The Count of Monty Cristo

food for thought

From Joseph Brodsky's lecture, 'How to Read a Book':

Before I come up with my suggestion -- nay! with what I perceive as the only solution for developing sound taste in literature, I'd like to say a few words about this solution's source, i.e., about my humble self. I'd like to do it not because of my personal vanity, but because I believe that the value of an idea is related to the context from which it emerges. Indeed, had I been a publisher, I'd be putting on my books' covers not only their authors' names but also the exact age at which they composed this or that work, in order to enable their readers to decide whether they care to reckon with the information or the views contained in a book written by a man so much younger -- or, for that matter, so much older -- than they are themselves.

sunday poem #?

Arrival 1946

The boat docked in at Liverpool.
From the train Tariq stared
at an unbroken line of washing
from the North West to Euston.

These are strange people, he thought --
an Empire, and all this washing,
the underwear, the Englishman's garden.
It was Monday, and very sharp.

Moniza Alvi

oh, and by the way

New MR.

how many skymiles to the moon?

Hi folks. Sorry to have fallen off the face of the earth lately -- I've been traveling (again), and won't be back in Edinburgh for a little while longer. Despite my missing all the anarchy currently on offer, it's been interesting nevertheless: flew directly into the swamps last weekend for my mother's birthday -- happy, er, 25th, Mom, if you're reading this -- and after a tranquil few days fishing in the bayou and dodging backyard alligators (yep) have been taking care of predeparture stuff for my relocation to Cambridge next year, prior to zipping over to the ol' alma mater for my ol' roommate's wedding this weekend. (Kids these days, right? Can't turn your back on them for a minute!) Never a dull moment, I reckon, especially if those named Cindy and Dennis have anything to say about it.

In other news, once I get back to Merry Olde next week, there's summer camp for translators waiting for me. It should be a lot of fun -- I'll be translating mostly Italian poetry (with some prose), plus sitting in on the Greek seminars as well -- so once I'm back in Edinburgh I'll be sure to spill a few beans on that. Of especial note, incidentally, is the 'workshops' page on literarytranslation.com. Check it out and you'll see why.

Some apology is necessary, by the way, for my lack of promised Man Booker Int'l Prize commentary. It has to do with hopping continents -- all my notes taken during the judges' panel are on my desk back in Scotland. (That, and the fact that the Count, despite his lofty lineage, was not invited to the actual awards ceremony that evening, where most of the good gossip was to be found. A little bird did tell me, however, that a substantial number of local (and perhaps more deserving) literati weren't invited either, which burnt not a few social bridges for the awards committee -- unfortunately, though, as this little bird was already speaking on condition of anonymity, it couldn't tell me any more than that.)

Anyway: I can say, however, that much of what Manguel, Nafisi, and Carey said in person at the panel was replicated (at times verbatim) from their published comments which appeared in the days following the announcement. Initially this rather annoyed me, but I guess when you take into account how terrifically often they've been speaking about the prize in the past few weeks, it is, admittedly, a little more difficult to chastise them for saying the same things over and over. Of course, it's always possible that their lawyers told them to do it.

That said, it's also possible that they told Manguel not to make a comparison between publishers and sausage-makers (about which I'll say more when I have my notes). But apparently he just wouldn't listen.

oh, my

I'm pretty sure that this is not the magazine I was looking for. Unless a certain government got their hands on it while I wasn't paying attention.

the nature of the activity as limit

Thanks to a spat of web-wandering in which Letitia is somehow implicated (I forget exactly how, though -- sorry, dear), I've stumbled across this lovely blog featuring nothing but the same ten-question interview with scores of contemporary poets (including T.R. Hummer, a fellow Mississippian and, from what I hear, a damn fine saxophonist to boot). Loiter a while; you might be pleasantly surprised.

I've not much else to report from the weekend except that 1) 'Batman Begins' wasn't half bad until the dialogue took a train wreck in the last five minutes (sorry -- you know it's true), 2) to the surprise of everyone involved, it is possible to get sunburned in Scotland if you just sit still long enough, and 3) the last few episodes of Arrested Development are some of the shining jewels in the series. Example:

Lindsay: "I've got the whole afternoon off!"
Lucille: "Oh, did nothing cancel?"

Before I shuffle off this wakeful coil, I'll leave you with some extracts from Robert Creeley's Paris Review interview, conducted almost 40 years ago but not a day old in tone or relevance. Tomorrow afternoon is the Man Booker International Prize ceremony; I'll be there with bells on, so check back here for a report tomorrow evening. (I reckon that most of what will be said has been said already, but you never know what kind of flecks will appear in the sieve.)

Emphases are mine; the best quote, hands-down, is already singled out.

On the relationship of place to poetry:

This [New Mexico] is a very basic place to live. the dimensions are of such size and of such curious eternity that they embarrass any assumption that man is the totality of all that is significant in life. The area offers a measure of persons that I find very relieving and much more securing to my nature than would be, let's say, the accumulations of men's intentions and exertions in New York City.

On 'the grid of initial experience and proposal':

John [Ashbery] was obviously coming to it by way of the French surrealists, where he found, not only playfulness, but a very active admission of the world as it's felt and confronted. It came from other places, too. I was finding it in jazz, for example. And that's why Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and those people were extraordinarily interesting to me. Simply that they seemed to have only the nature of the activity as limit. Possibly they couldn't change water into stone. But then again, maybe they could. That's what was intriguing.

Interviewer: You have said that poetry is 'the basic act of speech, of utterance.' Are you implying that self-expression is the poet's motivation, or is there more to be said about his desire to communicate, his interest in possible readers?

I don't think that 'possible readers' are really the context in which poetry is written. For myself it's never been the case. If one plays to the gallery in that way, I think it's extraordinarily distracting. The whole performance of writing then becomes some sort of odd entertainment of persons one never meets and probably would be embarrassed to meet in any case. So I'm only interested in what I can articulate with the things given me as confrontation. I can't worry about what it costs me. I don't think any man writing can worry about what the act of writing costs him, even though at time he is very aware of it.

Interviewer: Do you have the sense of continually progressing -- is there a sense in each successive poem of a new adventure?

Creeley (emphases his): A 'new adventure' possibly -- that is, like Melville's sense, 'Be true to the dreams of thy youth,' which [Charles] Olson told me Melville had on the wall over his worktable. I don't want to be unromantic about it. But I have never felt I was going anywhere, in writing -- not like, 'Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.' What I've really loved is the fact that at times I can take place in this activity, just be there with whatever comes of that fact. I live in this house, or with my wife, in just the same way. It's not 'getting somewhere' that is the point of it all.

continuing the thread

David Chalmers recently put up a constellation of zombie-related links; while the zombie simulator is, admittedly, pretty cool, be sure to check out Max Brooks' (Mel Brooks' son, not surprisingly) rather slick Zombie Survival Guide. Note that Brooks, with his insistence on their viral origin, holds to the biopathological account of zombies -- not the religious/theological account that is briefly mentioned here (under 'Explanation for Reanimation') and such as you find in films like Lucio Fulci's classic 1979 Zombie -- the film that features the legendary underwater duel between -- wait for it -- a zombie and a shark. In the burgeoning field of zombology this is a crucial distinction, not least because means of zombie disposal can diverge quite sharply depending on their type.

When I worked in the pathology lab back in high school, incidentally, we used to get amputated gangrenous legs fresh from the OR that, given their color and texture, looked like they could have fallen off a zombie.

Just thought I'd share.

zombology 101

In keeping with the zombie festival suddenly taking place over at the Times, I reckon it's about time I stepped up the zombie presence round these parts as well. So. Here is what I'd like for Christmas, followed by its (unnervingly) many sequels. And please don't forget the all-important Bag o' Zombies (which makes a great desktop wallpaper if, like me, you can't actually afford this stuff).

Should you find yourself in need of some brains, there's always Brains4Zombies.com, which serves all your neurologic needs.  (Note especially their fine selection of brains, brains, and other brains.) I've also added a blog written by a zombie to the blogroll; study his movements carefully and you'll know what to do when the time comes. By which I mean not pulling a Rod Stouffer and standing stock still.

You'd think they'd learn.

moments of abstraction, indeed

One of the more curious passages from my recent reading (which includes Czech novellas, archaeology textbooks, developments in neuroscience, and a truly heartbreaking work of staggering genius). From Dr Johnson's Dictionary, by Henry Hitchings:

During the years in which Johnson worked on the Dictionary, [William] Strahan was his paymaster, acted as his unofficial banker, franked his letters, and even periodically provided him with breakfast. Johnson visited frequently; he found his printer good and generous company. Strahan was a warm host, and an unaffected one. He and his wife had an impressive library of unusual books; occasionally these were lent to Johnson, and we know that one of the volumes he borrowed was a recent treatise on the tranquillizing powers of opium by a Scottish doctor called George Young. Besides, there were more immediately analgesic rewards to be had from visiting the Strahans' home. In the courtyard stood a lime tree which Johnson, in moments of abstraction, liked to hug.

And in praise of synchronicity, in the next paragraph, speaking of Johnson's lodgings at 17 Gough Square, Hitchings casually mentions something that the Zombie saw:

A solidly built William and Mary property, five bays wide and five storeys high, it now houses a small, well-run museum, cowering behind the offices of the American investment bank Goldman Sachs. In the cobbled square outside there is a modern statue of Johnson's cat Hodge, for whom he loved to buy oysters. The life-size bronze, shaded by an acacia tree, shows Hodge sitting at stroking height on the Dictionary -- a perpetual reminder of Johnson's magisterial achievement, and of his more affectionate side.

pre-cheeky pint printing errata

Here's the story, morning glory: it's the middle of June and it's still cold, still wet, and the sun sets at 10.30pm. Well, I reckon one outta three ain't bad.

Preparations for the big party continue apace; and even amid these they -- who is this 'they', I wonder? Are they the same 'they' that say smoking causes cancer, and other vague notions like that? -- still find time to hand out nifty swag like the deftly-acronymed BBC4SJPfNF (via the Saloon) and the Scottish Book of the Year Award. I went to the ceremony for the latter, at the kind invitation of a friend of mine, and let me just say that if a bomb had gone off in that room, Scottish publishing would have ground to a screeching halt. Everyone was there -- everyone. Let me break it down into a few categories: Folks I Do Recognize (the smallest), Folks I Probably Should Recognize (the midrange), and Folks I Would Recognize if I Were Actually Somebody in Scottish Literature (which far and away dwarfs the other categories). Man, that joint was packed like a, um, joint.

Um.

Good eats, though. Tandoori chicken.

But much more exciting, in the Count's humble opinion, is the invitation one of my flatmates, who works for the Scottish Executive, has just received for a garden party with the Queen. Okay, so setting it up like that is excitement aplenty -- but if that weren't enough pomp and circumstance (or Pimm's and circumstance, as the case will likely be) for you, check out how it's phrased: "The Lord Chamberlain is commanded by Her Majesty to invite you to ..."

How awesome is that?

Two of the interviews I conducted are now online over at textualities.net (along with some other new content); you can find Jacob Polley's here and Choman Hardi's here. Matthew Hollis will come next week. I'm quite pleased (chuffed, as the Brits would say) with the way they came out, if I may say so -- and no, in case you're wondering, the inclusion of the actual salmon was not my idea. (But I wish it had been.)

And lastly, I ask you: body of the article aside, with tidbits like the last quotation -- "Interesting books just drift out of print because people don't buy them any more. Writers of this quality end up not being stocked or in print" -- what do we file it under, 'laugh' or 'cry'? Beats all hell outta me.