My old friend and part-time Kai Lord, Paul Gray, who I first met when selling actual physical books made of paper 20+ years ago (in the late lamented Methven’s bookshop in Canterbury) has just had a short story published in vol. 1 of a Lone Wolf anthology. My recall of the 1980s gamebooks is hazy, so I hope the memories come flooding back when I crack the spine on this collection. Congrats, Paul.
I’m currently reading the English translation of Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, a Polish mystery novel by Olga Tokarczuk. It’s about an older woman who over-winters in a small hamlet, working as a caretaker for the other houses in the village, which are essentially summer homes. She spends her time helping her younger friend (and former pupil) translate William Blake into Polish and doing astrology charts before she finds herself embroiled in a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances. She has a wonderfully off-kilter voice, and peppers her account with homespun philosophy, or Theories (her capitalisation choices are very Blake). This passage is particularly wonderful:
It was hard to have a conversation with Oddball. He was a man of very few words, and it was impossible to talk, one had to keep silent. It’s hard work talking to some people, most often males. I have a Theory about it. With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people. His capacity to read novels almost entirely vanishes; testosterone autism disturbs the character’s psychological understanding. I think Oddball was suffering from this Ailment.
Note to future self: watch for signs of testosterone autism.
See here for Fitzcarraldo Editions’ edition (minimalist cover art). Thanks to ABK for the recommendation.
The missus is re-reading David Mitchell’s number9dream for the dissertation. Every now and then she reads a bit aloud for me.
I watched for a while longer. Not much happens in Paris Texas.
“Sort of slow, isn’t it?”
Buntaro licks his hand.
“This, lad, is an existentialist classic. Man with no memory meets woman with huge hooters.”
I really enjoy days when I write and she reads.
For the first time in what feels like months – and probably is – I rode my bike five miles to work and five miles back. I’d been starting to feel like a lardy, cranky bastard, but working up a sweat on the bike (mostly on the way back home) makes me think I’m back on the right track.
Other news: I’m currently reading a book that’s a collection of pages in a box. You assemble them in whatever order you want, except for the very first and the very last. It feels like inhabiting a very disorderly memory, which is likely the point. It’s called The Unfortunates and it was written by B. S. Johnson, no relation to London’s current head buffoon mayor.
In A. S. Byatt’s Little Black Book of Stories there is one about a woman who turns into an beautiful and bewildering assembly of stones. Naturally she ends up in Iceland, where the stones are still very much alive. Talking to her Icelandic sculptor friend shortly before her final transformation, he tells her the story of a man who abandons his friends to live wild amongst the rocks. Each year for three years they visit him to see if he’s willing to return to them, and each time they ask what he believes in. The final time he responds, laughing “Trunt, trunt, og tröllin à fjöllunum,”
“‘Trunt, trunt’ is just nonsense, it means rubbish and junk and aha and hubble bubble, that sort of thing, I don’t know an English expression that will do as a translation. Trunt trunt, and the trolls in the fells.”
Ever since I finished the story, trunt has been rolling around inside my head. I love the idea of a word that is so chock-full of nothing.
My friend Dr. Ellis Jones has just published a new book, The Better World Shopping Guide. He’s launching it at the Varsity on Saturday 18th November. There’s also a new website, Better World Shopper. It’s a very handy reference if you’d rather avoid buying products from companies whose practices are unethical, like Nestlé. You can also download a version of the guide for your iPod.
In his review of The God Delusion in the London Review of Books, Terry Eagleton plays Devil’s Advocate for theology in order to make some pointed criticisms of Dawkins’ rhetoric. As a firm atheist, I’m looking forward to reading The God Delusion over the festive season, and as someone who respects Terry Eagleton’s scholarly work, I was equally interested to read what he has to add to the debate.
It’s very good for homesickness. I can see all the locations. I know Jason Taylor’s route to school. I remembered that he would have attended the Hill School (it’s called Upton upon Severn Comprehensive in the novel), and not Hanley Castle until he was older.
I’m amused at the way Mitchell has turned place names from the area into names of teachers: Mr Kempsey, Mrs Wyche, Mr Inkberrow. I wonder if I’ll start recognising some of the teachers? I’m also amused by the mention of “the pork scratchings factory in Upton on Severn.” I knew the manager’s son. The gossip was that he was illiterate, and his son certainly was.
I’ll post some notes on its literary qualities shortly, but right now I’m wallowing in the nostalgic smell of ashtrays in the school bus and the fear of being at the bottom of a pile-on on the playing fields.
Suddenly I’m reminded of how a friend of mine got barred from a Worcester music shop owned by one of our ex-teachers. My friend P walked in and was greeted by Mr. C with “Hello P, you’re looking fatter.” P wasn’t too impressed and responded with “Hello Mr. C, you’re looking balder.” And that was the end of that.
Back to the book…
From the Random House website:
From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982.
David Mitchell himself says:
It’s about 13 months in the life of a 13 year old boy. It’s set in a small, narrow village in South Worcestershire that the narrative only leaves twice. It’s 1982, in the cold war, and the year of the Falklands war.
Source: The Agony Column Book Reviews.
Knowing that Mitchell is from my neck of the woods, and knowing that neck just as well as he, I’d suggest that Black Swan Green is the name of the village in which Jason Taylor lives, and that the real-life precedent for that village is Hanley Swan. I’m going to have to wait until April to find out if I’m right.
…and stuff him where the sun don’t shine. Courtney has finally driven me mad with her Harry Potter fetish. I don’t think she’s uttered a single sentence in the last week that hasn’t started with “Dumbledore,” “Snape,” or “Rowling.” I swear I will destroy any copy of the book I see, other than Courtney’s prized UK edition which arrived in the mail today. If I destroy that, she destroys me.
As an antidote, I was very glad to read J.G.Ballard’s article in the Guardian about Michael Powell. What’s especially amusing is that the article was written to promote a season of Powell’s movies at the National Film Theatre, an institution that Ballard blew up in his 2003 novel Millennium People.
During my degree I saw a perfectly preserved print of Powell & Pressburger’s wartime movie The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It was the first time I’d seen an early colour movie in the same quality that it would have originally been shown. Even better, Blimp was shot in colour at a time when colour film stock was strictly rationed. The immediacy of the movie was striking. Suddenly 2002 and 1943 were not so far apart as I had previously thought.
