean

To brace my skin

Against the laughing air

And thrill-

Before the land

Turns honeyed,

Warming

Still.

Kindling 02/06/15

So brittle lies

The kindling

Stacked round their

leafy brethren

Awaiting

That first flicker

To bring themselves alive

A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khaled Hosseini

Each of our lives is governed by key moments, turning points, forks in the road down which our futures travel. The decisions, choices, and interactions we make scatter our experiences rendering us as individual and unique as the genetic codes in our cells. Perhaps it is because of this scattering that when experiences unify a community, a nation, the globe they become so much more potent. The 'where were you?' moments: the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin wall, September 11th 2001. I wasn't alive for the first one, and as the wall fell I was more interested in Sesame Street and getting as much liquidised food into my chubby cheeks as I could (I was not a particularly politically aware toddler). But I was 14 years old in 2001 and the memory of that day exists more clearly in my mind than many in the years since. So quickly Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Afghanistan became buzzwords- shorthand for fear and terror.

There's no way for me write this in a way that isn't spectacularly trite but what astonishes me now is how little I still know about Afghanistan, what was going on before that fateful day, its history and the seemingly unending traumas the nation underwent (and continues to undergo). A Thousand Splendid Suns, written by the very talented Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini of The Kite Runner fame, has allowed me to explore in a very small way the turbulent past of the country. Of course, it is a novel and the characters themselves fictionalised. But the fall of Communist oppression, the hopeful transition to an Islamic nation state that gradually fell to the control to the Taliban highlights the unending tragedy that befell the nation in the latter portion of the 20th Century, represented through its central characters.

Hosseini centres his novel around the lives of two women, Mariam and Laila. Mariam, a harami (literally, 'forbidden'), is an illegitimate daughter of a moderately wealthy man with three wives. Although he only pays the minimal courtesy to her and her mother, Mariam adores him and her life enters a tumbling downward spiral when she is left disappointed on her birthday (a fact that comes back with a shuddering punch to the heart in the closing pages of the book) and runs away to find him. This of course makes it sound like her actions drive her fate when in fact, it is the societal powerlessness of both Mariam and Laila which drives so much of the narrative. Throughout the novel what Hosseini does so well and so brutally, is to illustrate repeatedly the inherent strength of these women despite the constraints in which they live. As Mariam is sent from the countryside to Kabul to marry,Rasheed, a much older man, who later also becomes Laila's husband we see a young woman with no option but to mould her existence around that of her husband's. The self-assurance with which Rasheed commands her is horrifying in its very matter-of-factness and Hosseini seems at pains to impress the commonplace attitude of control and subjugation on his readers.

This is not to say the male-female dynamics in the book are totally negative- far from it. Laila, who is a child when Mariam first moves to Kabul, has a warm relationship with her father and Hosseini's gentle handling of her friendship with her best friend Tariq creates a heart to a novel without which large portions of it would have been very bleak indeed. However, both Laila's father and Tariq are constructed as outsiders- her father, a quiet intellectual, is brow-beaten by his dominating (although terribly fragile) wife and Tariq has already been the victim of war- losing a leg to a landmine in his early childhood. They represent the good and the broken. What this means is when both of these men are gone and Laila falls into the power of Rasheed the 'status quo' seems that much more brutal.

And it is brutal. The horrifying ridiculousness of the Taliban declaration across Kabul which happens in the second half of the book is still fresh in my mind:

"...Singing is forbidden...Dancing is forbidden...If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will be killed" and then, in it's own special paragraph: "Attention women: You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets...You will not, under any circumstances show your face... You will not speak unless spoken to... You will not laugh in public... Girls are forbidden from going to school. All schools for girls will be closed immediately."

Shall I go on? I'm re-reading and typing and I want to throw the book out of the fucking window again. Because, as I mentioned at the beginning, this stuff was (is) real. Throughout the novel Hosseini does not shy away either in the description of the assault on Afghanistan by the Taliban or the physical assaults that Laila and Mariam and eventually Rasheed are subjected to. In the same way that the current assault on the cultural heritage of Syria (which by the way is an assault on the cultural heritage of everyone on this planet), Laila finds herself being particularly horrified by the destruction of the enormous sculptures of Buddha she visited with her father and Tariq.  There is no getting around the subject matter- that of systematic and dismal destruction of culture and lives- but Hosseini does so with real humanity and truth, particularly through his handling of the relationship between Laila and Mariam. They do not instantly bond because they are women sharing a difficult situation. The process is a slow one, and driven as much by their own individual desires to survive as their collected one. But once forged the relationship is as deep as it is complex and the denouement of the novel will leave you utterly heartbroken.

It's probably clear from what I've written that the book is highly emotive. It is, as far as I can remember, the novel which has bought me to tears the most times. But I don't believe that is its main aim. It never feels hyperbolic or cynical- indeed it is the realism of the novel which is often the hardest to bear. Despite this there are moments of magic too and a couple of particularly fairytale like occurrences although Hosseini is clever in the construction of his characters to make it not merely a tale of good and evil. And incredibly, it is also a novel infused with hope. At the end there are good tears as well as sad ones. In the postscript to the novel Hosseini described A Thousand Splendid Suns as his 'modest tribute to the great courage, endurance and resilience of Afghanistan' and this is the sentiment that closes the novel. Rebuild and hope. There can always be hope. And in those moments, particularly those dark, unifying moments, this is the most important thing to hold on to.

The Goldfinch- Donna Tartt

This is going to be a bit of a mind-splurge, as is seeming becoming common-place in this blog. I find that it helps me to get the thoughts out of my head a bit more clearly.

The Goldfinch was an absolute by-the-till impulse purchase in a bookshop a few weeks ago. I have never read either of Tartt's other novels, as good as I am told they both are. I didn't really know anything about the novel either. So I didn't go into it with any expectations which I suspect was a good thing. I will now proceed, inevitably, to construct some expectations for you so if you favour a blank canvas approach to reading a new book (pardon the obvious metaphor), please turn away now.

The first thing to note about The Goldfinch is that Tartt's prose is immaculate- it is like sleeping in silk: you barely know it's there but you can feel the quality of it (this is a bit of a projected metaphor: I have never slept in silk, I sleep in ancient mismatched pyjamas of indistinguishable fibre). She glides her reader along with the utmost care, a street is described in 300 words, a note, an aside can take a page and a half but the story, or at least the first half of the story does not drag. There is no awkward crunch of a misplaced adjective, or an over-laden clause (in this respect it is the polar-opposite of this blog) and it seems to have been given the editorial care of a priceless object. This, as it turns out, is half the problem with the closing stages of the novel but more of that later.

The story revolves around Theodore Decker, a boy who, in a cruel twist of fate, loses his mother in a tragic and violent way. His action immediately after this event takes the rest of the novel to play out, over a period of 14 years taking in America and Europe. When we meet Theodore (or "Potter" as his damaged and spirited friend Boris takes to calling him, even into adulthood) he is holed up in a Dutch hotel room, sick in body and mind, recounting the story that has brought him to this point.

Theodore himself is written as a curiously absent character, with a personality fundamentally joined to the event that shattered his childhood. He is no where near as nuanced as the supporting players, particularly Boris, the poly-national drop-out he meets in Las Vegas, his damaged formally-absent father who takes him there, and the high-society Barbours who facing their own brittle realities initially take him in. The warmth, the heart of this story (although also present, albeit in an increasingly broken way, in the very fine characterisation of Mrs Barbour, particularly in the latter stages of the novel) is reserved for Hobie, the antique-restorer who fate throws into Theodore's path. The hulking benevolence of his character- juxtaposed with the ephemeral Pippa. is at once omniscient and naive and I was disappointed that Tartt, however understandably, relegates him from the final quarter of the novel, much as Theodore does.

There is much to appreciate in this novel, which at 864 pages in my edition, is no weekend read (nor should it be- in my humble opinion people who race through novels as if to win some sort of prize miss the point of reading entirely. I would say that though, I am a slow reader). However, the ending of the novel disappointed me no end. It didn't really have anything to do with the plot, which is resolved well- although the second the novel 'catches up' with itself in Amsterdam it all goes a bit bonkers-, but in the pseudo-academic meta-conclusioning that Tartt insists on putting her reader through, in Theodore's name and voice.

One of the main themes of the novel is the power of art on the individual and the place of art as a unifying agent across time and space (in a non-Doctor Who-y way). Theodore, like his mother before him, is captivated by the painting of the eponymous Goldfinch and his own conclusion is that regardless of the absolute nihilism which is part-and-parcel of the human existence (I know, ever so cheery, this) art, and in particular, a piece of art with which one truly connects, can act as a kind of salvation, Which, y'know, I get. However, Tartt then blunderingly breaks the reader/author/protagonist dynamic: suddenly Theodore is addressing a reader, as it becomes clear that he's been writing something all along ("although it doesn't matter since no one's ever going to see this" *snore...*), and talks about the beauty of understanding that "we can speak to each other across time" through art.

Suddenly the hand has been played. Like the intricate brush-works and textures on the canvas Tartt is suddenly screaming at us: isn't what I've just done beautiful? Aren't I clever? You'll carry this with you forever! Which is a massive gamble because, if you loved the novel more than any other book you've ever read, you'll cry "Oh god, I understand, this novel- it is my Goldfinch" and laugh and cry and know that you will be forever bound to this book, to all those who read it and have the same emotional connection, and you will, in your own small way, become immortal. If you don't (and this, dear reader, in case you were in any doubt, is where I am), you'll see The Goldfinch as a very fine book, like a very fine painting in a gallery, which you will close and go 'ahh' and have enjoyed, but which will have ultimately left you with the feeling that it was just a touch pretentious. Which is a great shame, because the craft is spectacular. The plot is compelling, I just felt that Tartt reached a little too far in her closing pages and, in so doing, overcooked her Goldfinch just ever-so slightly.

Perhaps I am being disingenuous- perhaps Tartt is making a wider point about art which doesn't direct include her own work. But the fact that the novel is called The Goldfinch does bring out my cynical side. However, who am I to argue, I haven't won a Pulitzer for anything (there's no blog category, right?). So reader, I recommend this book to you, if only so you can make up your own mind.

'Untitled'

Feel like I haven't read anything in full for ages so this isn't a book post. I was rifling through some papers the other day and found a poem I'd written a few months ago which on re-reading, didn't make me cringe and scrunch up into a tiny ball (me, not the poem. I tend not to throw away, however awful), mainly because it memorialises a time for me that deserves to be remembered. I re-jigged it a bit and, in the spirit of elephant-brainedness copied it below. It's a sentimental mind-splat without a lot of craft so don't take it too seriously.


"It's hard to blaze a trail when it's so
damned cold" she said

"It's amazing what they'll wear to keep warm"

A drawl met with scowls and typing
And a chocolat chaud from
the 40 cent machine

Hardly the dream of the bourgeoisie:

Enough for bread and cheese and
not much else
(the waiter in the Flore disdained us, quel surprise)

Wine experts decreed 1.80 a bottle was all we'd need --
and that it was,
nauseated from the Gare de L'Est
to Montparnasse
then home to bed as the rest
went out again.

A day of fur and pearls and
playing dress-up to troop into
the cold for a bar we never found
(we out-performed the boulevard, that day).

Paris with tea-drinkers:
Yellow tags and chips on the Ile:
The accent tripping further away,
our 'pardonnez' lost in the Englishness of our apologies.

*

One day the hawkers took no notice
as we reached the foot of the Tour
so we'd arrived, with no glance to the sky
To see it ironed into triangles of cloud.

And still we rode the 4 north and south
between the same old haunts.

'Til at last,

one day in May,
and the sun on our bellies on the Promenade des Anglais,
we thawed
and slept
and dreamed of where we'd been,
where we'd forever be.
                      

Maya Angelou- Still I Rise

In memory of Dr Maya Angelou, who passed away today aged 86 I was going to post my favourite poem of her's, 'Still I Rise' without comment, convinced that nothing I could say would ever live up to the power and brilliance of her own words. But although I still believe that what I have to say about her could never match what she had to say about herself and her work, one of the most abiding sentiments that Dr Angelou has left for me is that to hide oneself for fear of failure and recrimination is not living life to its full potential- that emotions and the essence of living should be celebrated. So although I have cried three times already over her passing (which when you're in an office is surprisingly difficult to conceal) and am writing this on a laptop that is substantially older than Justin Bieber's career (and may in fact be older than Justin Bieber himself) here I write my own interpretation of her words.

The poem can be found here http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-i-rise and it might be better to open it in a second tab. I'm also putting a link to Angelou reading a slightly edited version of the poem. She has a truly wonderful voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0

'Still I Rise' is a poem that does just that, and the oxymoron of the title is the gateway by which Angelou uses supreme control of language to make the rhetoric, the hyperbole of the lines more powerful. The first verse is confrontational with the power immediately held by the voice of the poem (Angelou herself): 'You may write me down in history' she begins and then subverts immediately 'with your bitter, twisted lies'- the tone of the stanza is hard (it's easy to get some real venom behind the harsh consonants in both 'bitter' and 'twisted') but the end of it is lifted, held and controlled by her use of commas 'But still, like dust, I rise'.

The second verse works in opposition: sassiness is a fabulous word to say, although with a southern English accent you really do need to put a lot of sass into it for it to sound right! Its bright sibilance fizzes in contrast to the darker images and longer vowel sounds, the 'gloom' and 'oil' in the second and third lines (oil being oxymoronic too being physically dark but prized). The rhetorical questions that become part of the fabric of the poem are both challenging and  humorous- later on she will ask 'Does my haughtiness offend you?' 'Does my sexiness upset you?'- the symmetry in the rhythms of these lines becoming taunts to her opponents. And for all that the nature of this poem is a serious and angry confrontation, what does she do when goaded? She dances and laughs in celebration of her own worth, here manifested as gold mines and diamonds, natural resources taken by man. It is an interesting opposition to the images with which Angelou herself identifies: the ocean, the moons and suns: all things that are greater than mankind itself, world-shifting and profound.

The images associated with those unknown (although very much known) foes in the poem are brutal: 'You may kill me with your hatefulness' Angelou writes, mirroring her opening line. Indeed, the notion of her broken body 'bowed head', 'shoulders falling' in the face of this hatefulness only serves to emphasise this possibility of total destruction, both physically and psychologically. However, the refrain and the overriding sound at the end of the poem with the lengthened 'i' sound in 'rise' an unstoppable exhalation, the breath that drives the poem, the voice, keeps going. Indeed, the increased frequency of the phrase 'I rise' and the change in meter in the final two stanzas mean that the reader speaking the poem aloud takes in more and more breath, becomes, in a sense, more alive as the poem reaches its powerful crescendo. This crescendo is also emphasised by the powerful iambic lines: 'Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave/I am the dream and the hope of the slave'. Angelou's message here becomes clear: taking the hurt and the suffering of her own life, of her history and the history of her ancestors has galvanised a response which will see her going far beyond above the people who would crush her. The end, depending on how you read it, is a meditative sigh or a chanting cry: 'I rise/I rise/I rise'.

It's a poem that never fails to give me goosebumps and it is Angelou's skill as a poet as well as the sentiment of the words themselves that inspire such a powerful reaction in me, and in many people who read or hear her work. I was wondering this evening why her death so upset me and I think the reason is this: that such a woman with such tremendous capability to live to the fullest potential of her being has now left us, makes her death seem somehow more profound. But the truth is, the very fact that such a person has existed, and that we can share in her thoughts and her life is a joy that can never be extinguished. And so, in that spirit, Angelou can have the final word here:

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." 

Americanah- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I had to leave this post unfinished and was going to leave it unpublished as well but on re-reading I realised that I'd got further with it than I thought. I'm posting it here because this is a great book, I'm just sorry that my thoughts on it are a little under-developed.

I'm a big fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I was gutted to have missed the premiere of Half of a Yellow Sun in Streatham a few of weeks ago. There are lots of things to say about this book- mostly compliments- but there are also a couple of things  about the novel that just lacked a bit of the magic of her previous two novels, and in particular Half of a Yellow Sun which is one of the most astonishing books I have ever read.

Americanah is a departure from the subject matter of Adichie's previous two books. In Americanah, the political situation in Nigeria is the catalyst for the action rather than the subject of the novel as two school mates Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love and go to university in nineties Lagos, amidst the chaos of teacher strikes and military disquiet. Half way through their undergraduate degrees Ifemelu departs for America to complete her studies while Obinze remains in Nigeria before trying his luck in the UK. The themes of love, separation and reconciliation run through the novel but this, frankly, is no where near as interesting as the development of Obinze and, particularly, Ifemelu and the identity politics of being a Black African in America and Europe.

In fact, where Adichie is strongest in the novel is where she is engaging with race through Ifemelu's blogs. It is polemical stuff in its directness, and ensures that readers are fully confronted with the underlying racism (and sexism) at work in so many aspects of Euro-American society. The blogs, emails and texts that permeate this novel  are fascinating in themselves as literary devices as they are undoubtedly the 21st century epistolary reality in literature. We encounter all three every day yet why does it feel so much more modern when they are used in literature? Is it because we are used to the diarist, to the correspondence by letter? How many books can you name using a technological epistolary device that you would deem 'classic'? This gets us in to the realm of 'what makes a classic?' 'what makes a novel a work of literature?': important questions but not the original intention of this post.

But it is interesting nonetheless that, through Ifemelu, Adichie presents her readers with two courses of food for thought: racial prejudice and literary snobbishness. Confronting her reader with both of these simultaneously can almost feel overwhelming and there were a couple of moments, when I was reading this on my commute, that I had to close the book for a few moments and just think about my own attitudes, as a reader of fiction, as a white privileged woman. I loathe this phrase but I've never felt so compelled to check my own privilege as I have reading this book.

That said, I was a little unsatisfied by the conclusion to the book and it felt that, as important as Ifemelu's return to Nigeria was in the trajectory of the novel, the return to her relationship (the word here used in the most general, non-loaded way to avoid any spoilers) with Obinze did not ring true with their characters. This is a shame because it is the last impression I had of the book. But there is much here to enjoy, to be interested and challenged by, and Adichie remains one of the most interesting and compelling authors out there.

Happy Birthday Mr. Shakespeare

Today commemorates, approximately, the 450th birthday of William Shakespeare and so to mark the occasion I have chosen to revisit a piece of text that first made me realise just quite what a genius he was. I was fifteen and reading Romeo and Juliet as part of my GCSEs and decided I'd do a little exercise in close reading. Never one to self edit, the result was a 3000 word monstrosity of coursework. Here I present a much revised, hopefully much shorter, and pretty irreverent commentary on one of the most famous exchanges in the play.

ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand,
                This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
                My lips two blushing Pilgrims ready stand,
                To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET: Good Pilgrim you do wrong your hand too much
              Which mannerly devotion shows in this,
               For saints have hands, that Pilgrims' hands do touch
               And palm to palm is holy Palmers' kiss.
ROMEO: Have not Saints lips and holy Palmers too?
JULIET: Ay Pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer
ROMEO: O then dear Saint, let lips do what hands do,
                They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
                                                         [Act 1, Scene 5]
And they snog.

Now everyone likes a good flirt but if you flirt with Shakespeare's words in your mouth well, heaven help your flirtee. But before we get to these words, let's get some context. Although with minimal dramatic licence most productions of R&J will have had them making googly eyes at each other before this exchange, the first important thing to note is that Romeo has already spotted Juliet, but she has not necessarily seen him. He's likened her to a 'snowy dove' among crows and foreshadowed her death by observing that she seems 'for earth too dear'. For him, Juliet is dazzling energy itself ('she doth teach the torches to burn bright') and this is in direct contrast to the darkness of Romeo who 'shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out/And makes himself an artificial light' (the 'artificial light' I think it's fair to assume, is a metaphor for Rosaline). Their love will consume them entirely- light annihilates the darkness as darkness annihilates the light. Their story is a juxtaposition of opposites and balance and it has already started.

Now just a note on the verse form and then I promise we'll get going. This is, when read in isolation, a sonnet. And a sonnet is traditionally one of the most trussed up of verse forms. This version is a classic Elizabethan version, written in iambic pentameter with a defined rhyme scheme. Which makes it a Mr-Darcy-in-a-wet-shirt sort of exchange. The structure means that we can all see exactly what's underneath, and it's hot: the sensuality is there clad in translucently restrictive garb. The regular, heart beat rhythm that ebbs and flows between the two characters dominates but there are a couple of heart-skippy moments: both of which up the ante that bit more. Shakespeare packs the sonnet with noun repetitions: 'saint', 'prayer', 'hands' but when the repeated word 'lips' crops up in line 9 the first de-dum that you would expect from an iambic line gets sort of squashed, and the heartbeat skips a beat. It does the same when Juliet says 'move' in line 13 and stops the flow of the line. Clever, eh?  

Now to the words. Romeo really goes for it doesn't he? To him, as I've already said, Juliet is other-worldly: the summary of his lines is basically: you are biblically hot, am I allowed to kiss you? He's ready to profane but once again Shakespeare balances this with doubt, and the hyperbole is tempered by the opening word 'If' and the coyly 'gentle sin'. On the other hand his lips are blushing with both doubt and arousal and you try saying 'smooth touch' without making a kissy face (you just tried it, didn't you. Adorable). So cards are very much on the table. Oh Mr. S, you are so cunning. But this is no peacock display: the ball is quite determinedly placed in Juliet's court. And she has yet to make her judgement.

'Good Pilgrim' are her first words. Good being a good sign, and a repetition of Romeo's description of himself making it clear that she's in on the joke, and she likes it. You know that people attracted to each other mirror each other's body language? Well, this is the verbal equivalent. Juliet immediately picks up on the imagery but neutralises it somewhat 'Saints have hands that Pilgrims' hands do touch': hey buddy, you've got hands, I've got hands. Get me off this pedestal a bit and let's do something with... hands. Flirty, sexy undertones but joining in the Saint/Pilgrim joke. Are these two made for each other or what? With this encouragement Romeo then decides to try it on a bit: 'Have not Saints lips..?', Juliet reciprocates 'Ay Pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer'.

So, if hands come together in prayer 'let lips do what hands do' says Romeo, ever the logician. Crunch time. Come of Jules, we're all rooting for you. 'Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake' she says. Alright Your Royal Coyness. She's brought the metaphor home and is not going anywhere, except to be kissed, the word 'move' ironically grounded mid-sentence by a comma. A hesitation, but crucially, she's has the deciding line, and she has given Romeo the divine right. 'Then move not' he says as he leans in and the entire audience go wobbly kneed, 'while my prayer's effect I take'.

If only this was the grand finale, eh? The curtain comes down and the world goes away with a happy heart. But the prologue has told us otherwise and it's already gone wrong as Juliet realises just after this exchange: 'my only love sprung from my only hate/Too early seen, unknown, and known too late' which, brutal though it is, is a phenomenally balanced line.

So like so many teenage infatuations, this post is over before it has barely begun. Despite that however, I hope you've enjoyed my little analysis: sad to say perhaps, but this is one of my absolutely favourite ways to spend my time. But for now I'll bid you adieu: I'm off to have a slice of cake in the great man's honour.

Queenie- Alice Munro

It seems fitting that a short story should be afforded a short post (I am also writing this under time pressure on my lunch break) but I couldn't let this one go without writing a brief note on this fabulous story.

I bought a tiddly £1.99 copy of Queenie in Waterstones a few weeks ago, not long after it was announced that Alice Munro had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I enjoy short stories but don't read enough of them- which is absurd because they should be the perfect companion to my daily commute (and could be just the thing I need to wean myself off of Candy Crush Saga, which has already consumed so much of my 27th year).

It's the first of Munro's stories I have read and, on finishing, I was overawed at her mastery of the form. Indeed, unlike Munro, I am struggling and about to fail to describe the story in a way that is not cliched or better summarised by somebody else. Sufficed to say therefore that the story, about a woman, Chrissy, who travels to Toronto to stay with her estranged step-sister, the eponymous Queenie and her husband, feels like the TARDIS, such is its extraordinary capacity for detail and literary economy.

Through the first person narrator Munro immediately draws the reader into a deep intimacy with herself and her characters but also skilfully builds and maintains a sense of isolation that permeates the story, and particularly her central characters. The story encapsulates the awkward reality of the re-consolidation of female intimacy while addressing the shift in dynamic between once close sisters whose roles have now been complicated and re-assigned to that of wife and housekeeper in the case of Queenie and unemployed sister-in-law in the case of Chrissy. Several roles are played by both characters throughout the story- and indeed Chrissy foreshadows this at the start of the story when she describes Queenie's appearance as being a costume when she meets her from the train. The necessity of artifice is a theme that returns later in the story and is something that Chrissy comes to recognise as a means of protection, of getting ahead in the city both personally and professionally. I'm interested to see whether this chameleon-like portrayal of female characters is a characteristic of Munro's stories in general and what such a portrayal might indicate.

Whole characters, such as the druggist and his officious wife who offers Chrissy a job, are sketched in one or two sentences but rather than feeling Impressionistic, the story is profoundly robust, clear and highly structured. Indeed it is Munro's matter-of-factness in her delivery of the story that makes the ephemeral thoughtfulness of the closing paragraphs, as Chrissy tries to find her sister again and again, all the more heartbreaking. I felt bereft for the characters and of the story as soon as I read the final line.

In fact, the story left such an impression that I instantly ordered Munro's 'Dear Life' collection. If any of these stories leave half such an impression as this one has had on me, expect many a half-baked blog post to come in the next few weeks!

The Edible Woman- Margaret Atwood

Hello there, and a happy new year to you.

It doesn't take a genius (no offence) to work out that this new post coincides with the new year and all of the procrastination-guilt that is so prevalent at this time of year. Already in my mind this morning I have determined that I will be at least 20 mins early for work every day (already scuppered by a truly awful commute), will run an entire 5km race by September (my third run yesterday ended prematurely when I schlomped nauseated and exhausted into a thicket) and will write at least a short post about every single book I read in 2014. A ridiculous overachieving set of goals which I have no doubt I will fail at but here we go, no more mucking about, book one of 2014: The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood.

If you have never read any Atwood then do, she is a rare breed of author who manages to create a really dynamic reading experience whilst still giving you time and space to think about the things she's writing about. I was shocked to find that she wrote the first draft of The Edible Woman aged 24 such is the skill found in the novel but given the subject matter and main protagonists it makes a lot of sense. The main character, Marian, is in her early to mid-twenties and lives in an apartment with her female friend Ainsley above their disapproving landlady. She has a not-quite-run-of-the-mill job (for a female graduate in '60s Canada) at a market research agency, and a sensible (read dull and traditional) boyfriend, Peter. All is formulaic in Marian's life until she meets English graduate and all-round odd-ball, Duncan, and Ainsley in bohemian fancy determines that she wants a baby, without the need for the man to stick around. Most bizarrely, as Marian's world unravels she finds herself afflicted in a very particular way by finding it harder and harder to eat anything.

At its heart the novel is about the deconstruction of the self, and more specifically, the feminine in the society the characters inhabit. Marian represents the teetering middle-ground of feminine existence- neatly reduced by society to the gap between sexual inexperience and marriage. She similarly finds herself perched ever more precariously between her work friends, otherwise called the 'Office Virgins' for their mutual- although not identically reasoned- no sex before marriage stance, and her old school friend Clara, who is married and mother to 2 and soon after 3 children who have all appeared in exhaustingly quick succession.

The female experience in relation to sex, the not having it in the case of the Office Virgins, or, in the case of Ainsley and Clara, the seemingly inevitable product of it, is at the heart of this novel and yet the book underplays, even coyly removes itself, from the act itself. This surely is deliberate as each woman in the novel appears to be defined by it and yet Atwood treats it as almost a queasy topic, in the same way that food becomes progressively less appetising to Marian. Throughout the novel Atwood cleverly plays on the concept of the femininity being equated to reproduction- and in a society where a woman was expected to give up her job when she got married the equation between marriage and motherhood is absolute. Marian both consciously and subconsciously rejects this, as Atwood emphatically does so. I'll try not to spoil it but at the grand denouement of the intriguing relationship between Marian and Duncan all parties are left unsatisfied. Indeed, satisfaction for Marian comes later and in a more surprising form.

The narrative structure itself flips between first person (Marian) to third person and back to the first again for the very final chapter. In this way, Atwood allows for the disintegration of Marian's character both literally in the structure of the novel as well as in the plot itself, before the emphatic recapturing of self at the end. Marian ends the novel on the ambiguous note, but the optimistic reader will end the novel with Marian's eyes looking up and not back. It is intriguing then that Atwood has asserted that written before the second wave of Feminism of the late '60s, this is not a feminist book. From 2014 it certainly reads like the germination of a new era for women and perhaps therefore it should be  read, not as the book that changes perceptions, but the earth into which such seeds can grow in the minds of both women and men (corny, eh? I thought of that one myself). And yet, at some point I will read the novel again with Ainsley at the forefront and probably come to a different conclusion.

In short, this novel is as relevant for a modern audience as it was when it was written and, although driven by the female experience, will appeal to anyone trying to make sense of their life's direction.

Cloud Atlas- David Mitchell

I was bought the subject of today's blog nearly ten years ago. I got about twenty pages into it, stopped reading, and it sat on my bookshelf at my Dad's house until the beginning of August when I went home, needed something to read on the train and picked it up again. This is going to sound ridiculous but I think that that very act of not reading, and then returning to Cloud Atlas, made my experience of the book that much more spine-tingling (come on now: it wouldn't be my blog if I didn't unleash a super-sized hyperbole in the first paragraph). Let me explain why.

Cloud Atlas is a big, fat, interesting book written by a very clever writer (it's not the David Mitchell by the way, although I'm sure he could write books as well). The premise is gargantuan: Mitchell layers together and then pulls apart six narratives spanning several centuries, from the early/mid 19th Century to some point in the distant future with characters that are connected by seemingly more than chance (no spoilers but keep an eye out for a comet-shaped birthmark). Does the structure always hold together seamlessly? No, some of the segues between the narratives feel a bit forced. Should every A Level English student give it a read? Absolutely: it's a tour de force of narrative structures. Fundamentally Cloud Atlas is an ideas book- a terrible phrase but very appropriate, and for a book that wants to make you think, no bad thing.

I love to be swept away by a good, straightforward tale, and there are certainly moments when I did get swept away, but this is definitely a book that, even as it focussed on one storyline, keeps an eye on the wider point of the novel: that everything and everyone is connected. But because of the structure of the novel, as a reader this is an idea that you are drawn into rather than confronted with on the first page. This is how the novel links together.

The first section is the journal of an American, sent on business to the mid-Pacific. This journal is then picked up (literally, in a library) in the early 1930s in Holland by a aristocratic (although destitute) composer, Robert Frobisher writing to his friend. Frobisher's Cloud Atlas Sextet is heard in a based-on-a-true-story novel by the novel's protagonist Luisa Rey, who is trying to expose the dangerous truth of a nuclear facility using the research conducted by Frobisher's friend, Sixsmith. This novel is being read by an ageing editor, Timothy Cavendish, who's farcical life is made into a film. This film is seen by Somni-451 (who's identity I won't spoil) who's interview is then held in biblical esteem by Zachry, who lives in post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Zachry's section forms the heart of the novel, after which the narratives unfurl themselves in the reverse order.

The reason I've explained this is to give a sense of just how much of a mind-bend this book is when you start to think about it as a whole. But individually the sections are not pretentious or deliberately abstract at all- Zachry's section in particular is incredibly well written in melodic dialect. In fact, it would be interesting to re-read both parts of each section together- so that the book becomes a series of short stories through time. Because that is what it essentially is. But what Mitchell does is so much more than that because of the way that each of his stories and characters slot together. And because of his authorial bravery he can ask several colossal questions- what is the nature of the soul? Should we take our own reality for granted? Can we view our own place in the world, and in time, with any real degree of comprehension?

And just as these questions are posed to the reader, so the reader is asked to consider where their own life falls- between wonder and terror, hope and desolation- Mitchell's characters often career between the two. Even if sometimes Mitchell's authorial head pokes above his narrative structures, the journey is wild, goose-bumpy, mind-blowing. And when I finished Cloud Atlas this evening, I felt like my own little story, the seventeen year old who put the book back on the shelf, and the twenty-six year old who picked it up again had completed. Which was nice. But even if you don't leave it nine years between the start and finish, read and enjoy this book. It's a helluva ride.

Work in Progress - May Day Poem

My own poems come to me quite rarely but tonight I was in luck (though without a pen so I wrote it, bizarrely, on my phone on the tube home). Although I love all the seasons, and particularly the transitional stages between them, this is one of my very favourite times of year. So this little poem reflects that and the image that I took to accompany it. It doesn't feel quite finished/right at the moment (I might add another verse later to the end and to somewhere in the middle) but I thought I'd post it anyway as a little Mayday Elephant-Brained moment...

Monday 13th May.

It's approaching after hours,
And so I move to sit and wait
To have a conversation with the white bird
Hid amongst the pillars and lost chairs.

From up here May sings
Flirtatious, greenish melodies--
As chlorophyll and pigment flaunt and hum
Coquettish with the metropolitan.

I gaze, unseeing
As slight and spiteful breeze
Stirred up and over steps
Glances at me.

The white bird, gladly unperturbed,
Hops, eyes, turns to me and cries again
"May is the time"
He waits, then flies.

Perhaps it is.

But so often, as he drifts away
Becoming blossom dancing far below
The pirouettes of transient confetti
Still spin up into glimmerlets of hope...

Some Thoughts as it's World Book Night... I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith

The 23rd April is a big day in England as it's St George's Day. It's also Shakespeare's birthday. And it's also World Book Night, a night when all things literary are celebrated. 500,000 books are given away absolutely free to encourage people to read something new by 'givers' specifically chosen because they love the 25 books chosen each year. Along with this, there are readings and events going on all over the country in a celebration of the written word. So I thought, in homage to all of the above, (and due to the fact that I'm feeling poorly-sick and not going out to one of these events) I'd write a little bit about my favourite novel I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

I first read I Capture the Castle when I was fifteen and have read it every year or so since then. The story is quite a simple one: Cassandra Mortmain is a seventeen year old girl writing a diary in 1935 full of thoughts and feelings about herself and her unusual family. The Mortmains comprise of her brilliant, avant-garde novelist father with writer's block, James Mortmain; glamorous former artist's model and nudism enthusiast step-mother, Topaz; desperately dramatic, hopeless, beautiful older sister Rose; younger school-boy brother Thomas; and the late housekeeper's son, the Adonis-like Stephen. They live in a tumbledown castle ruin in rural Suffolk wondering how they're going to survive on the dwindling royalties from Mortmain's Joycean first novel 'Jacobs Wrestling' when the new, young, rich American owners of their castle, and of the neighbouring Scoatney Hall estate, Simon and Neil Cotton, rock up. Instantly Rose determines to marry one of them to help them out of their alarming poverty and her own personal misery, and by the end of the novel she has succeeded as Cassandra looks on. As always, the plot stops here- if you want to know the hows and whys, you'll need to read it yourself.

Alright, so far, so ridiculously twee you think: this is going to be a tale of plucky young women winning round the men of their dreams- a sort of mouldering (Cassandra's word, here borrowed) Pride and Prejudice in a gentle comedy of manners. Well, yes and no (and a P & P comparison is nothing to be sniffed at in my book)- but it's not half as simple as that. The novel is deceptively 'grown-up' despite its very naive narrator. In Cassandra we have a little of the Nick Carraway (I'm half way though a blog on Gatsby and mega-excited for the film hence the slightly left-field comparison): she is a narrator almost buffeted along through the story by seemingly stronger characters, but who nonetheless delivers to her reader a view of the world which is both crystal clear and oddly blinkered. But despite being in amongst these strong, and often nutty characters, the novel is always Cassandra's story and, reflected by the time it was written in, there is a substantial departure from innocence for Cassandra over the course of the novel that Smith achieves with beautiful lightness of touch. Seemingly innocuous transitions of emotion compound on each other to bear witness to Cassandra's profound heartbreak, which occurs about two thirds of the way into the novel, and confusion that everything she has held as truth is not as it seems- which lasts until the end of the novel and, we are led to believe, beyond.

So many novels deal with a coming of age but I've never read a novel that so accurately portrays how miserable that can actually be and how first, or unrequited, love can be agony. Not to say that reading this novel is a morose affair- it is far from that. Cassandra, even at her lowest ebb, has a wonderful capacity for marvelling at the beauty around her and, along with the other components of the novel, happily combines moments of the absurd with a lovely understated reality: 'I write this' writes Cassandra in the novel's famous opening line, 'sitting in the kitchen sink' which is sweet, daft and literally informative all at the same time. Similarly in my favourite section of the novel, which also marks it's tonal transition, Cassandra performs a Pagan-lite Midsummer ritual in the same way she has done since she was a child before being whisked away to Scoatney Hall for dinner by her sister's fiance. Throughout the novel Smith juxtaposes the profoundly innocent with impending, and on occasion almost sinister, adulthood so that Cassandra, and by extension the reader, only just manages to keep up with proceedings. This is helped no end by the fact that Cassandra is often writing the diary to make sense of what has happened rather than her original intention to 'capture' her family in prose. This device also makes the organic unravelling of time over the course of the novel feel very natural.

The first image of Cassandra writing in the kitchen sink tells you almost all you need to know about how the novel works. The novel is undeniably domestic and 'small'- the social commentary that Smith chooses is understated, but that's not to say it's unimportant to the reading of the novel. Smith raises important questions around the nature of class, of the place of women, of the importance of art at a time when all of these questions were very important indeed (and in different ways, still are today). But this is ultimately a story that unites the reader with Cassandra, as Smith explores the notion of growing up, even when this process should be at an end (James Mortmain's regression in his quest to recapture his literary talent to an almost childlike state perfectly encapsulates this). Fundamentally it seems that, although her protagonist is very young, Cassandra is a means by which Smith lets her reader know that we are all going through the indefinite process of growing-up (at twenty-six, I certainly am) and becoming who we are, but that this also never changes.

In this way (brace yourselves) Smith and Sartre share a common bond and Cassandra in I Capture the Castle almost acts as a beginning point for early development that Sartre deems to end at the 'age of reason'. I am exactly half way between seventeen and thirty-five and so maybe that's why this makes sense to me now. And maybe my favourite book will take on another significance when I am thirty-five, or fifty or eighty. I think that it will, and perhaps this is also why it is my favourite book. And I think that's why it is always important to keep reading- even when you think you might have all the answers.

So on that thought, happy World Book Night everyone.

The Age of Reason- Jean-Paul Sartre

There's a quote from The Simpsons, in the episode where Springfield hosts a film festival, where guest judge and film critic Jay Sherman impresses the Simpson/Bouvier women by saying 'Camus can do- but Sartre is smartrer' (much to Homer's chagrin). I love a pun so I've always thought this quote was quite funny but, although I read a bit of Camus at uni, I could never really claim to understand it as I'd never read any Sartre. This has now changed (hence the title and subject of today's blog) but I thought that starting the blog with a reference to The Simpsons might assure you that reading Sartre doesn't turn you into a cultural snob (which, I have to admit, was a fear of mine before I started).

The story of The Age of Reason could be described as a multi-level exercise in problem-solving. The protagonist Mathieu, a 35 year old philosophy lecturer living in Paris, is trying to find enough money to give to his sort-of girlfriend of seven years, Marcelle, so that she can get a safe abortion from a Jewish doctor who, in light of the gathering spectre of the Second World War, is only in the country for a few more days before leaving for America. At the same time Mathieu is also trying to figure out whether he is in love with a much younger, plainer (and I only mention this because Sartre mentions it repeatedly) woman, Ivich, who is the sister of one of his students, Bruno. Bruno in turn is having an undefined affair with a much older cabaret singer, Lola. Alongside Mathieu there is also his louche, handsome but troubled friend Daniel, who is also involved with Marcelle, although unbeknownst to Mathieu. The novel itself is set over two days- from the time Mathieu finds out that Marcelle is pregnant, to the resolution of Mathieu's predicament. As with Beloved in my previous post I don't want to give too much away about the plot needless to say that these characters interact with each other with the underlying duplicity and savagery of cats competing for territory.  

So what with Sartre's rendering of the atmosphere of Paris in the 1930s, where the prospect of war is rarely alluded to but hangs over the novel like a dark cloud (the novel itself was published in 1945), and the building existential crises that permeate every character of the story, the tone of the novel is unrelentingly oppressive. My penguin edition of the novel runs to 300 pages of small type which, when you consider that the novel is set over an almost uninterrupted two-day time period, makes for a very densely written story indeed. Having said this, Sartre's constant manoeuvring between the 'reality' of Mathieu's quest for money with his internal quest for resolution with regard to his feelings for Marcelle, Ivich and himself, is done with a clear and readable prose- no doubt helped by a very good translation, by Eric Sutton in my edition.

One of the main contributors to this feeling of oppressiveness  and indeed one of the main themes running throughout the novel is the notion of 'running out of time' and the consequences that procrastination and introspection have on Mathieu and by extension the characters around him. In the most basic sense, Mathieu is running against the clock to secure the abortion, which in turn has existential implications for Marcelle as a woman, a lover and, potentially a mother, as well as for the unborn baby. The potential resolutions of the situation, to obtain the money and have the 'safe' abortion; to risk the cheaper but deadlier, back-alley procedure; or to do nothing and have the baby all have seismic consequences for the characters' lives. Sartre makes his readers aware that Mathieu is being forced out of a world of stasis- where he project-managed his relationship with Marcelle in a seemingly eternal state of nothingness- into a world where whichever direction he chooses he will be entering into a new level of existence which he cannot control. The world cannot stay the same and, even though it initially appears that we are merely witness to a snap-shot of the characters lives, what we read not only fundamentally alters these lives- professionally, socially, mortally- but that these revelations will also continue to have consequences after the novel is finished.

Sartre is certainly, then, smartrer. Because throughout what could be perceived to be quite a melodramatic, self-indulgent story (and it is still that) the novel also takes on a greater significance. From his vantage point in 1945 Sartre knows that in the period of time he is writing about, Europe and the rest of the world is hurtling into a period of human disaster. 'By doing nothing' he seems to say, 'you, and the world, are nothing. By doing anything, you and the world, change'. Mathieu is 35 in the novel and is grappling with the notion that his youth is over, that he has purportedly reached the titular 'age of reason'. Whether this understanding that he has reached the age of reason translates into Mathieu's freedom to exist in a changed world is up for debate, and Sartre leaves it for us to decide. Nonetheless the novel certainly raises an important question about whether the notion of existence is a constant struggle against an ever-changing reality. Which is succinctly summed up for me in another Simpsons quote: D'oh.

Beloved- Toni Morrison

This blog is long long overdue (again) and it has been quite some time since I finished reading this book. But I have to publish this abbreviated review mainly to be able to carry on with this blog but also because the book I'm writing about is so important. Here it is.

I'm going to put my cards on the table right at the start of this blog- this is one of the best books I have ever read. For those of you seeking a book review, well I hope you find it here- but impartial this blog will never be. The quality of this novel is truly aspirational and anyone who has ever tinkered with the idea of writing a book should stop what they're doing and pick a copy of it up now and start writing down pointers. It is nothing short of a masterpiece. Right: hyperbole over, let me tell you exactly why I liked it so much.

First of all, the plot- such as I am going to describe it. Beloved follows the story of Sethe, an African-American who twenty years after being freed from slavery, is still coming to terms with the magnitude of terrible actions exacted upon her and that she has exacted. Caught between an imposed and self-imposed ostracization from her community Sethe lives with her daughter Denver and is in the process of rebuilding a life with her erstwhile partner, Paul D. I really want everyone who reads this blog to read this novel so I'm loathe to give out any plot details, suffice to say that just when everything seems to be going well a mysterious young woman appears in her garden, the past and the present begin to collide in a disturbing, haunting way. All of this you can get of the back of the Vintage edition of the novel (although I have paraphrased it a bit otherwise there's no point me writing it).

So plot aside, and in a way it can be put aside in the reading of the novel, the essence of my delight in reading this book is Toni Morrison herself and her mastery both of her prose technique and use of language. Her prose is meticulous, measured in tone from the very first line '124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children'. I'm usually a fan of the swooping narrative, of lines that rise and fall like the melody of a song but this opening line cuts like a knife and sets the tone for the rest of the novel. This sentence immediately subverts the readers expectation- instantly we ask 'how can a baby be full of venom'? This becomes a standard of the novel: as repeatedly Morrison tells you exactly what you need to know, but forever leaves you wanting to know more- an omniscient voice oscillating between comfort and menace for the reader.

It's this extraordinarily structured juxtaposition between the measured and the fantastic, the philosophical and true throughout this novel which makes it so compelling. The story builds through retribution to catharsis, and as such contains the stylistic elements as well as the narrative of an oral folk tale or parable. In this way it feels like the narrative is unfolding organically, even as it moves from the present to the past and back again. But despite its nineteenth century setting, this is a modern book with a confident and talented modern author at its helm. Although I have only read this once so far, I believe this will be a novel that will offer new things to its reader with every reading. And that is perhaps one of the greatest accomplishments any author can achieve.

Update (lots of reading, not so much blogging)

Well I've not done very well with this lately. It's been seven or so weeks since my last post and, what's perhaps worse, I've been reading the whole time but- as is fitting with the premise of this blog- I'm already starting to forget what I've read (cue major setback to entire exercise). I've just logged in to my library history to remind myself of exactly what I've read and the rest I'll just have to hope I can remember. I've got an absolute cracker of a book to blog about next but for now here are my one paragraph reviews of the books I've read since mid-September:

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen- Newsflash: it turns out that I love the Emma Thompson film version of the novel so much I'd kidded myself into thinking I'd actually read the book. I had not. I liked it- it goes slow in the middle and, actually, the Elinor/Edward story-line is just weird (they basically meet and then never see each other, and, hello, his previous choice of fiancee is not up to much. Marianne and Col Brandon on the other hand, I totally get). But basically this book is less fluffy and fun than you might imagine. Like novelty slippers the week after Christmas.

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran- I loved this book so much that I was planning on basing an entire blog post about how loudly it was acceptable to gigglesnort (and I'm crediting Isha with that little beaut of a word) on public transport when reading. Alas so high was my regard for this book that I lent it to not one but two literary lasses which tragically meant that I couldn't refer back to it when writing. And that's my excuse. Read it and gigglesnort away is my advice. She is a very naughty girl.

I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron- I really needed the advice from some clever wise and funny women a few weeks ago, hence the authors listed above. Nora is the epitome of all three glorious traits and I cried when she died earlier this year- I credit her with some of my finest lines and opinions about relationships. This book is a gorgeous chocolate box of lovely insights about life and the madness of human interactions, fluffy as a teacake and as full of heart as a card shop on February 13th which makes it sounds nauseating but there's a delicious biting wit that runs throughout (Christ I've actually turned into Nigella- pass me a whisk).

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys- so still on my feminine insight bent I decided to push into a modern classic. I read Rhys' Goodmorning Midnight at uni- a dark portrait of the cusp of a mental breakdown in a world that seems, for women at least, barbed and treacherous. Wide Sargasso Sea runs along similar lines but here Rhys' use of Bertha Mason (later Rochester) the 'mad woman in the attic' from Jane Eyre hammers home with ferocity the unfairness of the female place and, particularly, desire in a patriarchal society. It's beautifully, hauntingly written- a book that when I'm in the right mood- it's really very dark- I'll go back to.

The City and The City by China Miéville- back now onto very modern ground and Mieville's rendering of a trippy dystopian double-world where two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, occupy the same physical space in kind of holographic antithesis to each other. The book raises all kinds of real world parallels, particularly echoing a cold-war dynamic and the protagonist is a Besz detective on a murder hunt across the forbidden divide. I loved the concept of this book and it is well written but the detective story didn't quite hold my attention as I hoped it would. However, I've been told that Mieville is one of literature's great chameleons so I'd be interested in reading another of his books.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee- another in my series of 'you've got two literature degrees and you have read that' embarrassments. Well thankfully, now I have and I don't know what I was thinking putting it off so long. Quite rightly lauded as one of the greatest books ever written it is unflinching in its portrayal of childhood idealism giving way to the departure of innocence. This book broke my heart in the best possible way by being so powerfully true. And, just to bring it back down to earth, I think it would be a real struggle to find a sexier lawyer than Atticus Finch in literature. Just saying.

The New York City Trilogy by Paul Auster- so from Austen to Auster and back to trippy cityscape. I've in fact only read two of the three of this trilogy but found Auster's more famous story 'City of Glass' to be more compelling than 'Ghosts'. Not for the faint hearted in the meta-fiction stakes these postmodern detective tales force the reader to deconstruct the nature of the author/narrator/protagonist relationships creating layers of 'what's going on? and whodunnit?' questions (I frequently asked both- I'm still not sure of either answer). As the detective aspect of the stories become less important there is a surprising honesty to Auster's portrayal of a never-quite-graspable New York city. In a way it reminded me of a less ephemeral Murakami tale. Such a pretentious closing statement might allow you to make up your own mind about whether you want to give the trilogy a go or not.

So there we have it- my recent life in books. Next time, one book only. But what a book it is...

    

Boys Don't Cry Part 2: Haruki Murakami

'A Folklore for my Generation: A Pre-History of Late-Stage Capitalism' in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami (short story within the collection)

This post is about a short story from a collection by Haruki Murakami- esteemed Japanese author and surrealist aficionado. If you like books about talking cats, if you like stories entirely about spaghetti, or tales about interlacing, make-believe worlds then Haruki is your man. As a lover of all of the above, I'm a big fan. 

I know I've been a little remiss in my previous blogs about actually summarising the plot of what I'm writing about and I've discovered the subsequent ramble gets a bit confusing without it. Well allow me to remedy this. This particular tale is about two men having dinner together, having met by chance in Italy years after they first knew each other at school, in Japan. Our narrator is listening, and also editing together, his dining companion's tale about the relationship he had with his first sweetheart. Now, before I launch into my little analysis, I better define my terms as this will get a bit confusing without some clarification of who I'm talking about in this story. From our point of view there are three layers: Murakami, the author (as previously with Kerouac, the author), the unnamed writer character within the narrative (henceforth called the narrator and closely comparable to Murakami himself) and the focal character of the story, again unnamed- just to be extra-confusing), henceforth known as the protagonist.  

Instantly from this you can assume, correctly, that this story isn't going to be the self-flagellation of The Subterraneans. Rather than the narrator stumbling through his own self-assessment, as Kerouac's Leo does with the limited success I've already discussed, Murakami affords his protagonist the luxury of an epistolary voice through narrative layers- here not written but rather communicated as a tale that is then 're-worked'. Think Nick Carroway in The Great Gatsby but with more insight on the part of the narrator (in fact Murakami goes a bit meta-fictive by giving his narrator a chance to explain that he is tidying up the story as he goes along). To tie this point back to the issues I raised in the last part, this use of a third-person, and arguably more emotionally stable, narrator helps to stablise, even as it lessens the intensity of the emotional catharsis that the reader can take from the story. For me this evokes a more satisfying conclusion to the narrative as, although further removed, the results seem more honest, even if I'm not getting it from the horse's mouth.

Not unlike Kerouac, Murakami's interpretation of the breakdown of a relationship is still raw and true, while it also seems rather more evenly handed. The female character in the story, Yoshiko, has a stock phrase: 'these are two different things' which she repeats over the course of her conversations with the male protagonist. The concept of this phrase is given due consideration by Murakami and by his narrator throughout the story and the tension is created where these two different things, or people, become so disconcertingly similar (they are styled by the narrator as 'Mr and Miss Clean') that it makes their inevitable separation that much more poignant. Yoshiko tells the protagonist that she cannot marry him, and thus consummate their relationship, quite matter-of-factly and leaves him in a state of in-consequentiality- something previously unknown to him 'Ever since we were little, people had been pushing us...[and] we met their expectations'. When they meet again, several years later, it is the protagonist's inability to make the sexual contact that his teenage self so craved that finally destroys his hope of their being together. It is an unhappy and rather dark end to what starts as a sweet yarn about first love.

One way of summarising this tale is by using the title, as it is both oddly deliberate but deliberately odd. The word 'Folklore' is an interesting choice- in itself a genre based on the, often oral, re-telling and re-working of the tale to suit the needs of the teller and, by extension, the reader/listener. After the protagonist tells the narrator of the strange phrase he always has in mind when thinking of himself and Yoshiko (' "and when it was all over, the King and his retainers burst out laughing" ') the narrator gently tells his reader that 'there's no moral or lesson' to be drawn. The point of the tale, of love and loss, is simply to be read, and understood by the reader. Stories like these, for all their quirks and apparent ability to define an era, in this case 'Late-Stage Capitalism', will be told time after time through generations. The emotions they evoke and that they describe, will stay the same. And in realising that, and in reading this, Murakami provides us with the best emotional self-help there is.

Next time: the women take over the emotional development and I'll try to answer a very important question: is it socially reprehensible to honk with laughter when reading on public transport?

  

Boys Don't Cry Part 1: Jack Kerouac

The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac (novella)

Originally this was going to be a blog of two halves and I suppose it still is, but it's also become a bit of a mind-splurge so I've divided it (hence Part 1). Recently I've read something brand new while also revisiting a story in a book that I bought on a whim a couple of years ago. Polarised by their styles and forms and geographically by the nationalities of their authors, both stories nonetheless share a similar concern- the catharsis of story-telling to mend a broken heart. In this post, we're starting with the new book, and heading back to 1950s America.

Jack Kerouac is often touted as the poster-boy for the hard-drinking, hard-living Beat Generation and his novella The Subterraneans is a portrait an ultimately doomed love affair so intimately connected with his own reality that Ann Douglas gives the reader a 'who's who' character list of the Beat generation in her introduction to the Penguin edition. In terms of love affairs 'romantic' is not often a word used to describe Beat texts and this book is a case in point. In the story the volatile treatment of Kerouac's stand-in Leo Percepied towards love interest Mardou Fox borders on the sociopathic as lust gives way to irrational jealousy. Not, then, an enduring love over the course of its 90-odd pages, the extremes of emotions between desire, love (though in hindsight, writes Kerouac, 'she never did use the word love') and the final demise in the relationship between the two characters are nonetheless as important as Leo battle to write about the relationship in hindsight as a means of self-therapy. 

The hypnotic, jazz-infused language which characterizes and structures the narrative reflects the life-as-art duality of the text; it's written as a Modernist stream of consciousness for the Post-modern age. It's this tone and almost musical phrasing of language in the novella which, for me, is its strongest element. Kerouac sets himself the unenviable task of 'just... [starting] at the beginning and [letting] the truth seep out' and as the waves of happiness become riffs of insecurity and distrust through his reaction to Mardou's perceived indifference and/or infidelity, the text is punctuated like trumpets: '...in my heart, 'O why did you do it?'- sensing, in my desperation, the prophesy of what's to come'. 

Leo, and by extension I suppose Kerouac, is constantly fighting his inner self-loathing voice with the recollection of his feelings for Mardou as they become inextricably linked to, and therefore consume, all of his other relationships. This raging is characterised by Kerouac through constant asides to his (Leo's) reader and temporal jumps between 'then' and 'now'. But despite its jumpy nature, as with much all-consuming romance, the downward trajectory is almost gravitational: the relationship begins in a heady dreamlike state 'she'd turned her face to me close, it was an ocean of melting things and drowning' and ends with a clunk: 'And I go home having lost her love. And write this book'

In writing the novella Kerouac's main objective may be an exercise in finding the emotional closure at the end of the relationship. However, this seems unlikely as, through the cyclical structure of the story, beginning, as it does, at the end, Leo is trapped in perpetual misery. Emotional catharsis is definitely not attained by either protagonist or reader (and reading it this way actually makes the story downright miserable: you may need to have some kind of biscuit-based treat available after you've finished). Alternatively it may be that this is Kerouac's attempt at artistic catharsis, and in the perhaps misguided, perhaps deliberately evasive optimism that comes from creation of the work, the novella, at any cost and regardless of emotional fall-out. Ultimately though, Mardou sums it up most neatly in an admittedly hackneyed metaphor: 'Men are so crazy, they want the essence, the woman is the essence...but [the men] rush off erecting big abstract constructions'. 

In truth (and biscuits aside), The Subterraneans is not an easy read, not least because of the chauvinistic attitude which always seems to find its way into Kerouac's writing: there's definitely more than a whiff of his Madonna/Whore complex here- and this is before we factor in his views on ethnicity which make for uncomfortable reading. But whether you're on the side of love as essence, or on the side of the big abstract construction, one thing is certain: in this book love is hard and boys most certainly do cry. 

Part 2 to follow and we're heading for Italy via Japan (now might be the time for that biscuit...)    

Inspiration on the Tube

Sometimes I have little moments of creativity and this, I suppose, is one. From Bank at lunch time, where I saw the Olympic and Paralympic athletes' parade, gestated on my way from work to Warren Street and born somewhere between Oxford Circus and Green Park on my way home, this little poem was tucked in my copy of Sense and Sensibility written on the back of a map, serendipitously, of Soho. In amongst the everyday, London has just recently felt a bit special and, now at an end, I feel the weight of expectation on this city has been lifted. I didn't have my camera at the Parade so this, for me, is my Elephant-Brained moment to commemorate the special day.

London 10.09.12

Out in the mass
With confetti
Weeping onto anybody else's shoulder but
Yours
Here's closure, now it ends.

But we further descend and
Now
At half past five and Underground
Clunky, curmudgeonly- a little bereft
That whisper in the crowd takes a breath and sighs:

we did it; we were there.
And, even as the warm breath fades
And as the little strings snap
One 
              by
                          One
I'll try to hold mine all the more
Closely
fleeting as the rails 
in our palms.

A Step Away From Them- Frank O'Hara

I first met Frank in my second year at University when I was young and impressionable. I had managed to squeak in to university without having had a proper grown-up relationship with a book but being able, for reasons still a bit unclear to me, to understand a lot of the books put in front of me. I like to think of it in those most intellectual of terms- a bloody fluke. Still, this is not a therapy session.

I still can't remember the first poem of Frank O'Hara's that I read (hence this little experiment) but I can remember first reading the one I'm going to write a bit about now 'A Step Away From Them' which can be found in a little book called Lunch Poems (part of the City Lights Books Pocket Poets Series, San Francisco 1964). I've found the poem here so you know what I'm talking about http://www.frankohara.org/writing.html#step

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In his poem Frank is walking, as he so often likes to do, in the streets of Manhattan on his lunch break, observing his surroundings with benevolence and whimsy, walking with the air of a Baudelairian flaneur (an aimless poetic narrative wanderer through urban settings, traditionally Paris). I could spend the length of a dissertation (and believe me, I tried) enthusing about this poem but instead, I'll draw out some of my favourite points.

To me, this poem feels inclusive and if poetry scares you, this is a fine example of a poem giving you a great big hug. For one thing, it's a fantastic example of 'looking around' in a city. One of the things I love about this poem so much is the continual stop /start of the observations in style as well as content: after a stanza of walking, following a series of observations down the sidewalks, O'Hara 'stops to look at wristwatches' in a split line all to itself as the cats play in sawdust at the end of the stanza, a moment for himself as his reader catches up to him, and is drawn into unity again with Frank the narrator.

The elegant synergy of language with image in the first stanza, where the skirts 'flipping/above heels and blow up over/grates', lift and swirl over three lines, like breezes stirred up by the cabs he mentions after. His choice of language is masterful- everything is 'ing', lilting and alive- you can feel it on your skin. At the end of the second stanza his use of time when 'everything suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of/a Thursday', mixes the transience of time with a particular moment- the ever-disappearing lunch break in the never-ending succession of weekdays where, for a few minutes at least, we are all free to roam around.

There is beautiful inclusiveness, mirroring the New York myth (and misnomer) even in observation: the negro, the blond girl and momentarily linked by the narrator- the unifying force, almost at one with New York itself. And yet Frank's own sense of self is not secure: when he mentions Bunny (Lang) and painters John Latouche and Jackson Pollack and asks 'But is the/earth as full as life was full, of them?', the wanderer is momentarily lost, even within the confines of his own art and the space in the city he is forging for himself. The ability to observe, concretely (subjectively) and also to question one's own existence in a changed world is something we can do, almost simultaneously. Walking around in the city certainly lends itself to this.

It is this that I also love most about Frank, and about this poem. This is not a hoity-toity ode to obscurity. This is the spontaneous act of walking out into the city. This is looking around, and feeling- as is so gorgeous to do in the summer heat- the world move and bend before us, with benevolent interest. His language is simply accessible but rewards can be obscure to his reader (I had never heard of Pierre Reverdy until this poem), or universal (with just a touch of the exotic): 'a glass of papaya juice'. It's worth mentioning that O'Hara belonged to a movement challenging the perceptions of academic poetry, of what was 'good' (high?) art or not. And yes it can be saccharine. And no this is not abject realism. But there is humanity here which struck a chord in me, and has never really left.

P.S. posts won't always be this long. I just really love this poem (see also O'Hara's 'The Day Lady Died', 'Steps')