The Unsung Letter No.49

The last Unsung Letter before Christmas is on a book that has become, for our writer (Juliet Swann), a personal classic:

 

On one last tour of the shelves, a slim, advanced reading copy with a plain cover, broken spine and well-thumbed pages gravitated towards my fingers. I began to re-read and knew, instantly, that this was my unsung letter. I tumbled back into the pages for a glorious two-day binge; I stroked the pages; photographed key passages, because even this error strewn, spine cracked item felt too precious to mark up; and I fell in love again with the characters, the landscape, the words, the beauty.

 

Aren’t you curious? Read her piece here.

As always, The Unsung Letter is a weekly missive from a different writer/book lover on a neglected book by a living author. Sign up here or read the whole archive here.

The Unsung Letter No. 48

Michelle Bailat-Jones writes this week’s Unsung Letter on a book with shades of Barbara Comyns (one of my favourite writers):

 

[redacted] tells the story of a peculiar family—nine children, two parents—living in a large house on the outskirts of a small city. In many respects, they are an experiment, a utopia created by the parents according to very specific rules. The greatest of which is their near complete isolation from anyone else excepting a weekly trip to the library. While this house and family can be considered a utopia, it is one without a moving force; it has turned inward and become frozen.

 

Read the full thing here – and sign up to receive The Unsung Letter here. Each week brings a different writer/book lover on an underhyped book that might just change your life.

 

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Small reminder – if you’d like, you can buy my pamphlet The Goldblum Variations here for £5. It’s a book of absurdist micros on a celebrity/plurality of worlds/beings. It would make a charming stocking stuffer for someone who would like an excuse to be off reading by themselves (or someone who likes to read stuff aloud to others – it’s short and sweet). You can check out reviews and add it to your Goodreads list, if that’s the kind of thing you do here.

The Unsung Letter No.3

The latest tinyletter of book recommendations for the underpraised has now gone round. This week it’s poet and writer Claire Askew writing her love of a particular Edinburgh-based poet. If you haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so >>>>>here<<<<<

The Unsung Letter No.2

Just to let you know, the next Unsung Letter is out, and it’s by A.D. Devers. You can sign up here, if you haven’t already done so. More to come in the next weeks!

News Flash

I apologise immediately for the punny title. I do have some flash news though –

 

My flash fiction, ‘Lope’ was shortlisted for the 2014 Bridport Prize – and you can see the list of winners here.

 

Very excited that a longer flash about two rather special teenage girls in Manila, entitled ‘PINK GLITTER’ will appear in Vol 1. Brooklyn at some point in the near future.

 

Lastly, and I think best of all, Queen’s Ferry Press are offering a really good value subscription deal. $100 dollars gets you ALL of their 2015 titles upon pre-release, plus one of your choice of the 2014 titles – and there’s free shipping for those of you based in the states.

This means

• you’ll get my collection On The Edges Of Vision (home to the above two flash)
• alongside NINE other books
• AND you’ll be supporting a cool small press
• AND can feel rather good about yourself while getting a constant stream of enjoyable books to read.

Treat yourself! or give it as a gift for the curious reader in your life.

>>>>>click here <<<<<<

 

Endless Reads Review: Another Country by Anjali Joseph

 

 

When you read, what do you read for? Plot? Action? Erudition? What’s the meaning of reading? I suppose this question depends on your mood when reading. Sometimes you want to sink into a comfy sofa of a book – and sometimes you discover that what you thought would be a comfy sofa is something else. A hardback chair. Or, like this book, a collection of pearled papers, a gathering of bright brittle leaves.

 

Another Country centres around the centreless, rootless Leela Gosh, a Bombay (now Mumbai) born twenty-something middle class Cambridge graduate who, when the novel opens, is living in Paris as an English teacher and feeling hopelessly, but rather wonderfully, out of place. From the well written sentences and precise evocations you might presume that you are entering a guided space, and that the plot will roll out carefully in front of you. However, this is not that sort of book. And after the bluster of 1Q84, I was certainly glad it wasn’t.

 

Here is something tender, fragmentary.  In the Paris sections, I was reminded of Jean Rhys – as in her works, human interactions here are like inflictions, bruising.  Leela is aware of herself and her flaws, suspicious of the behaviour of others and of her own performance towards them:

 

Leela smiled. She pulled her thin jacket around her. They carried on walking, away from the others and into pools of light under streetlamps. And now, nagged a voice inside her, what will you do? She ignored it.

The pavement glittered with moisture.

Simon put a hand on her shoulder; she tried not to jump. He smiled. “What were we talking about, anyway, before we were so rudely thrown out of that bar?” He released her shoulder, but not before his hand had been there long enough to signal deliberateness. It was a charming gesture, and made her nervous.

 

There is the use of make up to construct an identity, a mask. There is the character’s apparent passivity, but it seems to me different to that of Rhys’ protagonists.  There is more hope here, far less fatalism. Even when in a dismal London, in a stagnant relationship, there is a sense that Leela hopes to startle herself out. Companions, though just as fleeting, are less cruel. In the level of detail used to describe them, it seems as if Joseph is grasping at them, trying to put down in record what she can of them, before they fade from Leela’s view. London was the hardest section for me to read, because of the long dreariness of malcontent coming after the dizzying snippets of Paris.

 

When Leela returns to Bombay, to construct a life there, the text morphs again, and we are presented with a different sort of culture clash – that of the returned immigrant. Gone are the tube stations and the grey skies, here come the familiar-unfamiliar: the turquoise sea and dirt and the banter of crows and mannered, elegant women and servants in the home.

 

Any thought of resolution in novels of migration is predicated on the notion that every person who continually crosses borders can solidify themselves, make themselves fit neatly within whatever rules – spoken and unspoken, learned, half-learned or never acquired – that particular country, and the strictures of class and race and gender impose. Leela is witness to this difficulty. Though she may seem listless, she is being daily buffeted by the winds of her own alienation. Another Country and Another Country, and you must keep tabs as well as live your life, make something out of the shifting sands. The protagonist as a leaf, the protagonist as a line that goes on forever, in a light hand.

 

When reading a book, it’s your attitude that shapes your experience of reading – your willingness to engage with what it presents. If the territory is not familiar, not structured around character development and plot arcs of whatever sort, you have to ask yourself, what am I willing to expose of myself here, do I need certain touchstones, or can I go alone. You must ask yourself, do I trust the author. Sometimes you will go by name recognition – Virginia Woolf, James Joyce. At other times, the book, however slender and unconsoling, might suit you perfectly. Another Country is just that book for me right now. I’m typing, ill in bed with a missing voice. I’ve come through a big read, and I needed a little careful bruising breeze, and this was just it.

Numb fingers type faster

 

Today was one of those high, blue, fine-threaded days that brought a frost, and which means that my flat, a tenement from the thirties, is cold inside. We have heating, but it’s on a pretty poor gas system and we recently discovered that it was squeezing D’s lungs. A space heater will have to do us, when we feel lux enough to use it. The low today is only minus 2 celsius, so it’s not great trial. It just feels a little Dickensian to be wrapped in – okay – snuggies and blankets, with cold noses and fingers that bend a little unwillingly.

 

But I’m not here to complain. I’m here to express my gratitude to all of the people who have been visiting this blog recently and who have started following me on twitter. To the people who retweeted my story from yesterday, and who contacted me directly about it. Thank you! I think every writer craves an audience, and feels that when he or she has made a connection with a reader that that is something really uplifting.  I cannot explain this comfort, except that all writing is a form of communication, an attempt to lay out in textures and black marks something important to them. A story that burns through the finger tips. That wants, as Sundog Lit say, to burn the retinas. To light someone else up in the ways that they can and are able be. A less-than-perfect cross between song and chatter, physical sculpture and neon and flame.

 

 

It’s a dark time of the year, as I have said. Cold, blue, low lit. Writing is more important than ever, it feels. Reading, huddling round a book or bringing one clumsily, bittily, into being. I will have more time, now that my work, sadly, is cutting back my hours in the winter slump. The pictures above are from one of the distractions of the season: the Christmas Market on Princess Street. Outside of the picture are little huts strung with lights and tinsel, selling overpriced decorations and German snacks and hot mulled wine with schnapps. I’m thinking of setting up my own stand – selling a poem. Selling a photograph of this city. I won’t, because I’m truly not business minded, but the idea of doing it makes me smile. The possibility of physically handing my art over to someone as we both shiver and clap our hands at the chill.

 

There are ways to speak and ways to see on these cold days. If it’s warm where you are, perhaps summer, I am envious, but not. How are you managing though, wherever you are?

 

And thank you, as ever, for reading here.

Book Christmas

 

 

I received all these books today (after a few days of missed connections) – all three volumes of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead, Restoration by Rose Tremain, The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright and The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell.  And a little slip that reads ‘Vintage Books – with compliments’. Spectacular. Thanks so much to the lovely people @vintagebooks (who tweet delightfully). Endless Reads 2012 continues finely apace.

 

Mute

 

Because it is hard to speak today, because I need something solid to lean on, let someone else speak well:

I watched an armory combing its bronze bricks
and in the sky there were glistening rails of milk.
Where had the swan gone, the one with the lame back?

Now mounting the steps
I enter my new home full
of grey radiators and glass
ashtrays full of wool.

Against the winter I must get a samovar
embroidered with basil leaves and Ukranian mottos
to the distant sound of wings, painfully anti-wind,

a little bit of the blue
summer air will come back
as the steam chuckles in
the monster’s steamy attack

and I’ll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get
to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least.

 

– from ‘Poem‘ by Frank O’Hara

A Reading List

Recently, I compiled a list of reading for a very high level ESL student of mine. I thought I’d share it here – in part in case I lose it, in part because that student has now left, and I’d like to mark that in some way. It’ll be some time before I get to have literary discussions as part of my job.

 

I wanted to provide a list that would challenge. That would demonstrate various Englishes, from 19th century works to the modern day, from Scottish English, to African American dialect, to Nadsat. That I had read before and so could mark their varying levels of difficulty – in terms of vocabulary and structure and so on. That would be of interest to that particular student, I hope. The selections are unashamedly idiosyncratic. They are books that question and probe and twist, or simply tell a story. Some are serious, some fluffier, some influential, some brand new.

 

It is my wish that at least some of them will open up the world for this student a fraction, a crack. That the words will not only be new and add knowledge, but will charm and fire. What would you, personally, have suggested to someone new to literature in English?

 

Here’s what I passed on:

 

The Annotated Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (notes by Alfred Appel)

Textually rich, lyrical and fanciful in imagery. Challenging subject matter (in the disturbing sense – and in the sense that the narrator is openly unreliable)

Difficulty rating: Tricky – though the rhythm of the sentences should help you through them, and the notes will explain any obscure references.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Also lyrical – and short! The American Dream in the jazz age (1920s-30s) is one big party. Or is it? The end paragraph is one of the most famous in American literature.

Difficulty rating: Moderate, but short, did I mention it’s short? Taught in American High Schools.

Possession, A.S. Byatt

A very literary mystery – Roland is a loser academic living in a flat that smells of cat pee, but studying in the library one day, he discovers a previously unknown poem by a famous 19^th century figure. He pairs up with Maud Bailey to solve the mystery and evade a covetous American memorabilia collector. Meanwhile, in the 19^th century the poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte embark on passionate love affair which will have lasting effects on the present day. Far and away not as trashy as it sounds.

Difficulty rating:  This is an intellectually playful book, utilising poetry, letters and diary entries alongside 3^rd person narration. A nice mash of contemporary (80s) language and 19^th century conversational and written styles.  Longish. So moderate-to-difficult

One D.O.A., One on the Way, Mary Robison

Eve is married to Adam, a Southern gent with an identical twin. Eve may or may not be sleeping with the identical twin, who can really tell. Amongst the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, the story plays out. Witty and dark and bourbon-soaked.

Difficulty Rating: The minimalist prose style makes this one of the easier books on the list.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

A slave woman in the Southern United states is on the run with her children when she is cornered. Loath to see her children taken from her, she commits an act so brutal it will split the world from its reality. Brutal and lyrical, based partially on a true story. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this.

Difficulty rating: Pretty high, using African-American dialect in dialogue, but the sentences are shorter for the most part, which should make it a little easier going.

The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger

A charming love story between a  girl/young woman and a handsome librarian afflicted with a disease that forces him to jump naked through his own timeline.

Difficulty level: Easy (but contemporary)

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

A ferocious American preacher takes his family on a mission to the Congo. Told by the five women who surround him and must endure his fervour and madness and failures. A long but beautiful book.

Difficulty level: Depends which voice you are reading.

Glaciers, Alexis M Smith

Short, neat and moving – a story of memory, new love, and the landscapes of Pacific North Western United States.

Difficulty level – easier, very contemporary. Contains some of the most beautiful sentences I have ever read.

Green Girl, Kate Zambreno

A neurotic American girl with a fragile sense of self drifts and fails her way through her life in London. Every chapter begins with an interesting quote which will then be explored in some way. If you’d like to read ‘literature of the girl’ then read this. Some brutal scenes. Very contemporary.

Difficulty level: the quotes bump it up a little, but it’s crisp and clear.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg

The book that Fight Club might have been inspired by. A young religious man meets a person he believes to be Peter the Great and embarks on a series of crimes at his new friend’s suggestion. But why has nobody seen this friend of his?

Difficulty: old fashioned (18^th-19^th century writing style) but it’s a short book

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Demented novel/movie transcript/not all that scary horror story/breakdown.

Difficulty level: how good are you at reading upside down?

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

A difficult childhood surrounded by religious hypocrites  and coldness does nothing to damage Jane’s strength of character. Which is good at because Jane’s first job as a governess at a draughty mansion, the glowering Mr Rochester will be testing that to the extreme.  A love story about God and the moors and being a poor woman in a rich man’s house.

Difficulty level: 19^th century – so long convoluted sentences. But there is a movie to help clarify things.

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

The ‘prequel’ to Jane Eyre. But in fact a darker beast altogether. The action takes place on Jamaica just after the emancipation of the slaves – the land where Rochester was sent to make his fortune. It’s all chaos and faded fortune and steamy heat and colonialism and desire. Antoinette Causeway is brought up in a similarly lonely way to Jane, but her outlook on life is decidedly more fatalistic.

Difficulty level: straightforward, punchy sentences make this quite an easy one. Also short. But read after you’ve at least seen the movie of Jane Eyre.

1984, George Orwell

Because you must, if you like novels of ideas.

Difficulty level: easier than…

 

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

A sample: “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. […] The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence.”

Difficulty level: (see above) But you’ll be ahead with the Russian bits. There is also a film version.

Zazen, Vanessa Veselka

America is about to be torn apart, but what to do until then? Make tofu scramble and do yoga and protest something.

A sample:  “War A is going well and no longer a threat, small and mature. Like a Bonsai. War B is in full flower. Its thin green shoots reaching across the ocean floor like fibre optic cable. The TVs are on all the time all the time now. The lights dim and everyone moves in amber. They flicker like votives. That’s what we will all be one day, insects in sap, strange jewels.”

Difficulty level : It’s contemporary and full of unusual sentences like the ones above. But gorgeous, and not as difficult as A Clockwork Orange!

Orlando, Virginia Woolf

An aristocratic man lives for 400 years, changing gender and having various adventures. The style of the language changes as the years pass – from an Elizabethan English style to the Modernism of the 20^th century. Actually a cheerful story.

Difficulty level: hard.