Archive for the 'Books (and the like)' Category

Ha ha, screw you everyone

Published
by
Colm
on 13 May, 2010
in Books (and the like)
. 3 Comments

I am tired of “new writing” and of “powerful new novelists.” I am tired of today’s new people; I am tired of their lives, of their tastes, their reading, their language, their singing, their sedatives and their psychiatrists, their houses, their furniture, and their faces.

(via Bookslut)

That’s magnificent. It’s from Margaret Anderson, who I’d never heard of until this morning because I’m rubbish. She founded and ran an influential avant-garde literary magazine, which at one point was at one point the subject of a good ol’-fashioned book-burnin’ after they published the first few chapters of Ulysses. Another time, Anderson published a completely blank issue of the magazine, on the basis that nobody was writing anything worth a damn. What a champion.

… so but anyway, now you may fearlessly shout at passers-by about how tiresome and annoying their faces are, safe in the knowledge that you come from a fine pedigree. And isn’t that all we ever really wanted.

On imagination and, you know, whatever

Published
by
Colm
on 13 April, 2010
in Books (and the like), Films & TV and Writing
. 16 Comments

David Foster Wallace, in an interview with Larry McCaffery, 1993:

I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. But now realize that TV and popular film and most kinds of “low” art—which just means art whose primary aim is to make money—is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas “serious” art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. So it’s hard for an art audience, especially a young one that’s been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. That’s not good. The problem isn’t that today’s readership is “dumb,” I don’t think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture’s trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today’s readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard.

Discuss.

JD Salinger is dead

Published
by
Colm
on 29 January, 2010
in Books (and the like) and Writing
. 7 Comments

I speculate that the coverage for this is going to boil down to I Liked Catcher In The Rye/I Did Not Like Catcher In The Rye. So a few thoughts here on why a) you’re wrong not to like it and b) JD Salinger was way more important than one book.

The standard view on Catcher is that it’s some mopey teen wandering around being angsty. This polarises people: his worldview resonates with an awful lot of readers, particularly adolescents, but everyone else just wishes he’d cowboy up. The debate never seems to go deeper than that, which is a crying shame, because there’s way more going on in the novel.

Firstly, Holden’s mopiness isn’t just Gawd-no-one-understands-me angst. There’s a line near the start where he says1 “Sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen”. Holden was thirteen when his brother Allie died; his brother, whom he adored, placed at the absolute centre of his universe. Allie’s death destroys Holden and, though he never confronts it head on, the entire novel details his attempts to come to terms with it.

Secondly, despite what many people seem to think, we’re not supposed to see Holden as a role model. Arrested development is not something to aspire to. All-encompassing cynicism is not something to aspire to. If there’s a how-are-we-to-live message in Salinger’s writing, it’s that no matter how hard it might be, the best thing we can do is find a way to get outside ourselves, stop acting like everything is about us, and keep moving forward. There’s an excellent distillation of this in the second part of Franny & Zooey. Or, more conveniently, you could read this speech by David Foster Wallace, who was heavily inspired by Salinger.

At the risk of turning into a wild-eyed evangelist, I think it’s a tragedy that Holden Caulfield is the only one of Salinger’s narrative voices that most people are familiar with. He’s dour and self-absorbed and I can see why you might not like him, whereas Salinger’s writing as a whole is characterised by a genuine warmth and humour that most writers couldn’t even approach. His short stories are phenomenal (see for instance the title story in For Esme, With Love & Squalor). He can do this thing where, in about four or five words, he describes a gesture or facial expression so perfectly that a character’s entire history, state of mind and motivations are dumped directly into your brain.

Ok, wild-eyed evangelist. Breathe.

Right now I’m going to read over these two letters a few times (the latter being some of the best writing advice ever dispensed). Then I’m going to go home and read the books again. Then I’m going to wait for all the manuscripts he’s finished since he retired from publishing to surface. And then… I don’t know what I’ll do.

  1. I’ve no copy to hand, so I’m quoting from memory. [↩]

Compulsion

Published
by
Colm
on 27 January, 2010
in Books (and the like)
. 11 Comments

There’s something like my weight in books sitting at the end of my bed these days. I’m not counting shelves, you understand – only the bags of just-bought unreads. Some people seem to feel like this would be a daunting prospect, as if reading is something you have to push yourself into. Which, I don’t know. I spend minutes at a time just smelling books. I build them into a fort around me, laughing like a maniac the whole time. If I could swim through the things Scrooge McDuck-style, you’d better believe I wouldn’t be here talking to you people.


Because it’s funnier in Dutch, that’s why.

The catalyst for all this was the €100 of book tokens I got for Christmas. I was going to save them til my in-tray had diminished a bit, but on my first day back in work I went for lunch and – oh hello, I appear to have wandered near Hodges Figgis. You know they’re gonna have some sweet deals, might as well check those out.

I ended up buying seven books by accident. Which is to say, I didn’t specifically intend to buy seven books. I just kind of fugued. Also, the cashier was pretty.1

So ok, that’s gonna keep me going for a while. However, and for reasons outside my control, I happened to end up in Waterstones a few days later. Now, the thing about Waterstones is they have those 3-for-2 deals which, obviously, you’d be a fool not to take advantage. Not only that but there’s a best-of-the-decade table. I don’t want to spell things out for you, but let’s just say I woke up hours later with a brutal hangover and Random House’s number tattooed on my chest.

That should have been the end of it. But no: one morning the following week I forgot to put a book in my pocket on my way out the door. The whole way in on the bus I was just staring into space. Have you ever noticed what other people sound like? What they smell like? It was a nightmare. What the hell was I going to do on the way home? Gnaw my own arm off? Clearly, an emergency fix was needed. So into Hodges Figgis at lunchtime – Garrison Keillor, you say? And only €4? Job’s a good un. But on the other hand, if I find another book for €6 that means I’ll get a stamp on the ould loyalty card, and that’s just sensible.

It goes on in this vein. I’m going to trail off now, because I’m giving myself the vapours and my bank account can’t withstand another blackout. And because there’s a book of EU tax legislation here that I haven’t put to bed yet, and man do I want to see how that turns out.

  1. A fun game in bookshops is to try get the cashiers to check you out. I think I caught her attention with the Pynchon, but on reflection Rape: A Love Story wasn’t my smoothest move. [↩]

coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee

Published
by
Colm
on 2 April, 2009
in Books (and the like) and Writing
. 7 Comments

I would post but my good LORD how is it so hot in here. Faces are not supposed to sweat. That is something I firmly believe. Surely this whole scenario should make sweet delicious cups of cheap nonsense coffee less attractive but no, I want them. I want them very badly. I haven’t slept in days. I have discovered that being on edge is a prerequisite of good writing. I have been doing some very, very good writing. Everyone should read some Roberto Bolaño. Where was I? Oh, right.

Ha ha yeah

Published
by
Colm
on 21 February, 2009
in Books (and the like) and Foreign parts
. 10 Comments

Haven’t been doing much around here, have I? Lot of things going on the past week. For one I reckon I’m starting to get the most out of twitter. Like for instance the other night I found out that there were fireballs falling in Houston Texas, and the next day some guy I don’t know ate some meatballs in IKEA, and the cool thing is I knew about these events sooner than probably quite a few people. If you want to feel like a sci-fi supervillain just go to monitter.com, throw in some keywords and then imagine you’re absorbing crazy data streams out of people’s heads. It is not hard to do.

Secondly, there’s a project afoot. Uh. I’m not going to say anything about that yet.

Thirdly, I wanted to mention a nifty event I was at in Chapters on Tuesday – Neil Gaiman reading and Amanda Palmer ukelele-ing. Organisation was a bit dodgy, largely it seems because the staff were too busy shuffling awkwardly and going “Shucks, no one’s gonna turn up at our shop” to properly think it through, but it was a most enjoyable evening. Gaiman was reading from a book they worked on called Who Killed Amanda Palmer? and basically what you need to know is that his old school storytelling mixed with her gleeful sordidness makes for some top-notch material. Grimm fairytales but with hookers and crack, that kind of thing. You can see basically the whole show in five parts starting here.

And lastly, I’m off to Maastricht in… four hours. I’m typing fast here so I can stay awake. Exhilarating! There’s a carnival over there, you see, and I’ve been trawling Dublin’s various vintage shops (and River Island, and Tie Rack, which I don’t understand how they stay in business because surely cravats and cummerbunds aren’t exactly flying out the doors) so that I can bring the magic of Oscar Wilde’s Jakey Nephew to the streets of the Netherlands. On which note, either it’s bloody hard to get hold of a cane in Dublin or I’m just stupid.

Most excellent fancy

Published
by
Colm
on 28 January, 2009
in Books (and the like)
. 0 Comments

Far be it from me, in general terms, to make grand statements about a book I haven’t even finished reading yet, but listen: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is the greatest extant work of art in any medium. Every single page excites me. I have been excited a total of 758 distinct times so far, not counting endnotes, and that’s hard to argue with.

and I have the hangover to prove it

Published
by
Colm
on 9 December, 2008
in Books (and the like) and Writing
. 7 Comments

Homepages is out and you should buy it, because it will improve your life in measurable ways. You can buy it here. There’s wackiness going on with the postage prices so what you want to do is buy it in bulk. Buy enough and you can build a tiny fort for yourself. Or for homeless people, who have some kind of vested interest in this thing, I don’t know. I had glazed over at that point. Someone mentioned writing and the instinct took over. Like a shark on rollerblades. Only, he probably doesn’t know an awful lot about rollerblades so he tends to fall over a lot and slide off in random directions, and all things considered he would be much better off ditching the fancy footwear and sticking with what he knows. That is a metaphor.

The book is out.

Published
by
Colm
on 22 October, 2008
in Books (and the like)
. 4 Comments

The ISBN is 1-906027-13-7, if you feel like harassing a bookshop into ordering a few boxes (although I believe some shops already have it – in Dublin anyway). Alternatively, if you’re the kind of person who happens to see me wandering about the place, feel free to harass me for a copy. Price is ten euro, or 1.8 pints in the latter case (vodka and dash and a packet of bacon fries also accepted… no refunds).

A quiet week, I know

Published
by
Colm
on 23 September, 2008
in Books (and the like) and Writing
. 9 Comments

Writing writing writing.

The final changes have been hammered out on Anything But Simple, an anthology of poetry and fiction from the graduates of UCD’s creative writing MA (including y.t. and certain others). The launch is planned for 6pm on the 20th of October in UCD. We have wine. Join ussss.

Catherine is looking for submissions from bloggers and photobloggers for an anthology to be published in the run-up to Christmas, with 75% of the proceeds going to Focus Ireland. A worthy cause and a nice opportunity to see yourself in print. Submission guidelines are here.

If you have writerly aspirations you might also feel like throwing in an entry for RTÉ Radio One’s prestigious Francis MacManus Award. They’re looking for 1,800-2,000 words (my native length – chess!) and there’s €3,000 and a trophy for the overall winner. In addition, the three winners and some of the shortlisted stories will be read on air. Closing date is the 27th of October.

Bonus: Nothing to do with writing, but this is the greatest trailer for anything ever. I’d never heard of it before today but by golly I want it.