Dvorak

Here’s a quote from a piece John Berger wrote in Le Monde diplomatique back in 2003. The whole piece Written in the night: the pain of living in the present world can be read here:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27a/113.html

It is a little more than a century ago that Dvorak composed his Symphony From the New World. He wrote it whilst directing a conservatory of music in New York, and the writing of it inspired him to compose, 18 months later, still in New York, his sublime Cello Concerto. In the symphony the horizons and rolling hills of his native Bohemia become the promises of the New World. Not grandiloquent but loud and continuing, for they correspond to the longings of those without power, of those who are wrongly called simple, of those the US Constitution addressed in 1787.

I know of no other work of art which expresses so directly and yet so toughly (Dvorak was the son of a peasant and his father dreamt of his becoming a butcher) the beliefs which inspired generation after generation of migrants who became US citizens.

For Dvorak the force of these beliefs was inseparable from a kind of tenderness, a respect for life such as can be found intimately among the governed (as distinct from governors) everywhere. And it was in this spirit that the symphony was publicly received when it was first performed at Carnegie Hall (16 December 1893).

Dvorak was asked what he thought about the future of American music and he recommended that US composers listen to the music of the Indians and blacks. The Symphony From the New World expressed a hopefulness without frontiers which, paradoxically, is welcoming because centred on an idea of home. A utopian paradox.

Today the power of the same country which inspired such hopes has fallen into the hands of a coterie of fanatical (wanting to limit everything except the power of capital), ignorant (recognising only the reality of their own fire-power), hypo critical (two measures for all ethical judgments, one for us and another for them) and ruthless B52 plotters.

Here’s the sublime cello concerto that he refers to, coincidentally the one I felt encapsulated the narrative of human despair a few posts ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJcEbYfJ6XU

Part two

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3o8bVwPXLUw

Part three

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nkNQYqVEQk

There’s nothing like consensus, what? I shall restrain myself from a string of compliments about Mr Berger’s work and simply say reading his books is like the experience of jumping between rocks as a child. Each one you land on another small victory, a reminder of all the possibilities that exist, of voices missing from literature. What will we do if he dies? Learn to jump backwards, or add a half twist between stones, or hope for new outcrops.

Mad Notion 362 and the mittens

I have taken affirmative steps toward another of my notions this morning the acquisition of a smattering of the Arabic language. The early signs are that it’s more promising a feat than the barmy attempt last week to read a cello concerto.

The class is none of this let’s start at the very beginning with the alphabet. It’s more of a turn on the pan and start boiling approach, so an hour into the class we were asking each other for our phone numbers and replying with very useful phrases like I’ll be calling you next year or la, la, la, get out of here, you must be joking I’m not giving you my number. Because of the turn on the pan approach we were also telling each other we were doctors. There’s none of this interrupt the class while 12 people ask for the specific name of their job — much simpler to just all claim to be doctors. Al doctoraah.

What an incredibly gender specific language it is! Different ways to say how are ya? if you’re talking to a man or woman. Infact different ways to say everything. The only mild relief came when I realised by virtue of being a female I had only to ask the questions appropriately to males and females and could relax about having to reply as a bloke. Until this dawned on me it was a very intimidating prospect.

 Handily the class takes place on a campus with a very acceptable large arts library. I spent a long time getting cosy with the French literary canon, then chanced upon Beckett’s theatrical notebooks in German, which also took a while because I had to see how long he could keep up that neat writing on that squared paper. It became slanted by Endgame. There was at least a whole play where it did not slip remotely to the right. Most impressed. I couldn’t stop recalling the hand cramp of youth.

Followed that with a nice uplifting injection of Flaubertian cynicism to emerge to the exit and discover quelle horreur my bold and stripy mittens, always admired by people under age 5, were gone. I had to revisit every stop along the French literary canon to see had I tucked them on the shelves. When you’ve lost your mittens among it, the French literary canon is even bigger than you thought and those shelves are like caverns. It looked likely the French canon had eaten my mittens and all joy of literary meanders threatened to evaporate until hark I spotted them next to a man playing a complicated looking video game, who looked a little startled as I was reunited with them beside his elbows and exclaimed loudly my undying love for them and waved them in victory at the library staff, which prompted outpouring of lost black leather glove last winter story from woman behind desk.

Lannan audio archive: Coetzee, McGahern

Being approx three years behind the rest of the world, this archive may have been back up for a while, but I’ve just taken note of the fact.

I’ve sometimes found humour in Coetzee’s novels to the contention of many people I’ve mentioned this too. In this interview he comes across as being in possession of a sense of humour, so it suggests I didn’t hallucinate the humour entirely. He’s wonderfully reticent and evasive in this interview, but the interviewer is as nifty as I don’t know what and the auditory concentration required to follow the drift of the pair of them is rewarding (in much the same way squinting and rereading a tough paragraph over and over is) will cause your ear to turn and begin to lean in toward the speaker. http://www.lannan.org/lf/rc/event/j-m-coetzee/

 Here’s John McGahern (RIP) as well: the loss of Mr McGahern is felt keenly between these humble walls. As my mother said of him: he was well liked. It’s an endorsement he would have been glad of, as she’s a farmer with goats and Kerry cows and they’re not easy won over.

http://www.lannan.org/lf/rc/event/john-mcgahern/

Would love to pretend I was concerned with literature in the 1980’s but in fact this was what kept me occupied and this gal Szabo was my heroine, not the Bronte sisters. With hindsight the ambition of lifting five times (or maybe one and half times?) one’s body weight (giant circle on the high bar) is remarkably similiar to surviving literary ventures. Just as much likelihood you’d fall flat on your arse while at it too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMao_tU93qg

 This version has a voice over that sounds like it’s being broadcast from the moon. Brillo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hdWTsVTeuA

 Irresistible Europop meets classical can’t make up it’s mind music by 1985. Bless her, how did she endure this choice?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ6NHDCgusM

Zadie vs Snoopy

There are three things that Zadie overlooked in the latest part of her missive for scribblers and readers: The miracle, the unpersuaded and Snoopy.

The miracle.

I am encouraged at the prospect of Zadie’s proposed thorough reader. There is however a big boulder between her thorough reader’s hands and the literature they are to become thorough about. Zadie’s books are reviewed, so are many of the writer’s she knows, but surely she’s acquainted with a couple, (if not I can provide a list) who are blatantly ignored and whose books go away off to the literary chalk pits. It is nothing short of a minor miracle if your book is reviewed these days, after overcoming the major miracle of persuading publishers that a novel about a fork lift truck driver from Winnipeg has value and could find readers.  The word count for literary journalism is diminishing. We are seeing reviews recycled in newspapers off the wires constantly over here. If you’re unconvinced by this argument open the paper and count the number of fiction (do not include non-fiction) titles reviewed, then look at how many are emerging voices. It’s grim, grim, grimola. The Irish Times has perhaps 3 per week, that’s 12 per month. So the view from the gutter where I sit would have to be if they are saying anything about you whether it be good, bad, slippy or sniffy — there’s a vague hope your tome may make it into a pair of human hands. 

 Last year I had a devil of a time trying to find a newspaper to run an interview with Beckett’s biographer. I kept thinking Beckett, who spoke to no one, spoke to this man: why is it so difficult to convince the newspapers to listen to him? I mean I hadn’t even got to the part, where I admitted to asking the man obscure questions about Duchamp and the chess games. (Duchamp prevailed if you’re wondering)

Yes Michiko Kakutani fundamentally does not believe the world to be as David Foster Wallace, but as a visual artist once explained to me …I look at work for what I don’t know, not what I already know. So could Mr FW himself grasp anything from her exhales? Perhaps those two are not a good example as they’ve probably gone a few rounds by this point. Besides he doesn’t strike me a bloke about to be deflated by getting boxed in the NY Times. There are bigger literary injustices putting pressure on my frontal lobe on a daily basis. (Where are the Iraqi novels? etc.) Perhaps because I have far more to learn than Zadie (she’s an accomplished gal) I find literary criticism even when if it’s giving rickets to the knees of some novel I happened to like, can be enlightening none the less. (This could be the advantage that comes from the liberating matter that if I never write a book no one will notice) If the hammer’s going at your knees it’s likely a different matter.

The unpersuaded.

This week someone mentioned, adding politely it wasn’t a dis to the review I wrote, that they did not intend to read that particular novel because the subject matter was unappealing.  I considered it likely therefore that my review had failed the book concerned, since I tried to impress the value of this particular book in persuasive terms. The reader remained unpersuaded.

I decided to write about books in the first place because I felt the absence of so many books in the pages of the newspapers that I felt mattered and I was tired of people asking me about Frank McCourt on the bus. No disrespect to Frank, who I am sure would concur that Irish literature doesn’t need to begin and end with him.

 I must now revise my thinking and make an even bigger commitment to being persuasive in either direction it would seem.  It’s not enough to be thoughtful and insightful in reviews once must practically move the Yangtze River for a book if it is important that it be opened.

Snoopy.

All the reviews I read of Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone drew attention to the likelihood of him being a bit of a tosser. The tosser factor did not necessarily put me off, as I wasn’t needing to go camping with him and in the canon of literature some of the finest books are written by the grumpiest, most unforgiving of creatures. One review in a much less significant newspaper mentioned Snoopy and it was this the presence of Snoopy solidified my intention to seek it out. There was no suggestion in any review of how funny it is. I cackled my way across a bridge at his descriptions of pursuing the wax tailed duck in what can only be verging on a worrying dedication (for those close to him) to the feathered variety.

After the usual alarming thoughts that humour is wildly absent in this earnest continent I was reassured that Snoopy had prevailed over all the status of named and esteemed Literary Critics. Clearly if you place Snoopy somewhere in your novel, salvation will be forthcoming. It’s not criticism without cynicism that will help literature: it’s Snoopy.

Peg’s ma

Here’s a link to a Writers and Co interview with Margaret Atwood, http://www.cbc.ca/writersandcompany/audio.html in which she describes her mother taking up figure skating (ice dancing) at 45 and retiring at 75. I’m assuming she didn’t have the comfortable benefit of hockey skates, which made my second painfully uncomfortable attempt at ice skating a little more optimistic but not yet convincing over Christmas. The assumption can also be drawn that the Atwood gene is one that includes sensible behaviour by the inner ear. All very important literary insights of course, the sort you’ve come to expect from this blog.

Reading the score

For a while I’ve been musing on which piece of classical music perfectly replicates/interprets the narrative of human despair.  Now obviously that’s some indication of the cheery types of things I think about, but every time I hear certain pieces of music I hear the elements of the novel. Or perhaps more accurately I hear the elements that are missing from my own novel. It may seem absurd to try reduce human despair to one single narrative, but heck I have to start somewhere, so I’m settling on one for now.

 My present contender is the Dvorak – Cello Concerto in B minor Op. 104 – II. Adagio ma non troppo played by Jacqueline du pre in the recording I have.

 In an effort to explore this duality I find between music and narrative I got this barmy idea to try to read musical scores, which, given that my knowledge of the treble clef is v limited and all early experiences with violin were severely detrimental, was a little optimistic.

 The other day at the library negotiating the difficulty of a man hogging the shelfs of the section I was trying to reach I was excited to see the Bach cello suites. Ha, I think, I’ll start there because I can throw on Pablo Casals CD and try to follow him as a first step.

Naturally forgot about it til the small Puffin chanced upon  it.. what’s this? Starts singing out the numbers above the notes. So I tell him my plan about reading it with music on.  Sling on the CD, dart to sofa. It’s suite 1 playing, and suite one open on the knees. Think I am fathoming it, point out to Puffin looks it going up, he rightly asserts it’s going down on the CD. Perplexed hit track one again. Repeat dart to sofa. Five further attempts. Dismal failure. Declare to Puffin reading music is impossible task. Turn off Pablo. Return to sofa defeated. Close musical score. Catch sight of words: double bass on inside cover. It’s bloody double bass music we’re looking at.

We turn to something we really can understand Pippi Longstocking in relief.

It was an excellent exercise in knocking on the head another barmy notion from the increasing list of barmy notions. Actually I’d like to know which part of the brain is responsible for barmy notions because that might explain why a I, who cannot follow an omlette recipe, thought my chances might be higher trying to read a cello concerto.

Is it true?

Woman approaches me at bus stop and apologizes. Pause. She explains she likes to read the titles of books people are holding. I show her Anita Rau-Badami’s novel: Can you hear the nightbird call?

‘Is that the one about the man running to be the US president?’

‘It’s based on the Air India bombing.’ I reply.

‘Is it true?’

‘It’s about the Air India tragedy.’ I repeat.

After more babble where she says she doesn’t like fiction but she likes Rohinton Mistry because it’s true I am forced to admit that this must be a near exact replica of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with a geologist.

-Do you know anything about arctic cone drilling, I ask him.

-No.

10 minutes later after my arm waving impressions he says ‘aha, arctic core drilling.’

When I ask how it all happens he says helicopters fly the gear in.

-damnit I have people in my kids novel turning up in a row boat to do it.

He’s silent, politely silent.

-would there be any circumstances where a person could turn up in the arctic to do core drilling in a row boat or any kind of boat for that matter?

-absolutely not.

-what if they are afraid of flying?

He shakes his head.

Zadie Smith on failing and failing with ambition

The height of encouragement to see someone — Zadie Smith — born post 1971 forming cohesive thoughts on literature, even if I don’t concur with them entirely. I feel the focus of my generation (and I’ll be hitting the lack of a pension slightly before Mrs Smith) has been on career instead of work in literary matters. Explained maybe because we escaped the caning of a classical education and the Atari computer was only just putting in an appearence on our exits. We therefore plunged after Latin and before the ipod. 

 Here’s the link:http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1988887,00.html

The bit that tripped me up:

For writers have only one duty, as I see it: the duty to express accurately their way of being in the world. If that sounds woolly and imprecise, I apologise.

It’s neither the invocation of sheep nor imprecision that troubles me about that sentence it’s that it’s a depressing prospect since the notion that the writer would accurately express their way of being in the world feels very limited. (Case in point: the novel ‘Saturday’ — a reminder that chumped up, satisfied folk aren’t interesting. ) I’d hazard a guess that many writers barely have one foot in the world by virtue of the fact they’re stuck behind the curtains all day long. Perhaps I am not fathoming her drift, but in simple God’s ordinary people’s terms: I often long to read a novel about a man digging a hole and by her thesis I am very unlikely to ever read one unless a writer gets reincarnated. Beckett was probably my best hope. 

 I am thinking in particular of a novel like John Berger’s The Foot of Clive, which pushed me over the cliff mentally with the possibilities it held up to me when I read it. It’s just hard to be certain that book represents his way of being in the world. But perhaps infact it does, if one is to include his imagination to be him, and his imagination rambled off down the lane and plucked and rendered those people to his page.

In anycase I appear to have argued my way around to agreeing with her since I have neither sufficient science nor intellect to discredit it.  I have an affection for her work, (despite there being a certain amount of old guff in it) as Queens Park was the first grown-up place I lived and I bought my first significant poetry book in a bookshop on the Kilburn High Road when I was supposed to be buying a warm coat. I lived in a flat with a woman who was a former Bay City Rollers groupie, who had the snaps to prove it.. And a Keep Fit fanatic in the days of the leotard, star jump version of Keep Fit and a girl from Monaghan, who I’d go up the Kilburn High Road to get ‘messages’ (shopping) with. Nostalgic digression there: cue the theme music from The Wombles and shaking of head as that last paragraph is the equiv. of saying well I like Flaubert on account of being French. A most pointless of paragraphs.)

I did like the idea of accepting as a writer one is unlikely to get it right. There’s something very liberating about it. Though it’s another dart on the board for recommending being a good reader over a poor writer. If one could have enough sense to choose such a thing.

The Guardian will need to update their author page (daft concept clearly) on her since Mrs Smith is quoted at the top of it:

“Novels are not about expressing yourself, they’re about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic… Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.

On reflection I think there’s far more to be gained by reading Flaubert’s correspondence than the above linked piece. It reflects the uncompromising and near enough stigmata approach necessary to fail better. He may have been a flawed individual in his intolerant attitudes, but his relentless dedication to the written word is infectious. (see Flaubert’s Take entry for the link). This is an age of clicking and agreeing and nodding, while someone else has done the reading. But will impressionable minds actually go and read the writers she’s talking about. Unlikely perhaps.

Candidates

So wind chill and minus 16 turned out to be quite anti climactic. Small Puffin and myself dressed to the top of the hill, exit the building. Small Puffin exclaims in view of my front bite warning that’s it’s a bit steamy inside this get-up. Seconds later declares he’s blinded with the heat. I look across the road and see a bloke wandering along with his jacket wide open and no hat nor gloves.  I have to declare the whole episode an over reaction as we fling off the face wrapping. Further confirmed later when I spot a woman working as a flag person (traffic director?) stood in this wind chill doing a crossword. I stop for a chat with her and we discuss roadworks. Do you know, she says eventually, I should have had my ex evicted out of the house we shared when we split because I’ll never be able to own another house. I wonder can it be possible to have this much clarity, if it really is -16 in the wind. Then note there is no wind which makes it only -6.

In the soiree we get enthused about the sledging potential. On the road I think small Puffin looks strange: why’s he got two thick hoods on back of his head? Closer examination reveals he’s accidentally placed two big winter coats on. I must have forgot he says mystified. I cannot fathom how he physically managed to get them on, not least because one is two sizes too small for him.

The park is strangely empty, except for two snowboarders. When pulling Puffin from one side to other to reach some semblance of a hill I finally understand what it is to be a horse travelling the roads of Derbyshire in some Jane Austen tome. It’s beautifully quiet though, snow shifting away from the wellies like flour. It’s not that dreadful slushy snow. Powder, I think they call it.

 Since this blog has largely turned into tales of the Puffin and I walking along the road, due to the uneventful nature of anything literary, the use of the ‘s’ word in first paragraph will cause all kinds of problems, as sometimes people arrive at this blog with the most alarming search terms.  It’s like a form of censorship. Have had to remove an article to try to divert the owners of that group of brain cells to some other corner of the web. (i.e the corner they are actually trying to reach!)  Certain adjectives have me on edge. I am faint hearted. I’m sure people would say that’s the nature of blogging. Indeed there are far better candidates for it.

Pinter and wind chill

Here’s a link to a photo gallery showing the damage heaped upon Stanley Park, our big downtown park (should that be rainforest?) I’m not fluent in the West Coast vernacular, but the gallery gives a good indication of what happens when the wind shows up with this much gusto.

The latest meteorological wonder is the threat of -16 windchill in the morning. Since I’m not even sure what wind chill is, had to inquire of a person who is familiar with it all up in Yellowknife (she stated it was minus 40 up there at the moment) and then gave an apt description of exactly what one must don in order to make it intact to lunchtime. Essentially you exit the bed and wear the equivilent of a continental quilt head to foot with pertinent holes for the eyes. A sort of arctic burqa look.

It’s one thing looking at these astonishing numbers in other places on the map of this gigantic land of frozen puddles, it’s quite another when the numbers suddenly shift left and threaten the old doorstep. We aren’t equipped. The last time the temp dipped to -4 the Puffin had a fire alarm at school and had to stand outside for twenty minutes with no coat on, because obviously we never have cause to think about such things.

Anyway amidst learning this new dialect of the chills, I did chance upon a most uplifting interview with Harold Pinter  from earlier in the year. Listening to him made me excited about being a writer, or perhaps more significantly about being a human being, which is a fairly rare sentiment. Or perhaps I was also excited about the fact he’s still alive, given he’s nearly died twice. I hope it has the same effect on you if you listen to him. At the end he reads from a recent piece about mobile phones, which is both funny and eerily familiar. I find him to be a very hopeful man, (because of his clarity and his integrity), who filled this listener with a great sense of purpose, rather than my usual bumbling fogginess, amply demonstrated in previous post about wiggly tooth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/review/default.stm