Archive for the ‘booksbooksbooks’ Category
August 24th, 2010
I have, for a long time, been fascinated by the concept of the hero. Many years ago I bought an book of fantasy artwork (no, I’m not going to tell you more). Despite the prevalence of an effectively soft porn-esque idealised concept of the woman there was an intriguing set of prose addressing the nature of the hero. A lot of it was flowery bunkum but several interesting themes could be extrapolated.
The first of these is that the hero is static in relation to his or her tribe. Unlike the tribe, which transitions, the hero/heroine is caught of a moment within the chronological, social and cultural timeline of the tribe. They are, in effect, fixed in time and are unable to change their fundamental nature, even should circumstance and context change.
The second of these was that the hero often represents both the best and the worst of the tribe, reflecting cultural extremes and attitudes and social mores. It is this extremism that is both a driver and an inhibitor.
The third was that the hero enables the tribe to transition or change. The hero’s very immobility of nature is integral to the tribe advancing, he or she is the medium by which this is achieved, often at great cost to the hero.
The fourth was that the hero is of the tribe but apart from it. This separation allows the hero to act, to be break the bounds of social and cultural constraints to act for the greater good of the tribe. This disassociation from the tribe is another form of sacrifice, the hero subsequently revered or reviled, never to be part of the whole again.
These themes are particular to a certain narrow view of heroism, but, to a greater or lesser degree they can be applied to any form of classic heroism. The hero is about a pivotal moment of change, and stories are about transition and transformation. Whatever happens to the heroine subsequently, however they may appear to change, their fundamental nature remains extant. It is on this bedrock of immutability that the world changes, where the hero’s nature is fully and finally revealed and upon which the tribe transforms.
And that is the interesting thing, that the hero is merely a protagonist until the moment arrives and the revelation is made, and their nature asserts itself, no matter how briefly. Anti-heroes, villains, broken or dark or flawed,they are subject to the compulsion of their inner being; a critical convergence of situation and context and character lead to this exposure, and the hero acts.
David Gemmell was possibly the finest exponent of the classic hero paradigm, his characters where often flawed, driven by circumstance and nature to act in the only way they could. Time and again his books play with this archetypes, playing with the themes of survival, impossible odds and sacrifice, the hero revealed when needed.
Tanith Lee’s heroes are subtler; encapsulating a complex weave of motivations and characterisation, ranging from the obvious to the not so obvious. CJ Cherryh’s, China Mieville’s and Steven Erikson’s heroes are of a similar ilk, fascinating in their various natures and guises.
These are writers and heroes upon whom the fate of the world or worlds depend. Contemporary fiction often requires less of its heroes, and reality less so again. The idea of heroism is mutable by expectation, limited and constrained by experience and situation. The protagonist hero is forced to act, to face themselves and to change or enable transition of the reality in which they exist, no matter how mundane and trivial that may be. In a sense the scale itself almost does not matter, it is the moment and the act that is important.
For me the idea of heroism, no matter the themes above, is dependent upon the above; that the immutable innate nature of the hero is only every reached or revealed, no matter how well hidden or denied it is, and that situation and circumstance force that revelation, changing the world in ways from the subtle to the catastrophic.
Ultimately what intrigues is the journey to that moment, culminating in decisions and actions that contrive to bring about transformation. What happens to the hero afterwards is almost irrelevant, they fade into memory and legend and myth, or are forced to act and act again.
August 8th, 2010
At the moment I am finding it quite difficult to concentrate on writing (things going on) and the blog in particular, hence the rise of this more snippety kind of post…
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I finally, after a couple of years of intent, joined the Thali Cafe‘s tiffin club. And it is bloody marvellous. The food was plentiful (fish curry, spicy dhal, tasty rice and a weird little veggie salad thingy) and incredibly more-ish and more than enough for two people. Delicious and inexpensive when you consider refills are only £6-7.50, depending upon the type of meal chosen. Joining the Tiffin Club itself is only £22.50, and this includes your first meal (and gives you ownership of a very pretty set of metal tiffin pots too).
The Thali Cafe can be found in Totterdown, Clifton, Montpelier and Easton. The atmosphere is invariably relaxed and the food amazingly good value.
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Having joined Thea Gilmore‘s Angels in the Abattoir project last year (and finding it worth every penny of the £52 it cost me) I have also joined Liz William‘s short story experiment, in which, depending upon the level of commitment chosen, she will send you from 4 to 12 short stories over the year, for the princely sum of £18 to £50. Subscriptions run for two years (from what I can work out) and are limited in number.
I have received the first three short stories and will be reading over the next week. More on this when I have done so.
Thea Gilmore’s approach is very much an experiment in direct contact with her fans, and the ‘package’ is designed to add value over and above the simple purchase of a cd or iTunes download. Liz Williams’ effort is much more of a direct sales approach, with the limited number of subscriptions adding rarity ‘value’ whilst keeping the overhead of managing these at a reasonable level (both artists take the time to be personal in their approach, as much as they can be).
I do wonder whether there will come a time, if this model explodes, where we will see eBay auctions for virtual, authentic and rare ‘subscription certificates’ to well known authors, musicians and artists. Interesting…
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Breakfast this morning has been the remnants of yesterday’s bag of Jelly Babies. No, I’m not proud of myself at all.
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A number of things have arisen of late where I have had to think about fatherhood and the idea of having children (no, I am not about to have a child nor am I planning to); I am still pretty much convinced that my choice is the right one so far.
Okay, the significant change there is the so far bit. I am well aware that things change, and having pontificated at length on the flexibility of change and life choice off-line, I realise that just because a decision or choice is the way it is now, doesn’t mean it cannot change in the future. Life has a nasty (or blessed) habit of throwing a curve ball and when it does you have to re-evaluate your choices based on the situation and principles at hand, rather than stubbornly adhering to a possibly outdated and less self-aware decision.
I spent yesterday with my mum, brother, sister-in-law and the two nephews (and small jug). It was bedlam. I can see and understand that having children and raising them is no mean feat, but gods, I don’t know it. And I am quite happy with that shallowness of knowledge, to some extent.
My hat off to those of you who have done and are doing it. ’tis a brave and crazy thing you do, and best of luck with it.
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I am quite particular and opinionated about books, and a brief conversation with Emily last night highlighted this. I love reading and I love books. I love people’s writing but I can be a bit snotty about the quality of writing and storytelling contained within a book (this in no way contradicts my occasional penchant for horribly written pulp fiction, okay, it does).
I do not like the Brontes, the Austens and I dropped GCSE English Literature like a hot stone after reading the first couple of pages of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. Heathen as it may be, I just don’t like these classics and making me read them will only get me as grumpy as the time I was made to read Dan Brown.
On the flip side I do love the ancient classics; Aristophanes and Ovid and Euripides are great, and Fagle’s translations of the Homeric epics the Odysseus and the Iliad are just fantastic. Moving forward through time, Dumas’ the Count of Monte Cristo and the Three Musketeers are true classics, as is, indisputably, Cervante’s Don Quixote. Of course there are non-European epics/classics I like as well, such as Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en and the massive and intimidating Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata (although to be perfectly honest I only really ever watched the latter on television).
I just have a real blind spot when it comes to Hardy, Austen et al (and this goes for worthy Russians such as Dostoyevsky and Chekov). Perhaps time will change my mind.
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Mini-recommendations:
Sustrans is a cycling charity set up to promote cycling in the UK and they have been instrumental in the massive growth in the National Cycle Network. They do lots of good stuff at all levels of the community and if you are into cycling in any way you should consider joining. They also have some great helmets in their shop (ahem).
I have just recently picked up a copy of Dario Mitidieri’s Children of Bombay. The pictures are stunning, heartbreaking, emotive, brutal and observationally astute. The photography is superb. Go and find it.
The universe. I really like it. Despite all it’s odd bits; dark matter (confusing), exploding suns, life, incomprehensibility and unimaginable vastness and minute complexity, it has it’s good points too. Just look around, you’ll see examples of both. Love it.
July 29th, 2010
Despite being online and reading books for years I have only just recently stumbled into the world of book-blogging (where everything and anything about books is discussed). To this end I have created a set of links under books in the blogroll bit to your right with some of the frankly fab blogs/websites that I have started following/reading/enjoying.
I have deep love for science fiction and fantasy from the 30′s through to 70′s and I so far haven’t seen anything that really covers this. I am toying with the idea of setting up my little blog to this end, as I have read and loved (and occasionally hated) so much of these genres from these periods. It won’t be of the quality of these guys and girls to the right, but it will be something.
It will also give me (not that I need one) an excuse to surround myself with lovely stacks of the relevant books, to re-read and re-enjoy, and to quantify what they mean to me and why they should be read. There is a hell of a lot of classic, clever and inventive writing out there, undiscovered or more often than not, sadly forgotten.
Okay, I think I have just convinced myself to do this. Now to think of a suitably appropriate and odd name for said blog…
July 23rd, 2010
Further to my earlier post about Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, I am delighted and privileged to expand upon this with a guest post over at For Book’s Sake.
For Books’ Sake is a wonderful and entertaining new booksite from the enthusiastic, talented and prolific Jane Bradley. It covers everything from book reviews to book events, by way of posts on more general bookish topics. Go and have a look, great stuff indeed.
July 22nd, 2010
A couple of years ago I was fortunate to get tickets to listen to Terry Pratchett talk at the recording of Radio 4′s “With Great Pleasure” Christmas special. In it, with a cast of brilliant readers, he would introduce and elaborate on the books that had an impact on him and his writing. It was a very well done, hugely enjoyable and very much got me thinking.
A couple of weeks ago I happened to read this lovely post by Eyoki that talked about the books that were present in his home when he grew up. Sian’s blog also has a number of intelligent and intriguing posts about the books she grew up with, which are well worth a read, or particular note (for me) being this recent one about graphic novels.
Books influence us in many ways, of that there is no doubt, be they fiction or non-fiction. They can inspire and/or enrage us, leave us warm and cosy or thoughtful and melancholic. They can, and will, evoke a range of emotions in us that, often unknowingly, will echo down through the rest of our lives, influencing and colouring our thinking and the decisions made.
I love books and find brilliant ones every day (okay, every week or so, ish). And they do evoke emotion and thought and do stimulate me in different ways, reinforcing or reshaping the way I think and feel with great subtlety. There are, however, a few books that resonate on a deeper level, that make me think and ponder anew every day.
Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master has long been one of those books. Short, it is effectively a collection of linked fantastical fairy-tales, set in an other worldy place not so removed from our own. With intense and yet somehow sparse prose, the stories are beautifully written, and in the tradition of fairytales they deliver a heady mix of the cruelty and bliss both, playful and brutal in equal measures. In here are the roots of much of my writing, and Lee’s prose is full of dark beauty, distinctive and telling. It is a book about morals and lessons and the savage nature of the semi-mythological world of gods and demons that lies alongside our own, matched only by the cruel necessity of the humanity that exists inside it. It taught me, at the most basic level, that we are ever intertwined with our tales and myths, shaped by the powerful ideas that sit at their heart, and that they, in turn, are shaped by us.
CJ Cherryh’s Book of the Faded Sun is science fiction at its best. She has ever been wonderful at realising and emphasising the nature and psychology of the alien, making it accessible and understandable despite its other-worldliness. The mri are a race of castes, and the book is about the last of them, fleeing across the universe, accompanied by a solitary human. This is the crux and heart of the story, the tension between two different species, between psychology and culture and nature, contrasting the malleability of humanity against the rigidity of the archaic, anachronistic mri culture. It is here that we begin to see the elegance and freedom of such unforgiving, unrelenting adherence to caste and structure. In the mri nature, culture, biology and psychology have evolved to a singular complete point, diamond hard and immovable, where each individual has their place, integral and relevant and justifiable by the simple fact of it. It is this evocation, this tension, this gap between two different and opposed mindsets that echoes out, reminding me constantly that everything has a place, no matter what my views; that mine is not the only right and wrong.
Reach for the Sky, the story of the Battle of Britain fighter pilot Douglas Bader, inspired in me the heroic ideal of derring-do and battling against the odds, reflections of which I have long since sought to emulate in the stories I write and the tales I dream. Bader represented the best of what it was meant to be British, stoic, skilled, fighting with flair and leadership, despite having lost both legs and eventual incarceration in a PoW camp. Heady stuff for a young boy.
Ted Hughes’ Crow remains a powerful influence on me, containing a near perfect evocation of such mythological and primal life force as to be contained by the written or spoken word. Deep and dark and inventive Hughes reflects back on us the urges and desires of our race, hints at a multitude of hidden secrets and layers and meanings. It has forever lain over my eyes and imagination a veneer of what may be; the mundane can indeed be interpreted in the most profound and ridiculous and primeval of ways.
Finally, and by no means least, Festival in My Heart (example poem/post here) is the perfect antidote to the heaviness above. Touching, beautifully written and translated, these poems express the world in a more open, honest, innocent voice, all captured with surprising delicacy and simplicity. Sometimes the world needs to be viewed with a child’s eye, with a child’s creativity and a child’s sense of trust. Sometimes the world need be nothing more than what it is, a world of wondrous mystery and possibility.
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Night’s Master, Tanith Lee
Book of the Faded Sun Trilogy, CJ Cherryh
Reach for the Sky, Douglas Bader
Crow, Ted Hughes
Festival in My Heart, Bruno Navasky
July 16th, 2010
From somewhere near the front of James Kirkup‘s ‘The Descent into the Cave and other poems‘:
Yes, totally.
June 30th, 2010
You may want to read the post below before continuing to read this.
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I was thinking on the long walk back from my disastrous and somewhat dissatisfying run about the post below, and I came to the conclusion that I was not quite there.
TNoNH isn’t just about people and beliefs and ideas and jokes, it is also very much about what Malcolm Gladwell would call ‘tipping points’. This is a book as much about transition as it is about realisation and crystallisation.
Auberon Quin, the King, has such a moment of crystallisation when he encounters the ex-President of the recently conquered, once independent Nicaragua. This meeting realises something with Quin, and the first major tipping point is reached, ultimately culminating in the transition that is the Charter of Cities, his grand joke.
His encounter with a very young Adam Wayne in turn crystallises a belief in that boy about Notting Hill, eventually leading to next tipping point, when Wayne embarks on the path he believes the only one he can follow. Transitions and tipping points follow, played out through the earnestness of Wayne and the knowing buffoonery of Quin, rippling out to occupy both the physical and metaphysical landscape of London. At then end there is recognition of this fact, leading to one of the most intensely realised scenes of the novel, when the final and unknown realisation and transition takes place, beyond the final words of the story and on into the imagination of the reader.
All good stories are about transition and change, whether it is minor, subtle or vast beyond comprehension. It is this tension, between the status quo and the new state of being that drives the story forward, defining heroines and villains both.
TNoNH has no villains as such, each character is driven from their natural state of being, Buck and Barker content with the ‘now’, with Wayne striving forwards to realise the ideals he holds dear. Quin hovers between the two, first implementing his joke against the normality of the ‘now’, maintaining his plan in the face of exasperated opposition and reluctant forbearance, before embracing destiny as it is presented to him.
And yet the central debate and examination (see below) still stands, ultimately this story is about change and people and belief and the nature of the joke.
June 30th, 2010
This is a story about a joke. It is also a story about belief, and the conflict that arises because of that belief. It is a story about how a joke and belief can change a world by changing the minds and spirits of those who inhabit it.
A man becomes King, and treats this responsibility as a joke, capering and buffooning his way through life, realising that in the coming together of great nations a stilted seriousness has long since stifled humour.
In his humour he conceives a grand joke, and enforces it on the people of London, who, with grace good and ill, humour the King.
A boy meets a King, and from that fateful intersection of destinies is set upon a path that changes the minds of men, that reshapes the London and elevates the joke to something more than could have been imagined.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a short book, and is exquisitely written, reflecting the post-Victorian London of this alternative reality, stiff and uniform and lacking in poetry and humour. It rolls with a frantic mania, with characters wonderfully evoked by the force of their personalities, in the almost childish vibrancy of their emotions. And yet, at its heart, lies a debate, an examination of the nature of heroism, of patriotism, of humour and belief in an idea absurd.
It is a debate still relevant in a world confused and ever-changing, where ideas and ideals shift without thought and principles are mired by an overly complicated world.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K Chesterton
June 4th, 2010
Just because I have been sitting here, window open, watching the graceful fall of night as music plays, reading his various collections. Just because.
—
Making popcorn
for the seagulls on the porch
you look up from the stove
just long enough to look away.
Some new obscurity behind your eyes
I’m not as yet as liberty to know
stays lurking there
between the popcorn and the flame.
-Popcorn; The Sea Around Me… the Hills Above
—
April people all are lonely
that’s the general rule
and more than once a lonely heart
has made an April fool.
Born in April, sad of heart,
you’re a lonesome child,
but you could make the sun shine
with even half a smile.
April people live for love
nothing else will do.
So come along and take my hand,
I was born in April, too.
- April’s People; Grand Tour
—
I’ve saved the summer
and I give it all to you
to hold on winter morning
when the snow is new.
I’ve saved some sunlight
if you should ever need
a place away from darkness
where your mind can feed.
And for myself I’ve kept your smile
when you were but nineteen,
till you’re older you’ll not know
what brave young smiles can mean.
I know no answers
to help you on your way
the answers lie somewhere
at the bottom of the day.
But if you’ve a need for love
I’ll give you all I own
it might help you down the road
until you’ve found your own.
- Thirty-six; Lonesome Cities
—
There’s a few more lonesome cities
that I’d like to see
while the wine of wandering
is still inside of me.
There’s a few more pretty women
that I’d like to know,
a bridge or two I’d like to cross
a few more oats to sow.
Maybe when I’ve done it all,
seen all there is to see,
I’ll find I still cannot
run away from me.
But as long as the trains keep runnin’
a restless man I’ll be,
and there’re a few more lonesome cities
that I’ve yet to see.
- Lonesome Cities; Lonesome Cities
—
We come into the world alone.
We go the same way.
We’re mean to spend the interlude between
in closeness
Or so we tell ourselves.
But it’s a long way from the morning to the evening.
- April 12; In Someone’s Shadow
—
How can you say something new
about being alone?
Tell someone you’re a loner
and right away they think you’re lonely.
It’s not the same thing, you know.
It’s not wanting to put all your marbles
in one pocket.
It’s caring enough not to care too much.
Mostly it’s letting yourself come first for a while.
- Some travelling music; In Someone’s Shadow
May 31st, 2010
” – I was bunking off, doing something only other people such as Thor Heyerdahl and Ranulph Fiennes did: going on an expedition. A part of me refused to take seriously the concept of ‘expeditions’ in an age that routinely expected to soon to be sending people to Mars. Expeditions were for poor deluded fools who regretted being born in the late twentieth century. Expeditions were for people who couldn’t accept the fact that the world was all explored. Expeditions were for wealthy nitwits looking for kicks in speedboats and balloons.
And another part of me, the part that insisted on using the word ‘expedition’ despite having to make the ironic concession, knew that all of the above was lies.”
- pg 8, Voyageur by Robert Twigger
Just because other people have discovered it, seen it, tasted it, heard it, felt it, touched it, gazed in awe at it, danced it, jumped it, swum it, played it, ate it, drunk it, photographed it, drawn it, written about it, slept in it, rolled in it, chased it, run from it, wept at it, hated it, felt ambivalent about it, wanted it, explored it, found it, breathed it, watched it, paddled it, walked it, ran it, flown it, ballooned it, rafted it, basejumped it, toasted it, dreamt it, and loved it doesn’t mean you can’t too.
It is your adventure. It will only ever be your adventure, your life, your dreams and hopes and realisations. Nothing is stopping you, nothing is holding you back, nothing, that is, but you.
Now go and fucking do it.
