Interview: Catherine Edmunds
GOLDEN LANGUR INTERVIEWS NOVELIST AND POET, CATHERINE EDMUNDS
GL: In your signature you describe yourself as Novelist/Poet. Would you like to share a little about your writing as a novelist? How many novels have you published? What genre do you use? Are there any particular periods or theme that you focus on?
CE: I’m now onto my third published novel. The first (The Sand in the Painting) should probably never have been published, as it was literally the first novel I’d ever written – there aren’t any juvenile attempts lurking at the backs of drawers. When I look back at it now, I want to re-write every word, but at the time, I was so relieved to be in print, I couldn’t see a problem. It was a work of general fiction with an ensemble cast, told from various points of view. I learnt a lot through writing it, and even invented a couple of characters that interested me sufficiently to re-use them in my latest novel. By the time I wrote my second novel, Small Poisons (Circaidy Gregory Press), I’d matured as a writer. The book is technically far more polished, and I think it’s a much better read. It’s a work of magical realism, described by my editor as ‘The contemporary novel for Midsummer Night’s Dreamers’, and explores the wayward interface between illusion and reality in a totally unexpected setting (a suburban garden). The third, Serpentine (BeWrite Books), is the most personal of the three, as it’s about an artist, and for all I’m a professional musician as well as a published author, I would always describe myself first and foremost as an artist.
GL: When I first approached you for an interview you were awaiting the publication of a novel. Tell us about your latest novel, Serpentine. What is it about? Is it an ebook? When was it published?
CE: Serpentine is due for release by BeWrite Books on April 6th [2012] as an ebook in the three main formats (mobi, epub and pdf), so people will be able to read it on any e-reader, tablet or computer. It opens with a quote from Nietzsche – ‘Art is the proper task of life’ – and follows the attempts of Victoria, a young artist living in London, to reconcile her absolute need to be a creative artist with her frequently cataclysmic attempts to make personal relationships function with any sort of success. Vicky is in turns sassy, difficult, funny, infuriating – all of which makes the book sound a bit chick-lit, but actually it fits far more comfortably into the literary fiction genre.
GL: Are there any dos and don’ts about submitting a novel that you might like to share with our readers?
CE: Don’t write in a vacuum. In other words, unless you’ve subjected the novel to the sharpest, harshest critique by your peers that you are able to obtain, you are unlikely to have written anything a publisher will consider worth taking any further. Wait until the vultures have torn it to pieces and you’ve put it back together, and they’ve shredded it again, and you’ve reconstructed it again – and then you might have something that’s becoming plausible. Then edit, edit, edit, edit, keep editing. Cut the first chapter in its entirety. Possibly the first two. Reduce the word count of the entire novel by at least a third. Make sure the grammar is immaculate and the spelling is absolutely consistent. Read the publisher or agent’s guidelines over and over again. Realise you’ll need a slightly different version each time you send it out, as nobody will be asking for precisely the same thing. Never use a generic letter. Always do your research and personalise it as far as you can.
GL: Following on from your point about not writing in a vacuum, what is your idea of an ideal reader? What are you looking for in your reader? Do you envisage those who read your poetry will take to your novels and vice versa? Or are the two geared to different readers?
CE: My ideal poetry reader is any poet who is more skilled at the craft of poetry writing than I am. They don’t have to write in a similar style, but they do have to be experienced and knowledgeable. I’ve been lucky enough to find a number of skilled poets along the way who’ve been kind enough to critique my work (and of course I’ve returned the favour). The poets who like my poetry also tend to like my novels as they occupy the same literary world as the poems, though greatly expanded, but it doesn’t often work the other way round. My best readers for the novels are skilled prose writers and avid readers, though not necessarily novelists. They often apologise for not appreciating my poetry. Anyone can read a novel, but reading poetry is a special skill, best learnt by writing poetry. This is why most readers of poetry are poets. You can’t skim a poem. You have to stop and think and digest every word. It’s a bit too much like hard work for the casual reader who simply wants to enjoy a good story.
GL: Would it be fair to say that you’re principally a novelist who also writes poetry? Which came first, novel writing or poetry?
CE: I came to writing relatively late, having not done any creative writing since schooldays until a poem popped out of my head and onto my computer in my forties. This was not entirely out of the blue. I used to spend time chatting in the old msn chat rooms and the friendliest people I found in them were the poets, but as a non-writer I felt like an interloper, so I wrote a poem in order to fit in. The feedback was extremely encouraging. I wanted more, became hooked, and haven’t stopped writing since. I began writing my first novel within a few months of the first poem, so the poetry and novel writing evolved together and have continued side by side ever since.
GL: Are there any novelists whose work inspires you? How important is reading for you as a writer and poet?
CE: You can’t – really can’t – write anything unless you are and always have been an avid reader. I’d realised this initially while still at school, when I noticed that my stories were always better if I wrote them immediately after reading a decent novel. I analysed the novels to see which were the most effective in this regard, and made sure to read an Arthur C. Clarke novel shortly before taking ‘O’ level English Language. It worked. I gained an ‘A’ grade.
As to the authors who inspire me – there are too many to mention, but two stand head and shoulders above all the rest. First: Jane Austen. So much unsaid. So much beneath the surface. So much passion. So much heartache along with gentle humour to make it all bearable. Second: Stephen Donaldson – both his fantasy works and his crime fiction, but especially his science fiction. Searingly effective writing. Masterful plotting, superb characterisation, and an emotional intensity that few contemporary writers can match. Austen and Donaldson make odd bedfellows perhaps, but I love them both and each has inspired and influenced my writing in their own way. If any diehard Donaldson fans read Serpentine I can guarantee they will go ‘Ha!’ at one point when one character utters one word. Yes, just one word, and suddenly you’re in Donaldson’s universe, albeit briefly. Nobody else will notice anything untoward, but I wanted to give a nod to my favourite contemporary writer.
GL: Do share a little about your poetry. How did you come to write poetry? Do you use any particular poetical forms? Again, are there any particular themes that inspire and shape your poetry?
CE: Once I had written my first free form poem in the old msn chat room, and become addicted to positive feedback, I started exploring different possible poetic forms, using Wikipedia as first point of call. I soon discovered villanelle, sestina, and in particular, the various types of sonnets. I’ve had publication success with all these forms now, and the discipline of writing them has certainly helped improve my freestyle poetry. As for themes, I’ll write about pretty much everything and anything, but it’s almost invariably fiction. I’m not someone who has an experience or recalls a memory and then writes it down as a poem. Never have done. I can’t see the point. I’m a storyteller, so that’s what I do, whether through my poems or novels. Autobiographical writing doesn’t interest me. Victoria, the artist in Serpentine, is emphatically not me, even though she’s painted some of the pictures I have (one of which is used as the cover art) and had some similar experiences. She is her own person, and she goes her own way, as do all the characters who appear in my writing, whether poetry or prose.
GL: Your poetry has been widely published. Would you please name a few anthologies, competitions and your own collections?
CE: My earliest publications were in now defunct e-zines that burnt brightly for a while, but were then snuffed out. Once I’d gained the confidence that early publication brings, I discovered Earlyworks Press and their route into print publication through competitions, so I had a go, and quickly became successful. I have now appeared in a good number of their anthologies as poet, illustrator and cover artist. I have also had success with Leaf Book competitions, both in poetry and flash fiction. Companies as diverse as Byker Books and Sam’s Dot Publishing have published my short stories, and my poems have been published in magazines and e-zines such as Antiphon, 14, The Journal, Fleeting Magazine, and many others. Circaidy Gregory Press published my first solo poetry collection, ‘wormwood, earth and honey’, which has recently been re-released as a fully illustrated ebook, and I am now working on a second collection. 2010 was probably my best year for competitions, with two short-listings for poetry in the Bridport, as well as many other placings and a few wins. So long as my winnings stay greater than the fees I pay out to enter, I reckon I’m doing okay.
GL: Are there any subjects that you as a novelist or poet would be reluctant to use in your writing? Are there any specific concepts that you are trying to express in your novels and poetry?
CE: I don’t write about subjects about which I know nothing or which I have no desire to explore. This is why you’ll find no short stories or novels with wartime settings and no Westerns. I haven’t written any historical fiction to speak of, though I wouldn’t rule it out entirely. I don’t like to write at length about miserable subjects as I want my readers to go away happy, or excited, or inspired, or shocked, or in wonderment – but never depressed. I never set out to express any specific concept – I let the stories do that for me. The characters know what they’re doing. I simply take notes and type them up.
GL: Your blog also showcases your skill as a painter. Do you exhibit your paintings widely? Please expand a little more about how you use your painting in your poetry and novels.
CE: I define myself through my art, much as Vicky does in Serpentine. It’s what I do and who I am, and always have been. I’ve only recently started exhibiting, and that’s been largely due to the internet, as before I started exploring online I had no idea what opportunities were available. I exhibit widely online, and have received commissions, mostly for portraits, as a result. I also exhibit in the ‘real’ world – annually in local exhibitions, and occasionally further afield. Last year I was a prize-winner in the Patchings Exhibition in Nottingham. I also recently joined the women’s art collective ‘Vivian Vile’, which exists to encourage women artists and help them find opportunities for development and promotion. Through them, I managed to exhibit a self-portrait in the ‘Cultivate’ gallery in London.
Art influences my writing to an enormous degree. Serpentine is about what it means to be an artist, but all my poems are reactions to art works, even if that is rarely explicit in the text. Writing is my way of expressing and interpreting art.
GL: You have been a member of Writers’ Dock for quite some time now. How has this shaped your writing? What is it that you, a published novelist and poet, find particularly stimulating about a writing site like Writers’ Dock? Are there any aspects of the site that you think might need a rethink and revamp? Do you have any suggestions?
CE: The thing I like about Writers’ Dock is its flexibility. It’s a huge site – there’s something for everybody. I tend to use the daily prompts and rarely pop outside that section to see what everyone else is up to, which might sound a bit restrictive, but virtually all my writing, whether short story, novel, or highly edited poem, starts off as a quickly penned response to a prompt (picked up from the site) in combination with a browse through images on an art site. I don’t think the Dock needs a re-vamp or re-think. It simply needs to retain its fabulous variety and the warm welcome it gives all members.
GL: What is it about the use of prompts that stimulates your writing? Is it the challenge of writing impromptu?
CE: My writing starts out in a stream of consciousness style, so give me a word or two and a few images and I’m away, not thinking too hard about what I’m writing, letting anything bubble up from the corners of my psyche, and committing it to paper in a random way – only worrying if it makes too little sense later on. The poems I write for the daily prompt section only take a few moments to jot down, and then perhaps five minutes or so to edit to make sure they hang together. I often don’t see the meaning in them until people have commented on them and given their own interpretations, at which point I can say, ‘Aha! So that’s what I meant!’ and edit them accordingly. My writing is essentially imagistic. Concrete images, not vague abstract waffle. Present the ‘thing’, and let the reader worry about how to interpret it. All is metaphor – except when it isn’t. I sometimes write absolutely literally, just for the fun of it, and this can cause confusion if people are looking for hidden meanings.
GL: Which novel or poetry collection or even a single poem are you most proud of? Please would you tell us why?
CE: My favourite novel is always the one I’ve just finished, so it’s undoubtedly Serpentine at the moment, though had you asked me last year I would have said Small Poisons. Even with poetry, it tends to be a poem within the last half dozen I’ve written, and as I write two or three poems a day, that’s going to be a very recent one.
GL: Has the recent rise of e-publishing had any impact on your writing and publishing? What are the pros and cons of e-publishing for you as a writer and poet?
CE: I’m a huge fan of e-publishing. There are pragmatic reasons: ebooks are cheaper, so people who aren’t quite sure whether to buy your book or not are more likely to take the chance if it’s not too expensive. Readers no longer have to worry about whether they have shelf space for yet another book. They can store hundreds. Thousands. All on one natty little reader. The figures speak for themselves. In just a few years, ebook sales have shot through the roof, while paperbacks are struggling. Of course paperbacks and hardbacks will never disappear – on a shelf next to where I’m typing this interview, I have a collection of large art books which would be absurd on an e-reader, and not even much use on a widescreen pc – and of course there are many other examples where a beautifully bound hard copy is simply a wonderful artefact, almost irrespective of its content – but for convenience of reading, the ebook is the thing, without a question. In the world of poetry, e-publishing has enabled wide distribution of many e-zines that would have failed in no time if the publishers had had to bear the expense of print for every copy, and this has given opportunities for many more poets to be read, which has got to be a good thing.
GL: How has your writing changed over the years and what plans do you have for your writing in the future?
CE: The more I write, the more honed and skilled my writing becomes. I look back at my early poems and wince – as no doubt in ten years’ time I’ll be looking back at my current output and wincing – but no matter. I love writing. I start every single day by writing a haiku, and have done so for a number of years. I can’t see that stopping. The act of writing a haiku sets me up for the rest of the day, as I no longer have a virtual ‘blank page’ staring accusingly up at me – I’ve already written, so anything more is a bonus. As far as novels are concerned, I have a rule that as soon as one novel is published, I start another, so I’m now at the stage where I’m on the verge of setting out on the adventure of a brand new novel. I have no idea what it’ll be about, but the likelihood is I’ll write a poem one of these days and want to expand it, and eventually it’ll become an entire novel. That’s what happened with Serpentine. In 2008, I visited the Serpentine Gallery in London and wrote a sonnet about it (which incidentally is being published by South Bank Poetry in July this year) and from that the ideas grew and grew until I had an entire novel. I may very well write a short poem from today’s daily prompts on the Dock, which will become my next novel. Who knows? We’ll see.
GL: Finally, who is your muse?
CE: Ah, now, that would be telling. I have a number of muses. None of them know they are fulfilling that function. I’d die of embarrassment if they ever found out. Shhh . . .
More about Catherine Edmunds’ writing can be found here: www.freewebs.com/catherineedmunds
Book Review: Shelter (Frances Greenslade)
I SEEM TO HAVE A THING FOR BOOKS WITH A WOMAN’S HEART that use orphan-like characters in poor and crumbling habitats. If there are small practical points of magic or folklore interwoven, then we’ll be friends for life. Shelter, by Frances Greenslade, can now be added to this list.
Shelter, set in British Colombia, Canada, is Irene’s story. Although she is absent for a good portion of the book, everything leads to her. Using the voice of her youngest daughter, Maggie, it is ultimately a simple story told through the confused eyes of a child; a story of life getting between members of a family, resulting in separation, and how it becomes an awful mystery to Maggie and her elder sister, Jenny, and the mist that lingers as they grow up until they have to know the truth.
Maggie is an ideal narrator. As the youngest, her sense of feeling wrapped in the family – and desperately wanting it to stay intact – is an interesting point from which to tell the story. She is fragile as a daughter but with a strong heart.
Maggie’s sister, Jenny, is her perfect accompaniment with a very likable and deeply drawn character full of optimism and girlishness. In fact, you get a feeling she is a character that the author knows particularly well. This is especially conveyed through the idea that Jenny would like to be a writer, as she has certainly been given the wit and charm that make her good at it. As she grows up, Jenny appears to move on with her life more than Maggie, having her own teenage girl problems to think about. Maggie is much more anchored on the separation of her family and the past, but only when Jenny hits a wall, and realises that she isn’t ready to stand alone after all, does she really follow Maggie into the hurt that has come from the large hole in the family.
Greenslade says that the inspiration for this story came from the early loss of her own mother and how that made her feel. She says that she was able to write about this subject in a more balanced way now she is older and a mother herself, and in the book you do feel a sense of compassion develop for Irene from Maggie. More than anything she wants to understand where she has gone and who she really is. As Maggie starts to realise that her mother is a whole person of her own, separate of her children, the mystery begins to unravel.
The Canadian landscape and its mythology features as quite a prominent part of this story and the descriptions were knowledgably written. A real flood of imagery comes through the pages, and it is very much this family’s perception of their surroundings and what the land means to them, how they use it, not just any old Canada that could be lived in by just anyone. This brings the reader closer to the personal ways of this little broken family.
A lot seems to happen in this book, and fast. A hundred pages go by, the writing laced with femininity, and we’ve been through so much. This doesn’t in any way feel rushed though. The sentence structures are beautiful and intricately delicate while stamping within the reader a complete faith in the author. You have time to look around and feel at home in the scenery; I like a book where I can get to know intimate details like what colour the tea towels are, the smell of the curtains and how the air feels in British Colombia on an autumn morning, as well as keeping the story at a riveting pace. I read this book really quickly, flying through the pages, intrigued by the mystery and then holding my breath for the perfect end, the only end there could be.
– Clare Brierley
Deities and Nectar of Wisdom: Avatars and Signatures
THIS TOPIC IS INSPIRED BY DISCUSSIONS IN THE FORUM about the use of pseudonyms by members of Writers’ Dock. The use of avatars is closely linked to this and it seems logical to examine this in some detail.
Descent in Human Form:
Avatar is a Sanskrit word rooted in the Hindu concept of ‘descent of a deity into the human world’. The deity is an enlightened being who, out of compassion, returns in flesh to save mankind. Thus, an avatar is an incarnation of the sacred. One of the main Hindu deities who returns in his avatar form is Vishnu. He has eight different avatars and Krishna is the most popular of his avatars. Krishna (the ‘blue-skinned one’) is often depicted in Hindu iconography as the archetypal infant, lover (the flute being his instrument of enchantment), and the wise prince (in the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharata).
It is interesting that another major computer term, ‘icon’, also derives from a fleshly representation of a divine being in Christian iconography.
From the Heavens to the Computer:
According to the Wiki:
The use of the term avatar for a computer representation of a user dates back to at least as far back as 1985, when it was used as the name for the player character in the Ultima computer games. The Ultima games started out in 1981, but it was in Ultima IV (1985), that the term ‘Avatar’ was introduced. To become the ‘Avatar’ was the goal of Ultima IV. The later games assumed that you were the Avatar and ‘Avatar’ was the player’s visual on-screen in-game persona. The on-screen representation could be customized in appearance. Later, the term ‘avatar’ was used by the designers of the pen and paper role-playing game, Shadowrun (1989), as well as in the online role-playing game, Habitat (1987).
Online Representation:
It seems this use of avatar takes on a more personal role when we use avatars to represent ourselves on a site like this. There are numerous forums dedicated to the creation of online avatars.
Nectar of Wisdom: Signatures:
Together with the avatars, we also use signature or what the Wiki calls signature block:
It is common practice for a signature block to consist of one or more lines containing some brief information on the author of the message . . . A quotation is often included (occasionally automatically generated by such tools as fortune or an ASCII picture). Strict rules of capitalization are not followed.
What inspires your choice of avatar and signature?
Do you have more than one avatar?
Do you change your avatar and signature from time to time? What factors influence this?
– Golden Langur
American Tales: On the Road, NYC
DEAN CODY CASSADY OFFERS A SECOND EXCERPT FROM HIS USA TRIP.
On the Greyhound, halfway to New York City, south on Interstate 95. Crystal blue sky over the Smalltownvilles of America: railroad complex hunkered flat, low, wide; billboard signs like jungle flowers high over telegraph poles and wires; roadside eateries like scattered stones, flat on the edge of the Freeway, lit up high by Denny’s lozenge signs on sticks.
Sign for Queens and Long Island: still an hour out of New York. Man, I need a coffee. The occasional smell of cinnamon ebbing down from the back of the bus: cake or drink? I can’t tell. Been coming down over me since we crossed the Massachusetts state line.
First sight of Manhattan: the city waiting there like a silver tiger, lying in the glass and metal grass, watching us over the river.
Entering the city through Harlem. Slowly being swallowed up by the place. Slipping down its throat.
Down 5th Avenue: even on a Sunday this place is struck truckpacked full with yellowcabs and people. I get a fleeting glimpse of ordinariness, of this being a place populated by people after all, instead of images or robots or . . . what?
Yet the city, legend in itself, almost has a life of its own. The Manhattan Monster. The silver tiger skulking. Something dark and gothic: in the realm of legend, lore and the fantasy of NYC. It’s an ordinary place. Yeh, right. Capital of the world.
Ian says, ‘Hey, look: Times Square,’ but I’m too busy writing.
Downtown, round Wall Street and Battery Park: brick-built warehouses and tenements; old colonial buildings scattered like gemstones; wave after wave, Uptown, of progressively taller, thinner, metallic, glassy stacks of shards, like the city is an animal after all.
This place feels weirdly natural though. Walking through Greenwich Village, there are all sorts of people, all mixed up: Spanish, Jewish, Chinese, Polish, Russians, Irish. NYC’s rebounding off the waters: in geography, geology and demographics.
The subway: tangled New York sub-city web. Subterranean maps like they’ve been washed in coffee, wrapped in ink, crumpled out, chewed. Mixed up sour mash of Downtown Uptown routes. Tubes, pipes, open ductways writhe beneath: like a mirror image of the rational surface place; like the subway’s New York through the looking glass; like it’s a kingdom of its own.
Washington Square, like a ‘Thinking Well’: wide, shallow concrete pit, a fountain not turned on; denizens sit like leaves blown up against the edges. I’m whispered at by a dealer ghosting past: ‘Smoke?’ Maybe the thinkers are Dopeheads; maybe they see things on the sunken hologram stage. Maybe the Thinking Well is the Non-Thinking Well.
Walking Downtown, feeling the noise, not so much loud, but constant: the dull hot throbbing, padded pulsing of yellowcabs, buses, horns, nauseous wave after wave of people. Into Wall Street, the stone and glass bank canyons act as a natural air conditioning unit. Cool soft air flows through the Downtown machine, slipping down deep channels where the sun doesn’t reach; shadows spread like spilt chilled white wine.
Ian finds a speakeasy, though he’s never been to NYC before. He sees a door like any other. We follow him, find ourselves in a subterranean place; old name-carved wooden tables.
Up the Empire State: it’s so high that your ears pop in the elevator. It’s not as wide up there on the balcony as when I watched Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle! The camera never lies!
The Chrysler Building shining silver toothtipped and easily the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen.
What happens in these buildings, squares, parks with their legend names? A city has its monuments and its ‘toothpaste’ (streets squirt like infill between the blocks). In NYC even the streets breathe like monuments do: 5th Avenue, Broadway, 42nd Street, Wall Street, Madison.
Walking on the back of the silver tiger, all its streets and monuments breathing, I didn’t realise Manhattan wasn’t perfectly flat (it’s a bucked beast: curved-up land, Downtown, Uptown, Crosstown).
East down 42nd Street, in amongst the tide of a Crosstown million people, swarming round us; us up against the flow; us in the flow; both at once. It’s like swimming through flesh.
On the morning TV: man got shot on the Lower East Side, where we’d been. This is a real place after all, not just the fantasy Metropolis I write it as. I don’t feel unsafe, but something at the back of my head warns me, quietly.
NYC was always a patchwork legend to me: a fusion of years of TV, film, newspaper images. It is a patchwork city: pastel purples, blues, greens on tourist gridmaps (blockpatches of Chelsea, Soho, Little Italy, Chinatown, Lower Manhattan, Central Park); threaded together at the edges by the East West Street stitches (‘Greenwich Village’, says one book, ‘traditionally starts at W14th Street with its southern boundary at W8th or 9th’, like it doesn’t really know for sure); people jammed together, a patchwork quilt, side by side in the multi-million stitch peopletide of Jewish, immigrant street beggars, Hispanic, Latino, European, Americano melge.
Bumping north on Interstate 95, two hours from Boston, I’m almost sad to see the back of New York City. I’ve walked on the back of the beast, down at the base of its spikes, along the breathing streets, over the silver tiger lying low between the glass grass reeds. I’m no longer afraid of the fantasy city legend told me I should be anxious of.
– Dean Cody Cassady
Book Review: Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)
THE JAPANESE NOVELIST, HARUKI MURAKAMI (1949 -) IS A LITERARY PHENOMENON. His novel, Norwegian Wood, a moving love story, sold four million copies in Japan. Both the Japanese original and English translation of his latest work, 1Q84 (a multi-lingual pun on Orwell), had queues snaking around bookshops in London and New York at midnight, drawing parallels with the Harry Potter phenomenon.
A bar and jazz-club owner before bursting onto the literary scene, Murakami weaves a kaleidoscope of literary and cultural references in all his books. He alludes to scientific theories of a multiverse or series of interlocking alternative universes, which makes one question ‘What is reality?’
Kafka on the Shore (published in 2002) tells the story of two main protagonists, in alternating chapters. The first protagonist is the eponymous hero, the fifteen-year old Kafka Tamura, as he styles himself. His father, a wealthy Tokyo sculptor, prophesises that Kafka is destined to murder him and sleep with his mother and sister. The added poignancy is that Kafka has been abandoned by his mother and sister at the age of three. The father destroys all photographs in the house and Kafka has no idea what they look like, if they are alive or where they live. Kafka has an emanation or shadow, ‘the boy called crow’ (‘Kafka’ means ‘crow’ in Czech), who urges Kafka for much of the book to be ‘the toughest fifteen-year-old in the world’.
The other, parallel hero is an old man, Nakata. As a boy evacuee during World War II, from Tokyo to the province of Shikoku, Nakata is brain damaged during a mushroom picking school trip in a nearby forest. The children and teacher see a mysterious flash of light in the sky and lose consciousness. The other children recover but Nakata remains in a coma and is sent back to Tokyo. On regaining consciousness Nakata says he became ‘a shadow’. This is a significant parallel with Kafka’s ‘the boy called crow’. Nakata loses his ability to read and write but finds he can communicate with cats. This leads to a job with the municipality as catcher of stray cats. There are delightful passages of Nakata’s conversations with his neighbourhood cats, which carry echoes of Soseki’s talkative cat protagonist, in I Am a Cat. Nakata befriends a Siamese called Mimi who has a proclivity for quoting Puccini operas.
The centre of the book, in so far as one can locate an epicentre at all, is a macabre and hallucinatory killing by – or perhaps not by – Nakata of ‘Johnnie Walker’, who may or may not be the whisky label and may or may not be Kafka’s father, to prevent a cat-killing orgy by ‘Johnnie Walker’, who has a penchant for tearing out the still pulsing hearts of the cats and using their souls to make flutes. Nakata goes on the run and is picked up by a long-distance lorry driver, Hoshino. Nakata reminds Hoshino of his own grandfather. The two travel to the provincial city of Takamatsu in Shikoku.
Meanwhile, to escape the Oedipal curse of his father, Kafka too embarks on a kind of pilgrimage – echoes of the haiku poet Matsuo Basho’s journey to the North – of his own. He travels from Tokyo, his home town to Takamatsu, Shikoku. Here, Kafka is welcomed in a private library by the librarian, Oshima, a transgender gay figure, and Miss Saeki, the manager, who may or may not be Kafka’s mother with whom Kafka eventually has a sexual relationship. The motif of the shadow is once again played out in the characters of Miss Saeki, who is a nebulous presence, and Oshima, who transcends gender classification. Oshima is Kafka’s intellectual and emotional mentor and it is in the forest where Oshima has a cottage that Kafka has an epiphanic reckoning.
Throughout the book there are numerous references to music. The interweaving of plots, encounters and people resembles a Bach fugue where ambiguities are frequently unresolved and thereby haunting. Kafka and Nakata never meet but their destines are inexplicably intertwined. We never find out if Miss Saeki is Kafka’s mother, whether Nakata or Kafka himself killed his father, what Osima’s true sex is, whether there really was a Johnnie Walker cat-killer.
What particularly appealed to me is that Komura Memorial Library, where Kafka works and lives briefly, is described as being dedicated to the works of tanka and haiku writers, immediately evoking literary allusions to Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki. There are some tantalising passages about the library being used by haiku poets.
Another unforgettable aspect of this novel is a parallel alternative reality in the forest where a colony of beings live in detachment from the world – a kind of zombie-Avalon. Kafka wanders into this hinter world and faces the prospect of being swallowed into its shadowy existence. He returns, determined to face the aftermath of his father’s murder.
There are no neat resolutions to the parallel strands of Kafka and Nakata’s stories. What one is left with is a mesmerising sense of atmosphere, as both plot and characters dissolve, a haunting sense of claustrophobia and limitless possibility and unresolved contradictions. Murakami is sympathetic to his characters: even quite wicked ones like Johnnie Walker have a kind of insane pathos about them.
– Golden Langur
American Tales: Boston, MA
DEAN CODY CASSADY OFFERS AN EXCERPT FROM A TRIP TO THE EAST COAST OF THE STATES.
I finally made it to the USA, after years of sucking up the place through childhood TV. Outside Boston, MA., in an old timber frame house, it’s like stepping into that TV screen! Lightblue and white, cream and brown, pastelgreen detached houses, all with verandas. Walking down Newtonville at night, it struck me about the space: no house is built up against any other when it doesn’t need to be; just how big must this whole country be?
It’s strange, this place we think we know so well but which is Aliensville, MA. I mean, we know its streets, the cars, the way the lights hang over the traffic, swaying in the tumblebreeze, the Stars and Stripes hanging like redblue flowers from posts, yet we haven’t ever seen it: it’s like we’ve slightly shifted into an alternate universe.
Strange that the locals in a Boston bar can’t understand my accent. I slow down, speak clearer, stop my slur into London English, as I tend to do when lazy; yet, I understand Ian from Georgia perfectly (and vice versa), even with his slow Southern twang: ‘Hey, what’s up, y’all?’ I thought I’d assimilated after all these years. Obviously not yet.
We rumble past the Red Sox stadium on the top deck of the double-decker train into Boston, jumping off at Back Bay, literally: waiting for the footbar to swing up, like we’d seen it do from outside, but it doesn’t. Four or five feet down onto the platform. A fat, angry female guard behind us shouts: ‘Don’t you ever do that again, you hear?’ We hit the exit steps, running.
A favourite phrase right now is ‘What’s going on here?’: no pubs in Boston, except down Union and Marshall; bar glasses three quarters of a full English pint; on every intersection there’s a four square pattern of pedestrian rights-of-way (‘Hey,’ shouted one Bostonian at a taxi, ‘don’t y’know pe-destrians have right of way, you idiot?’) The double-decker train. We sit up on the top deck: it begs us to. The guard doesn’t understand my accent: ‘Newtonville to Back Bay,’ I say, but I pronounce it English new (n’you), rather than American noo. We learn quick, from the ticket he’s punched, that if we want to go there and back, it’s a roundtrip rather than a return. We pay him $2 each, preparing to pay again from Back Bay because he hasn’t registered what we want.
We find a bar in the old town, just off the Italian quarter. Kind of like an English pub, it’s on the tourist route. Why do we tourists do this? We come three and a half thousand miles and find a place that serves English beer: so we order it, stick to it. It takes a few days to readjust. I hope, by the time we get to New York, we’ll have Americanised our former selves: we’ll be able to order some sandwich on rye with whatever filling, hold the mustard, double Columbian latte to go. Or something similar. I somehow doubt it though. It’s our Englishness, you understand.
Americanisation. I find myself trying to adjust my accent and vocabulary, just to fit in. Why? Am I that unsure of myself? We Englishmen talk to each other about restrooms not toilets; bucks not dollars; intersections not junctions or crossroads; bars not pubs. We’re in a kind of limbo here.
You see Americans in England waxing lyrical about the history of the place, but I’m in reverse here. Boston: birthplace of the Revolution. It’s difficult to see that history though. The American Grid street system has taken over; I can’t see history in the grid: the ‘Cheers’ bar, the Expressways to NY, the BigDig out near the airport.
Way back at architecture school there was a lecturer who’d absorbed America already by the time he’d got to us. He was passionate about the wide open space, painting it from every angle: huge empty skies above long wide streets; passive cars between isolated gas stations, bright-red Coca-Cola signs; thin telegraph poles, wires strung across roads; trafficlight blocks hung over them, insinuations of hot soft wind easing through the place, stuffing itself into the wide open space, ruffling the tattered-edged Stars and Stripes hung from posts in the middle of the road. The paleblue sky, the dusty-red Coca-Cola signs, the pastel yellowgreen landscape: like the whole painting had been washed in water specially stored in a jar since the Sixties.
Well, we walked into one of those paintings out in Newtonville, MA. Although not exactly a painting in itself, the intersection of Walnut and Washington, over the railroad bridge, made me flash-back; I could see how and why he’d absorbed it. God is in the details, we were taught (the wisdom of architect, Mies van der Rohe). Although this is only an intersection, a dull little everyday sight with no exceptional qualities to the everyday American, it’s an exceptional sight when not taken for granted.
This wide four-way intersection over the railroad bridge; four lanes of occasional passive cars; thin poles up between the blocks; the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes, limp but proud, tattered like a wartorn memory, hung from the post in the middle of the road. Under the widescreen panoramic sky, the painted scene soaked in ordinariness and branded at the subtle edges with dusty pale-red Coca-Cola signs, Mies van der Rohe’s God is in the details.
– Dean Cody Cassady
Book Review: Eureka (Edgar Allan Poe)
DAVID A. TROMAN REVIEWS A SCIENTIFIC ESSAY.
Synopsis:
The universe and all therein, from one singularity to another singularity, and the impossibility of infinity. What is God?
Comment:
It would be tempting to think that a scientific essay written – with the intention of its place in the literary canon being that of a prose poem – in 1848 as having little reference to the modern world. Think again. This book is very relevant to our modern world.
It is not, by any means, an easy read. The language is that of the time in which it was written, and the sentence construction/grammar is consequently somewhat alien to modern readers, but its content is so intriguing that it would be a pity to be put off by such considerations.
Within the slightly over 100 pages of this book you will find theories of the formation of the universe, black holes (non-luminous suns) and some ideas that may seem odd as well: for example, the discussion of seventeen planets comprising the solar system, at a time before Pluto had been discovered and then discounted as a planet; an explanation of the formation of the planets and their satellites, and even a theory of the existence and nature of God. All this from a man who was justifiably famous for his poetic and fictional writings may cause the reader to wonder how much of this was intended as fiction too. My answer would be, none of it. These are the thoughts of a very active and enquiring mind. Although Poe suffered much of his life with health and alcohol addiction problems, the arguments presented in this work are cogent and worthy of considered thought for both their content and their presentation.
One of the most interesting arguments put forward here is that infinity is an impossible concept because there always has to be an end to anything that exists: an intriguing point of view. Poe also makes reference to the works of many other scientists in this essay and shows a wide-ranging knowledge, and deep understanding, of the works of Kepler, Newton and many more. His arguments for the necessary existence of a repulsive force to counteract the attractive force of gravity are compelling, even now that this is a known fact.
As Sir Patrick Moore says in his foreword to this edition, ‘Read this essay carefully. There is much more to it than meets the eye.’
Concluding comment:
This is a book that rewards many fold the time and thought invested in reading it and, as with so many things in life, the greater the investment, the greater the rewards.
– David A. Troman
Language in Writing: Barbed Wire or Enchanting Portals?
EZRA POUND (1885 – 1972), THE AMERICAN POET AND CRITIC MAKES THIS OBSERVATION about the language used by fellow American poet, Walt Whitman:
You can learn more of nineteenth century America from Whitman than any other writers . . . The only way to enjoy Whitman thoroughly is to concentrate on his fundamental meaning. If you insist, however, on dissecting his language you will probably find that is wrong NOT because he broke all of what were considered in his day ‘the rules’ but because he is spasmodically conforming to this, that or the other; sporadically dragging in a bit of ‘regular’ metre, using a bit of literary language and putting his adjectives where, in the spoken tongue, they are not. His real writing occurs when he sets free of all this barbed wire.
Literature, both poetry and prose, says Pound, ‘is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree’. He goes on to argue that since literature/writing ‘does not exist in a vacuum’ the main social function and ability of a writer should be to use language to convey meaning.
Then we have Joyce, for whom the word/language is the reality. Frank Budgen, Joyce’s biographer and admirer, likened Joyce’s works - like Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses – to locked doors for which keys had to be made to fit. Here’s an extract from Finnegan’s Wake:
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs . . .
The opening line of this extract is linked to the end of the novel, which links the book to theories of the cyclical nature of the Universe and Time. This is suggested at in the word vicus, which is a pun on the name of Vico, the Neapolitan theorist of the cyclical nature of culture. The term commodius is a pun on the last Roman Emperor, Commodus.
This reference:
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s . . .
is, again, multi-layered in that it is the name of a Dublin pub as well as a pun on the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man.
Thus, Joyce created an inimitable use of language and married sound and meaning, which have been replicated by other Irish greats like Heaney, but Joyce’s unique mastery of language has never been equalled, let alone surpassed. The extract quoted here is a gripping example of his unique style and opens up the almost infinite possibilities of how language can be played around with and used beyond the literal meaning. He is the master of allusions, who turned the joke form of punning into a major literary tool.
Where in relation to Pound’s idea about meaning and language, and Joyce’s privileging of language over meaning, does your own use of language fit?
Do you agree with Pound’s critique that embellishment of language often obscures meaning?
Do you know or read any particular writer/poet whose use of language is inspirational for you?
How successful do you think your use of language is in getting across what you want to express?
– Golden Langur
What’s in a Name? The Importance of Titles
GOLDEN LANGUR CONSIDERS WHAT THE TITLE OF A WRITTEN PIECE LENDS TO THE WHOLE.
A. L. Kennedy, the judge of 2011 Bridport Short Story and Flash Fiction Prize, commented:
A number of writers seemed to have real difficulty finding a title that would help them . . .
She went on to say that the successful entries were the ones that work from ‘title to final’ in establishing an ‘unquestionable voice’.
Her stance is quite representative of the advice that editors routinely give writers. The title of a story or book is the first contact that a potential reader and editor make with your work. It represents your work to the world. If the title does not make the intended impact, it is unlikely that the reader or the editor will continue to read.
Some simple dos:
A title must be instantly eye-catching
Easy to remember
Appropriate to the content of the book/story
A random selection of published works shows a wide variety of titles. These range from a single word or name:
Saturday – Ian McEwan
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Shantaram – Gregory David Smith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Ulysses – James Joyce
to the enigmatic, and sometimes with metaphysical allusions:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner – Alan Sillitoe
to the seemingly mundane:
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
to dramatic, eye-catching titles:
Sexing The Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Talking To The Dead – Helen Dunmore
Catcher In The Rye – J. D. Salinger
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
For Whom The Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
(taken from John Donne’s poem:
‘. . . Ask not for whom the bell tolls –
It tolls for thee’)
to the bizarre:
The Short History Of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycha
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – Roddy Doyle
The Windup Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
to intriguing ones:
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
The Speckled People – Hugo Hamilton
An Equal Music – Vikram Seth
The Enigma Of Arrival – V. S. Naipaul
In the highly competitive world of writing and publishing, it is worthwhile giving due care and attention to picking titles that will imbue your work with an almost talismanic potency.
Does the title of a work affect your choice of reading?
How do you choose titles for your own work?
Do you know of any striking titles that you might like to share here?
– Golden Langur
In Santiago de Paula
R. L. TILLEY WALKS IN HEMINGWAY’S SHOES, IN CUBA.
In Santiago de Paula we walk up to Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s old home, now a museum. A leafy driveway leads to the place, which is surrounded by gardens. It is pretty much as he left it in 1960, when he left for Spain and then the USA. He lived here for twenty years. Juan, our Cuban host, tells us that the Hemingway family have struck a deal with the Cuban government to preserve the house and its effects as a perpetual museum to the writer. It is in the process of restoration as we visit and half of it is closed. Juan hails a man in overalls and asks him when the restoration will be completed. The man shrugs his shoulders. This is Cuba. Juan points to the porch.
‘He had a canon there,’ he tells us. ‘He would fire it when his friends would visit.’
We look in a window and see the bowed desk where Hemingway would write, and we see bookshelves, walls lined with books, and his Royal typewriter.
We go up the four-story tower where Mary Welsh Hemingway had intended he should write. He didn’t like it, however; he used it to store his fishing gear and to go up to look out across the sea, to determine the chances of a day’s fishing for marlin from the Pilar, his yacht, with his old friend the skipper of the Pilar, Gregorio Fuentes. The latter died, Juan tells us, in 2002, at the great age of a hundred and four.
Today there are Cuban women at the top of the tower. They want to change dollars for convertible pesos.
Connected to the main house are guest rooms and, walking past the swimming pool, where – Juan tells us – Ava Gardner once swam naked, the Pilar is preserved. One walks around a platform surrounding the boat. I see Hemingway’s chair for fishing. I see the cabin. I hear the sound of laughter and conversation between Hemingway and Gregorio Fuentes echoing ghostly from the deck as the Pilar cuts though the turquoise sea. Gone now. An instant. I am moved.
In the gardens of the house are the graves of Hemingway’s dogs. As we walk away from the house, we ask Juan how he knows Ava Gardner swam naked in the pool.
‘Hemingway didn’t tell it,’ Juan says. ‘ There were staff in the place. The help. They told it.’
Juan tells us how Hemingway would drink in the bars of Havana and bring the drunks and whores he met there back to the house, to the discomfort of his wives. He lived there first with Martha Gellhorn and later, Mary Welsh.
‘He had great energy,’ Juan tells us. ‘Ahhh . . . when he was a child, his mother would dress him in girl’s clothing, something he resented all his life. Maybe that is why he needed to project a macho image. This is just my opinion.’
We travel on to Cojimar, where we eat lunch at the La Terraza restaurant: another Hemingway haunt. Cojimar is where Gregorio Fuentes lived and worked and, until 2002, regaled tourists with anecdotes of the Hemingway years.
A sea breeze blows through an open window and we eat fish and drink beer.
I go outside and stand in bright sunlight and roll a cigarette. Three Cubans, one with a bicycle, stand in the wind conversing. They soon notice me. One comes over. He wants to sell me cigars. I decline.
We walk by the sea, passing the Spanish fortress – now occupied by the military – and we look at and photograph the bust of Hemingway, made of bronze from propellers donated by local fishermen. We stroll along the shore. Turkey buzzards circle over the sea, which glitters in strong sunlight, and Cuban children hold their hands out for pesos.
– R. L. Tilley
