February 2012
17 posts
1 tag
Openings
I believe that a well-known anecdote exists to the effect that a young writer, determined to make the commencement of his story forcible and original enough to catch and rivet the attention of the most blase of editors, penned the following sentence:
“‘Hell,’” said the Duchess.”
Strangely enough, this tale of mine opens in much the same fashion. Only the lady who...
3 tags
My home could be less crowded
Of course, the real reader has no need to surround himself with books, W. says. The real reader lends them to others with no thought of them being returned. What need has he for a library of books? He prefers to be alone with only the most essential works, like Beckett with his Dante, in his room at the old folks’ home. Beckett with his Dante, and cricket on the TV.
From Lars...
3 tags
Why we need the jinn
In a plot, the supreme being can act as a narrative force embodied in providence, but there are limits to the spectrum of his behaviour. Even the furious God of the Old Testament does not possess the degree of idiosyncrasy and vitality that less strictly perfect beings, intrinsically various and unruly, can add to a story. It is not simply a question of the devil having the best tunes, but a...
1 tag
The letter killeth
There was a gulf so wide between the Art I discovered by myself and what was on offer at school that I could detect no more than a tenuous connection between the two.
From Ted Walker’s The High Path
2 tags
Margins
Sometimes I have the impression that everything that happens in my life comes from a marginal, ominous place no one else knows, a place that has always been meant only for me. I’ve grown so used to the idea that it seems to me I enjoy my brief moments of happiness and well-being with an intensity unknown to other mortals. Those moments restore me, they are necessary to me, and each time...
2 tags
Inevitabilities
I interrupted to ask if every mine in the area necessarily had a sinister history. “Yes, senor, every mine has its dead. That’s the way it is. An Indian who lived around here and told fortunes used to say there’s no gold without a corpse, no woman without a secret.”
From Alvaro Mutis’s Amirbar, in The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
2 tags
New forms
“Look!” Bill said, pointing at the page. “In your head, there’s sexual tension there… . They’re flirting, Jack. You can’t play with that if you’re not going to use it. Remember Chekhov and the shotgun?”
“Fuck those rules. Who made that rule?”
“Chekhov.” “Who said that things had to have a certain structure? How...
2 tags
Definitions
Ennui is the condition of not fulfilling our potentialities; remorse of not having fulfilled them; anxiety of not being able to fulfill them.
From Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave
2 tags
You should always trust Maqroll the Gaviero
I pointed out that the living are often deader than the characters in books, and I was so convinced of this fact that I couldn’t even listen carefully to other people anymore, because I was afraid I’d wake them.
From Alvaro Mutis’s Amirbar, in The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
3 tags
Responsibility
When people don’t understand our work, it is always our fault. What the reader wants, above all, is to penetrate our thought, and that is what you arrogantly deny him. I understood you, because I knew you. If I’d been given your book without your name on it, I’d have thought it splendid, but strange, and I’d have asked myself whether you were immoral, skeptical, indifferent, or heartbroken. You...
2 tags
Judy
No matter whom you sleep with, or whether you’re a fan of the Metropolitan Opera or the Grand Ole Opry, practically everyone in the second half of the twentieth century (in America and around the world) has grown up with Dorothy and _The Wizard of Oz_; just as Garland was the major musical icon who started as a child star (even more than a headliner, like Sammy Davis Jr. or Buddy Rich),...
1 tag
Subject closed
Years later my mother was to tell me that when she had asked me, at the age of five, whether I knew where babies came from and I had said yes, she had considered further information on the subject superfluous.
P. Y. Betts, People Who Say Goodbye: Memories of Childhood (1989)
