3 March, 2010 | 1 Comment
“Okay Jesus, let’s go.” If he wanted to walk me home so he could rob me and slit my throat, so be it.
Archive for the 'literary' Category
25 February, 2010 | 1 Comment
“She loved accidents; any mention of an animal run over, a man cut to pieces by a train, was bound to make her rush to the spot.”
-Émile Zola, La Bête Humaine (1890)
10 December, 2009 | 3 Comments
Well, to update my previous post, I’ve been set straight on the whole magazine issue! I’ve put the magazine back in the novel and broadened the scope a bit so that there’s an online version of the magazine and also, the editor of the magazine (who my character works for) appears on TV as well. So it’s more dynamic now, but retains the magazine that I really missed when I took it out.
I have been writing very intensely this week. I go for about three hours, then must stop because I get a headache. So I take a break and then try to write for three more hours, and so on. After tomorrow I am free from all other responsibilities until the middle of January. Hurrah! My goal is to revise the first 300 pages of the novel during my time off. I still have a few chapters left to write, but I’ve decided to go back to the beginning and do some revision. This will help me get reacquainted with my character in the early chapters and maintain continuity of voice. Also, I need to start sending proposals out to agents and if I get lucky, someone may request to see the first chapters, so I want to be prepared. I met with my supervisor this week and I really need to get an agent and try to at least get a publishing deal, otherwise I have no chance of getting a university job. I don’t necessarily want a university job anymore – I’d rather write and perhaps work as a visiting lecturer here and there – but on a practical level, I will likely need a full-time job to support myself. I’m too old not to be realistic about that.
7 December, 2009 | 18 Comments
In the opening chapters of my novel, the protagonist works for the editor of a teenage fashion magazine. She has a particular kind of job that I don’t want to mention. I based this on my own experiences in the New York magazine world. When I first wrote these opening chapters way back when, there was no Devil Wears Prada or Ugly Betty. In short, writing about magazines wasn’t a big cliche. I was writing with Plath’s The Bell Jar in mind, where she recounts her experiences working at Mademoiselle. For a feminist novelist, this is rich terrain, but sadly, it’s all been ruined by crappy ‘chick lit’ authors and Hollywood hacks. Still, I kept the magazine element in the book because it’s my novel and I wanted to be true to my vision. This is why I was quite surprised when yesterday, I suddenly realized that the magazine has to be cut from the book. Not just because it’s cliched territory, but more importantly, because print magazines don’t have a bright future. (Look at newspapers.) A couple of the magazines I used to write for, including the aforementioned Mademoiselle, no longer exist. And for the teen demographic, which is what I’m writing about in the early chapters, it’s even worse. This demographic wasn’t raised on print magazines as we were. They’ve been raised on internet porn instead.
The world has changed a lot in the ten years this novel has been part of my life. It’s changed in ways I never could have predicted. Having a magazine in the book will make it dated, so the magazine is gone. Instead of working for a magazine editor, my character will now work for the host of a television show. Television as we know it is changing as well, but I think it’s more relevant than print magazines. The job my character has can be transferred to TV pretty easily, though it won’t be the same as having the magazine in the book. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a wee bit brokenhearted.
Of course, if print is dead, what does that say about the future of novels?
21 October, 2009 | 10 Comments
I have an important question I’d like to pose. Skip down to the bottom if you don’t want to read my blathering about my book…
Okay. So today I met with my PhD supervisor. She hasn’t really seen any of my work since January. That’s because of me. I don’t like letting go of novel chapters unless I think they are absolutely ready to be read by another person. It’s a very personal thing to me. But given how long the process of writing this novel is dragging on, I knew my supervisor was anxious to see something. I sent her some excerpts from various chapters, much of it from those chapters dealing with pornography that I wrote while in France this summer, the chapters that nearly sent me over the edge and made me want to give up writing forever. Those chapters. I’ve been working in isolation for months and months on this very strange material, without anyone seeing my work. And as I was about to send this material off, I began to wonder: Am I nuts? I’m writing all this very strange, very politically charged material, much of it about the vileness that is pornography. These chapters involve people being tortured and killed, explicit descriptions of pornography, explicit feminist politics, etc. I started to fear that perhaps I’d lost it, that I was writing all this stuff that would make my supervisor laugh at me, or think I’m disturbed or twisted, or perhaps make her want to order a psych evaluation for me. I pictured myself being kicked out of my PhD program for writing crap that’s not good enough to pass the PhD. I suddenly realized that much of what I’m writing is a huge risk…and that this was the first time anyone else had read it. I never expected to feel such vulnerability.
Much to my relief, my supervisor loved what I’ve written. She raved about it and said that it’s the best material I’ve written, that the novel is now much more exciting and that no one else out there is writing this kind of stuff. She also said that the vulnerability I felt was a good thing- it means something is at stake, that what I’m doing is daring, that it’s not safe. She even suggested a writer who could perhaps be one of my PhD examiners, someone who has been short-listed for the Booker Prize. I never expected this kind of reaction at all, so I was surprised and relieved. She said my work reminds her of Murakami and Atwood. Yay! So after this meeting I am feeling much more confident. All the hell I put myself through this summer may have been worth it. Of course she hasn’t read the whole novel – no one has – but I feel a lot more sure of myself now. Maybe I’m not nuts after all.
I have a new deadline to finish everything up until the last chapter by the middle of January. I am aiming for this, but it’s flexible. I can only guesstimate how many more pages I have left to write – it’s impossible to know for certain.
Those of you who’ve been reading the blog for a long time might remember that I was inspired to write this novel after seeing the film Fight Club. That was ten longs years ago. Crikey. I haven’t been working on this novel for ten years. In fact, almost everything in the book now has been written in the past two years. But still, it’s been part of my life in some way for a really long time. Fight Club appeals to me because it deals with issues of gender in a kick-ass way. It’s about men, not women, but after I saw the film for the first time, I wondered if there could ever be a book or film that deals with gender issues from a female perspective with the same kind of spirit. I’d never seen anything like that for women – and I still haven’t. Women get Bridget Jones and Sex and the City – enough said.
As I’ve been writing my kick-ass book about women, however, I’ve begun to think that it’s much more complicated to be a woman than a man. It’s not easy to translate the spirit of Fight Club into a book dealing so explicitly with femaleness. Being a woman is much more complicated – at least that’s the way it seems to me as I write this book. I’m not saying it’s inherently more complicated to be a female (though biologically it probably is), but I mean that it’s more complicated because society/culture/whatever has made it that way. I’ve never been a man, so perhaps I’m biased!
Thoughts?
11 October, 2009 | 2 Comments
Blah.
I knew I’d have a meltdown during the last year of my PhD, but I didn’t expect it to come right at the beginning of the first term. This past week was not good. Once again, I have gotten in way over my head with too many responsibilities. Three jobs, for crying out loud, on top of a full-time PhD that’s in its last year. This wasn’t intentional. I have my American job and then I accepted two classes at the language school where I’ve taught for years. I’ve never taught two classes there at once, since one class alone is about 7 hours of teaching time. But since I have to pay rent now, I accepted the two classes. Only after I accepted the classes at the language school did my university offer me the teaching job that I wrote about in my last post. I obviously couldn’t turn that down, so voila – three jobs.
The two classes at the language school equal about 14 hours of teaching time, not counting marking and prep (which is, of course, unpaid). The university job is only 2 hours a week, but those two hours pay more than a seven-hour class at the other school, which is the educational equivalent of a sweatshop. British university lecturers have it made, let me tell you. I’d love to see the lecturers I know survive one week at the language school. Anyway, the language school job was just too much even on its own. I knew I had to do something about it, but I had committed to the classes. Once the term starts, it’s really crappy to back out of a class. So I felt conflicted, but my PhD and novel were on the line – if I kept the 14 hours, I could kiss my PhD and novel goodbye, because in my time away from teaching, I was just too exhausted to write. The PhD/novel requires dedicated, concentrated work and a level of mental energy that is not easy to sustain if there are too many other distractions. Last Wednesday I was in bed with stomach pains and couldn’t move. Everyday I just felt like crying. Finally I was honest with my boss at the language school – I told him I felt as if I were drowning. I thought he would be angry or fire me, but for whatever reason he was nice about it (in some way, it must benefit him). So now I just have one class there, one class at the university and my American job, which I can take time off of if I need to. It’s still too much, but this is one of the most expensive cities in the world and living here ain’t cheap. I’ll have less money, but at least now I’ll have time to write each day.
When I think about all the the sacrifices I’ve made for this novel and PhD, I feel sick. If it were just the PhD, it wouldn’t be worth it. But the novel could be something really great, so I’ll finish the damn thing, even if I’m poverty stricken and my life is in shreds by the end of it.
I finished the week with a terrible sinus cold, but even still I managed to get some writing done this weekend. I hadn’t been writing for a while. I still can’t write at home, so went out to a cafe this afternoon and wrote five pages while drinking hot chocolate (okay, and eating a brownie). I really missed my character so much. Writing and spending time with her this weekend was like being with an old friend. It’s strange to have feelings like this about someone who doesn’t actually exist in any way except in words, but the fact that I have such strong feelings about her and that I feel she is real on some level perhaps means that I am doing something right. I still have a few months of writing left to go and then the revisions, but I have this sense that I’m nearing the end of my time with her. I think the next few months are going to be about that – sending her out into the world on her own, my little girl.
6 September, 2009 | 9 Comments
Writing
So it seems as if I have my writing mojo back. I was in hell for a month or more, but now the words are flowing again. I can only write in public spaces (libraries and cafes), rather than at home. No idea why – this is certainly a new thing, but I’ll go with it. The other day I was at the British Library and I was writing in a white heat – those moments writers love – when I realized the library was closing. Ahhhhh! I ran down the street with my laptop and found a Costa and started writing again. Luckily I hadn’t lost my momentum. It was at this moment that I knew I truly had my mojo back – running down Euston Road like a maniac with a laptop is a pretty good sign.
I’ve lost my mojo and then found it again so many times. It’s exhausting. This last freak-out I had over my writing was the worst one I’ve experienced since I started my PhD. It was thoroughly horrible, but it’s over. Now I’m in the homestretch, so perhaps I won’t experience another one of these before I finish. When I’m done I’ll have tons of revision to do, but still, it’ll all be there on paper – beginning, middle and end. I really need to get to that place. Since we’re heading into autumn now, I’m hopeful that I’ll really, truly, finally reach the end of the book soon (by “soon” I mean the end of October if I’m lucky). Autumn is my most productive time of the year. I’m not going to set myself a deadline though – my self-imposed deadlines cause more harm than good.
The current chapters I’m writing aren’t so dark, which makes my life easier. It’s still sad though. For the past two days, my character has almost made me cry. When I write, I feel what she feels. It’s a weird feeling. It’s also strange to be in public when this happens, especially at the British Library, because I often see people there that I know. I think I need to spend more time in cafes so I can channel my character and not feel self-conscious. We don’t really have the Parisian kinds of cafes here – only the London kind, which is Starbucks, Costa and Nero. I’ve made my peace with these chains because they have sofas and cushy chairs. You don’t have that in Paris, so there.
As for the British Library, why does everyone working there have a Mac? Is this the status symbol of the London intelligentsia? We’re like a flock of sheep. I like to feel unique, dammit! I am a unique snowflake.
Reading
The other day my internet went out for 24 hours and, surprise surprise, I got a lot more reading done. Reading of actual books. So I realized I need to put myself on an internet diet, because I waste far too much time online. And really, 90 percent of time spent online is a waste. David Ulin’s piece from the L.A. Times does a good job of examining how the internet and all the other digital crap makes it more difficult to concentrate on reading books these days:
“…after spending hours reading e-mails and fielding phone calls in the office, tracking stories across countless websites, I find it difficult to quiet down. I pick up a book and read a paragraph; then my mind wanders and I check my e-mail, drift onto the Internet, pace the house before returning to the page…Eventually I get there, but some nights it takes 20 pages to settle down. What I’m struggling with is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention, when in fact it’s mostly just a series of disconnected riffs and fragments that add up to the anxiety of the age.”
I experience this constantly and my recent internet outage highlighted just how destructive this is to my reading life. I think this might be one reason I find it easier to write in public – no internet access. So anyway, an internet diet for me now. I’ve got a stack of non-fiction books to get through.
For the past month I have been searching for a novel to read. I think the problem is that I can’t read fiction while I’m writing it so intensely myself, but I crave a novel. It’s a terrible feeling to want that nourishment that only fiction can provide but not be able to find it. Two Augusts ago, I went through a Virginia Woolf spell, when her words put me on the right path and just spoke to me in a way that I needed. Last August I discovered Murakami, who helped me fix a big problem with my novel (without him, I’m not sure what would have happened with my book). This August I expected the magic to happen again, that I’d stumble upon the perfect book, but no. Nothing. It’s painful. Quite literally painful. Last week I re-read an old favorite, a short novel called ‘Pereira Declares’ by Antonio Tabucchi (read a review here). I love this book and highly recommend it, but it’s so short that I breezed right through it. And since I’d already read it, I didn’t have the sense of discovery that comes with reading something new. I’ve been tempted to buy the new Coetzee, but I dunno…it doesn’t grab me. It seems even more self-aggrandizing than his last book. You lucky American readers have the chance to buy Lorrie Moore’s new book…her first in 11 years! If you have this book, I hate you. Seriously, get out of my sight. I adore Lorrie Moore. We have to wait for everything here – books, films, technology. Not fair!
So anyway, I’m novel-less. I’ve been through the entire fiction section at the university library and countless bookstores, but I can’t find anything I want to read. I start books and abandon them. I think it’s just me and my state of mind at this time. Perhaps I only have room in my head for my own words right now. Thank heavens my words are finally there again.
12 August, 2009 | 3 Comments
Yesterday in an email exchange I told a friend of mine that my novel has become much more political than I had originally envisioned. I wrote that if I ever manage to finish this novel, I’m not sure I’ll have the courage to publish it. She wrote back with this quote from “The Golden Notebook” (Mother Sugar speaking to Anna):
“You’re afraid of writing what you think about life, because you might find yourself in an exposed position, you might expose yourself, you might be alone.”
True.
In other news, I’m leaving Paris on Monday. Just the other day I bought a Eurostar ticket for August 22nd, thinking I’d leave one week earlier than I had originally planned. That would have given me ten more days here, but then today that all changed. I was calling around trying to find short-term accommodation in London and, miracle of miracles, I landed a place I’ve been trying to get for weeks and weeks. Relief! This is a place where I’ve lived before. It’s not a student place, but it’s similar – I’ll just have an en-suite room, not a flat. There’s a shared kitchen on the floor. It’s in Southwark, which can be a bit dodgy, particularly at night, so you have to be careful. But I know that it’s a nice, clean place and for London it’s damn cheap, which is why it’s so difficult to get a room there. The room is available for Monday, which is why I’m leaving here even earlier than my other earlier departure date. They only take reservations a couple days in advance and I can’t gamble on another room becoming available. This place makes all the difference between me feeling stable and calm and me feeling terribly angsty and unhappy. It just takes a huge weight off my shoulders, y’all. I’ve been a bundle of anxiety lately. I can stay at this place for as long as I want and it’s affordable, which means I won’t have any pressure to find a flat right away.
This only gives me a couple days left in Paris, which is a bit of a shock. I’ve ended up with an extra Eurostar ticket, so I may come back to visit in October – my favorite time in Paris. For now, I just feel I need to get back to London. I’m applying for teaching jobs, need to visit the doc, need the library and want to see my friends.
A few people have asked me why I haven’t been sightseeing while I’m in Paris [I haven't even taken a photo of the Eiffel Tower!]. Well, I didn’t come here as a tourist. Remember I was supposed to go to NYC this summer for writing and research, but that plan fell apart. I was left on the verge of homelessness in London and decided to come to Paris on what was, essentially, a whim. I spent my first month here writing non-stop, then spent a little while traveling and have since spent my days having a complete meltdown over my writing. Not much time for seeing the sights of Paris, then. But now that I’m leaving toot sweet, I will get out more, look at some art, point my camera at a few pretty things and all that, just to make everyone feel better.
27 May, 2009 | 9 Comments
I’m very unhappy that Ruth Padel has stepped down as Oxford’s Professor of Poetry. I didn’t intend to write about this issue, since I don’t really have the energy for it, but this is so unbelievably sexist. The first female Professor of Poetry in Oxford history is pressured to resign just days after being elected to the post. Surprise, surprise. Apparently she “smeared” Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott (her rival for the post, who later withdrew from the running) by repeating claims that he sexually harassed female students in the past. In the 1980s, Walcott was admonished by Harvard for pressuring a freshman to have sex with him and in the 1990s he settled a lawsuit by another student for sexual harassment as well. I think this is highly relevant when considering Walcott’s suitability to become Professor of Poetry, yet these charges against him have been roundly described as “character assassination” and anyone who mentions them is vilified.
4 May, 2009 | 4 Comments
Tonight in the Times I read a story about the murder in Pakistan of a well-known singer, Ayman Udas. She was murdered by her brothers, apparently for bringing disgrace upon her family by divorcing, remarrying and singing on television. [Here is a clip of her singing on YouTube.] This murder happened in Peshawar, an area that is increasingly being taken over by the Taliban. According to Radio Free Europe, “In January, a dancer’s bullet-ridden body was left in the center of Swat Valley’s capital of Mingora — not far from where Udas grew up — with a note warning locals that “un-Islamic voices” will no longer be tolerated.” The article also states that other female performers are being threatened.
While this story is yet further proof of the troubling situation in Pakistan, it also puts so-called “honor killings” back in the news, since Ayman Udas was murdered by her brothers for disgracing the family’s honor. I’ve written many times before about honor killings, yet no matter how many of these stories I read, I still cannot understand the psychology behind this practice. While it’s obvious that human beings are capable of the most horrific acts, it seems to go against human nature to murder your own family members. Sure, anywhere in the world you’ll find parents killing their children, children killing their parents, siblings killing each other, etc. But these crimes are aberrations, not part of a persistent cultural practice like “honor killings,” where teenage girls and adult women are murdered by male family members. I just cannot fathom the hatred and dehumanization of women that has to exist in order for two brothers to shoot their sister in the chest three times – which is what happened to Ayman Udas. And she’s not alone.
In doing some research for this post, I came across a story about 16-year-old Naile Erdas, who was raped and became pregnant. After she gave birth, she returned home from the hospital and was shot dead by her brother. In January, a Turkish court sentenced her entire family to life imprisonment for participating in this act, which is one of the harshest punishments ever for an “honor killing.” The average sentence for an “honor killing” is normally six months, so I hope this case sets a precedent.
24 April, 2009 | 1 Comment
I’m friends with a group of ladies from my PhD. We’re all feeling a bit down. The work isn’t going well and there’s the fear that in this economy, there’ll be no jobs for us when we graduate and no publishers to take our books. It’s hard to summon a lot of motivation at the moment. But now we have an anthem, available on YouTube. Yes it’s cheesy. Yes we’re dorks. But having an inspiring anthem helps and here’s the proof: I wrote four pages today!
15 April, 2009 | 7 Comments
I’ve been following the controversy regarding Amazon – it’s a complex situation, but in a nutshell they seem to have removed books tagged “adult” from their sales rankings in an attempt to make their bestseller lists more “family-friendly.” [Sales rankings are vital - for one thing, they determine what comes up when you search for a book. If a book loses its sales ranking, it will be harder to find on Amazon.]
Usually “adult” means pornography, but this not how Amazon uses the term. For Amazon, “adult” means gay and lesbian themed books, as well as feminist books and books on reproductive health. Classic novels by Jeanette Winterson and James Baldwin lost their rankings, whereas a Playboy photography book featuring the images of 600 naked women was not affected at all. So apparently, Amazon considers books that may offend members of the Republican party and the religious right to be “adult.” That would explain why pornography for straight-male customers, such as Playboy, was not affected.
5 April, 2009 | 3 Comments
I’ve decided to refer to my encounter last Friday as my Thelma & Louise moment!
Spring break has sprung, so the hall of residence where I live is virtually empty. This is a good thing – don’t get me wrong – but it’s also lonely. I feel kinda sad that I’m not going anywhere, but I’ll be in NYC in a little over two months, so I just have to keep that in mind. I have so much writing to do and I begin teaching again the week after next.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of what I do (that is, being a writer). Since I live in a hall of residence, I’m surrounded by students studying all sorts of things. A lot of them are studying subjects like law and medicine – you know, big serious subjects. They will often imply that my work is not actually work and that it’s not really that important compared to being a doctor or some such. I get this a lot. Today at breakfast, one guy told me this point blank. An upper-class, spoiled twenty-three year old who is going into medicine largely for the money and status told me that what he does is more important than what I do, thus degrading my entire life’s work.
1 April, 2009 | 8 Comments
I know this is a complete long shot, but what the heck. I have a minor character in my novel, a woman of Egyptian background. I need to talk to someone who is Egyptian and Muslim and who knows a lot about women’s lives in contemporary Egypt, particularly a woman who is feminist friendly and who is willing to talk about certain controversial cultural/religious practices in a critical way. If anyone knows someone like this, *please* let me know.
15 March, 2009 | 3 Comments
For some reason, I don’t really have any friends who are my exact age. It sometimes seems to me that people born in 1972-1973 have vanished from the earth and I’m the only one left. Was there a really low birthrate during this time? I wonder. The only people I know who are my exact age are people I grew up with (who I only ever have any contact with now because of Facebook) or people who I knew during my undergrad days in New York, but I don’t have strong connections to these people anymore because we’ve all moved around too much.
So…I have friends who are older or younger, but none my age. Most of my friends from home are older me. But because I am a student, most of the people I’m friends with here are younger than me – sometimes by as much as a decade. I’ve been lucky enough to make friends with people from my PhD, but they are in their 20s or their 40s and beyond. Apparently, doing a PhD in your 30s isn’t the norm. Seriously – I don’t know anyone in their 30s doing a PhD, so it’s a bit sad. I was out with some 20-something PhD ladies the other night and we were chatting about girl stuff, as we do. And we discovered that I’ve been menstruating about the same amount of time that they’ve been alive. So that was funny…for them.
I know there are some people born in 72-73 out there somewhere and one day I will meet you. [I write 72-73 because I was born in 1972, but at the very very end.] This was a fun period in history – near the end of the Vietnam War, Nixon was president – good times, good times.
8 March, 2009 | 1 Comment
You’re desperately trying to find a scene from an old chapter where your protagonist attempts suicide and a search through My Documents for the word “death” returns 304 documents.
[However, I did find the scene...]
8 January, 2009 | 1 Comment
The weather here has been arctic for weeks. It is absolutely freezing, the coldest it’s been in decades. Even the schools are closed in many places. The temperature right now is 30F, but it doesn’t feel like 30 one bit. I’ve spent most of my life in cold, blizzardy places and it feels more like 0F. It’s so cold that it’s just not comfortable to be outside for any length of time. And now the experts are predicting that this summer will be extremely hot.
I said that this past Monday was when I planned to begin working again…and I have! I’ve gotten a lot of writing done this week. In fact, I’ve been writing so much that I’ve been staying up until 4 or 5 a.m. I am a vampire at heart and like to stay up all night. I guess this is common for creative types. Writing at night is just better. But over the past six months or so I’ve trained myself to go to bed early and get up early with great success, thus putting an end to my torturous sleeping problems. I think it’s just healthier for me to live that way. Now, partly due to the jet lag I had last week, I’ve started staying up really late again. I’ll fall asleep at 5 a.m. and wake up at 1 p.m. In theory there’s nothing wrong with this – my main task right now is to write write write and I could get away with a schedule like this very easily, aside from on Fridays when I have to teach early. But today, for example, I woke up at 1 p.m. It gets dark here around 4:30, so that leaves me just over three hours of sunlight per day. Not ideal at all! I think I may have to go back to my old schedule again.
I had to put 2666 aside to start reading the books for the classes I’ll be teaching starting next week. I just now finished Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This book has been on my shelf forever and it’s one of those books I’ve always wanted to read, but could never get past the first page. I’m glad to have finally read it. I know it’s an acclaimed book and all, but I didn’t like it one bit. I guess you may think that I wouldn’t tend to like a book about a womanizer, one that is filled with male sex fantasies and wimpy female characters, but you’d be wrong. I’m open to liking any kind of book with any kind of characters, as long as the writing is good and the characters are compelling. I didn’t find this in Kundera’s book. I thought the writing was bad and the characters weak. The novel takes chances with narrative and structure, which I’m all in favor of, but for me it just didn’t work on any level. There were a few lines here and there that were gorgeous, but the book was filled with cliched language (one character stood “stock still” while another had a “shiver” run down her spine). Perhaps this is due to the translation. I sincerely hope so. I will admit I’m not a fan of philosophical novels, but this novel just seemed to be trying too hard to be profound. I thought the part at the end where the dog dies was touching, but come on – if you’re going to write about a beloved dog being put to sleep, readers are going to feel sad. That doesn’t mean the writing is good. Dead dog = tears. [I wonder if the movie version with Daniel Day-Lewis is good?]
Anyway, next up it’s more Kundera for me – The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. I’ll try to keep an open mind…
30 December, 2008 | 3 Comments
Just some book-related bits and bobs as 2008 comes to a close…
While I was in the U.S. I bought Roberto Bolano’s 2666, which makes me feel special because it’s not yet published in England. Rather than buying the 900-page hardcover, I bought the box set of three paperbacks, which will make reading more manageable. I realize not everyone who reads this blog is a book lover, so I’ll just clue you in that 2666 is the literary sensation of the year. I normally don’t like to jump on bandwagons, but 2666 seems to be something special. I want to start reading Bolano now (jet lag be damned), but I have a lot of reading to do in preparation for the classes I’ll be teaching next term. Still, I may not be able to resist…
I was thinking about the novels I’ve read this year and I’ve decided that these are the five best novels I read in 2008 (in random order – not one of these books was actually written or published in 2008):
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
All of these books were written by men, which distresses me. I’ve always been a great lover and defender of fiction by women. In fact, a good portion of my doctoral thesis deals with the ways in which writing by women is labeled and degraded. While this is certainly true, I find increasingly that I need to read novels that engage with ideas and the world in a certain way and that the novels I found this year that filled this need were all written by men. C’est la vie.
8 December, 2008 | 4 Comments
I swear, I need a personal assistant to help me with research for my novel. Unfortunately, I can’t afford one, so perhaps one of you can help. There’s a minor character in my novel, a Hollywood starlet who dies of a heroin overdose around 1934. I need to find out whether this is realistic. Does anyone know if the recreational use of heroin was widespread in the 1930s? If so, was it smoked, injected, what? Was the kind of heroin taken back then strong enough to kill someone via a single overdose? Does anyone know of a famous/noteworthy person who died this way during the 1930s or earlier? I have done some research on this, but I’m not having much luck at all. Any help is greatly appreciated.
