Great readers
Here’s a piece I wrote concerning the best ambition of all. That of being a good reader.
Let the greats explain the novel to you
Apply the insights of Milan Kundera and Francine Prose to your reading and writing.
Low econ-impact; agility round the dustbins
Loved this article from last weekend’s Observer, most esp. the bin diving neighbour who arrives at lunch with the piece of mouldy cheese.
Alex Renton rides shotgun with a band of eco-minded ‘freegans’ who plunder the bins behind the local M&S for gourmet foods. But how ethical is it? And can you get enough for a dinner party?
Asked Puffin to convert to freeganism, we’ve agreed to wait ’til the current garbage strike is over due to stench. Judging by the measly two malteser-sized tomatoes our huge tomato plant produced, sustainable living remains at a bit of a distance.
In sharp contrast
To contrast with our anxious “over the flutter of their cash” Silicon Valley millionaires, here’s someone they could learn much from Zell Kravinsky, who reminds me of Dorothy Day, and far from being barking mad, as is regularly inferred about him, makes pitch perfect sense and has taken the measure of the world very accurately. And since he’s a Renaissance scholar one hopes he can see the value in buying books and supporting artists.
I’ve often wondered if the acquisition of wealth is just humans collecting comfort, continuous comfort, an insulating quilt of comfort to the point that it merely highlights how uncomfortable they in fact are. That inside a monstrous house, and a massive car and a private jet and an endless swimming pool rings little but the eventual echo of loneliness. People even refer to themselves sometimes as “comfortable”. It’s an odd, blank description.
I think it was Tennessee Williams who said something like we’re all hurrying towards something, what’s going to happen when we actually get there. Well, it would seem that Mr. Kravinsky found out and he could not look at the blatent injustice that stared back at him.
He’s interviewed on The World Service program The Interview here
Brillopads
Could this be why it’s so damn hard for writers to make a living:
Living Modestly Despite a Nice Nest Egg
He seems to derive a kind of Zen pleasure through living modestly. He takes books out of his local public library rather than buying them at a store. He rents a one-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, Calif., although he can afford a larger place.
The, he, in question is: “By Silicon Valley standards, Brian Wilson is not rich. But despite a nest egg of roughly $1.5 million…”
Article on rich folk in Silicon Valley in today’s NY Times who have financial anxiety.
With respect to the folks of Silicon Valley, who are sitting on a million and a half, but proudly wandering with brillopads on their feet instead of shoes because of “wealth anxiety” I say that by the time you come to retire and take your wads out of the bank and lie on your arses on distant beaches on misshapen spines, you’ll have nowt to read because the poor writers your miserly ways are depriving of a living will be forced to procure a life of software piracy instead to feed their chickens.
For God’s sake would they ever buy a sodding book, painting, if they want to really live dangerously they could shell out for a poetry collection, or the much maligned no one wants to publish them anymore short story collection … share the damn wealth and stop being such stingy gits.
To all those who do buy books un grand merci beaucoup. The simple fact is if people don’t buy books writers cannot make even the paltry living most of them actually make.
Arthur Ransome travel article
Here’s a link to a travel article I (and the Puffin, who provided stellar guide to Ransome’s characters) wrote about Arthur Ransome and the locations in his novels. (Swallows and Amazons etc). Avast!
Two right feet, odd sizes
The Puffin, it has been declared by a shoe sales male, has worn his shoes too much! How one wears shoes too much is a bit beyond me, but there you go. The controversial pair were acquired at Xmas and officially o’tattered beyond belief when I eyed them the other day.
The Puffin informs me that when the disintegrating footwear were returned the shoe sales male announced in his opinion Puffin wore them too much, but will return to shoe intelligence central for the official verdict. If Puffin were true to his namesake he would take flight and go easier on his soles.
In meantime, rain concerned madre decides we better seek another pair. Puffin intensely displeased at trying on shoes, puts one of a pair on, declares them fine, refuses to stand up and prance about. Rain concerned mama takes dictator stance and insists Puffin put feet in both shoes whereupon we discover that the box has two right shoes. Inquire of arm waving sales male, why would this box be on a shelf with two right shoes? Sales male replies it’s mix and match. Rain concerned moi says, but seriously are there people in the world with two right feet? (Not the smartest at medical science I thought perhaps he knew something I do not). I don’t know, he says, maybe. So I look inside shoes and say I am fairly certain there is no small person in the world with two right feet, one sized 2 and one sized 3, as have now noted they are indeed different sizes. Increasingly angry sales male says I don’t know, it’s mix and match, there probably are people and has wavy arms that look like they’d like to bat me out of the shop like a cricket ball. Wavy sales male is v determined there is no problem with trying to sell this pair of shoes and appears to find my expectations too high.
Puffin and I agree that he and shoes are having some kind of compatibility crisis and we’ll divert to eating bean burritos instead.
No preview
An anthology I had two pieces published in years ago, but could never afford to actually purchase because it cost 40 dollars has arrived on google books. Finally thinks I … can get a gander at it because it’s so long since I wrote it, can imagine how dreadful piece will seem now. Takes a while to locate in the table of contents due to usual unpredicatable, streaky, mouse action … I’m clicking page 6 but it’s showing 192 .. on hunting the 6 pages me bit is supposed to correlate to, I discover they’ve been omitted those precise 6 pages from this online version of the book.
What’s the saying …if you go fishing you catch a boot.
o’nibbles
Here’s a link to Philip Roth interviewing Milan Kundera, plus here’s a Kundera essay from 1985 in which amongst other things he takes issue with Dostoyevsky.
Kundera’s seven part essay The Curtain is like taking your brain on holiday. Plus in part seven he offers a certain balm to the old brain when he highlights the dubious ability of our memories to track details, as we plough through a novel. You could imagine millions of brain cells burping in relief.
He has anecdotes about trying to comprehend the invasion of his country in 1968 by the Russians. Since I am bereft of such images, not arriving on the earth until 1971, I had to do with the difficulty of trying to order a hot chocolate or some kind of beverage in a bakery in Prague in the 1980’s and ending up with three of a completely different variety.
Tufty
Who remembers Tufty? The following explains why those of us who grew up in the 1970’s have advanced icecream van phobia. Those, who grew up in the sixties had the threat of the Cold War, while Tufty the squirrel took over the nuclear threat by frightening the bejesus out of us every time we heard the distant dingle of the Mr Whippy van.
o’verbally
The great mystery of human behaviour in the midst of city traffic continues. Here I am a trotting along, reading, when a certain rouse of verbal abuse is detected by my auditory radar. Three individuals, two fellas, one gal but can’t look sufficient to determine, for am attempting to keep up guise of not having heard they are offering their opinions loudly out the truck window for my benefit.
The truck, which is a can’t quite make it’s mind up colour between almost gold and yellow and green and sand, I dislike. It’s occupants are continuing to unnerve me with their remarks.
I placate myself with the possibility it’s the book they’re objecting to: Francine Prose’s Reading like a writer. Those truck occupants are repudiating her insistence on a good sentence. It’s true she’s getting a bit pedantic on the merits of a sentence on this particular page, but I would defend her across this lane of traffic. “It matters to her, let her have her sentences I could yell over to them. Leave Francine to her livres.”
They’re still objecting in the truck that moves too slowly due to the clogged up into a single lane instead of two because we’re building a tunnel traffic. (Francine would most certainly not approve of that sentence) It’s moving at a walker’s pace which is unfortunate because there’s a long lump of concrete tunnel lying in the road, which by virtue of being a short person, would block their access. Try slowing, try timing the trot, but no it would be necessary to stop still and squat beside the pipe like something from the “funnies” section and no truck shall make me do such.
Emerge past said concrete barrier and they’re now again at my left ear. The verdict is announced and it’s hard to be certain the exact combination of the words but it’s something like: you should give up reading that book, or you should give up reading or you should give that up.
Molto perplexing. There’s much to be gained from reading this book or I would not have been compelled to risk walking into a lamp post in the quest to read more of it.
Walking and reading makes much sense when the possibility of sitting and reading isn’t available. It’s necessary to get places and sometimes you don’t wish to be aware of getting there, preferring instead to spend the journey unravelling exactly where it all went wrong for Monsieur Goriot. It also offers excellent remediation for the balance organs, of which, high numbers of writers appear to suffer trouble with.
I think it was the act of walking that the truck passengers didn’t care for. Perhaps it’s part of the leasing deal. If you lease a four wheel 8 cylinder engine you have to harass four pedestrians a week to avoid interest hikes.