Completion - Fiction & Reading into Writing Modules

Happy New Year to one and all. I'm still a bit dizzy from the festivities (though I was the nominated driver and drank nothing). We attended a formal dinner at a lovely French restaurant - Frere Jacques - along the river in Kingston upon Thames, only to discover it had gone a little down market for celebration time. Initially we moved the tat, party hats, poppers, streamers, cheap wind-up cars, bowl filled with tiny coloured balls and two multi-coloured blowpipes - yes, blowpipes! We felt certain that no one would take up this rather mental idea of wearing hats and parping at each other. We were all civilised adults (excepts for the kids, and even they'd dressed up).

So it was, by 10pm December 31st, we realised we'd been sat in the worst of all places. Two factions had been established between the right and left sides of the restaurant, and we were smack bang in the middle, taking flack from both sides. The coloured balls were tightly wound spitballs, meant for use in the blowpipes! We needed cover and we needed vengeance for being pelted on the heads.

When those dining outside felt the need to come to the doorway and join in, I ducked under the table and began retaliatory fire (you can fire up to four spitballs and once from those things, you know). I quickly discovered that from my mostly-safe vantage point on the floor, a pillar at my back and a line of tables and chairs to protect my front I took advantage of rebound shots - being able to judge the right point at which to fire a volley and ricochet it off the ceiling.

Similarly amusing then was to fire on the waiters and waitresses who had served up the most exquisite Breast of Pheasant with grilled Portobello Mushroom, Red Onion compote honey-roasted Parsnips and Rosemary Jus, and a divine Rack of Lamb: Roti Dijonnaise,Gratin Dauophinois & sautéed Salsifi with Red Wine Jus (naturally I had to finish Laura's meal off), and who were still stuck with taking orders for drinks and having to dart back and forth across the battlefield.

My knees were scuffed up something rotten and I've never spent so much time scrabbling around on a restaurant floor fighting an 8 year-old child for control of spitballs!

Anyhoo, on with the writing:

I have just packaged and posted my two module assignments and am now looking ahead to the Professional Development module (still much to do, and much to be done while away in New Zealand - side note: you can catch up with our antics over at http://discovernewzealand.blogspot.com where I will be blogging about our travels).

So, in the meantime, you can catch up on what I've been doing for the past four months over on my website's NAW page, or you may wish to peruse the module's pdfs:

Reading into Writing
You can now read the full short story of Morgan le Fay (that I have been badgering on about for weeks).

• Morgan le Fay and the Green Knight - Creative Response.pdf
  - A 3,000 word creative response to the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight text - the machinations of Morgana.
  
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Account of Literary Qualities.pdf
  - Assessing the literary qualities of the Sir Gawain text and how I've interpreted and utilised them in my response.
  
• Reading into Writing - 4 Reviews.pdf
  - Four reviews. Three of the four books we read on the course and one as chosen by myself.

Fiction
And included here is what was originally the opening to an urban-fantasy novel, and has now become a short literary story.

• Pride and Pretence.pdf
  - A 6,000 word short story on love, licentiousness and loss in the 1950s.
  
• Pride and Pretence - Commentary.pdf
  - A commentary on my short story, considering its conception, creation, placement, weaknesses and themes.
  

Morgan le Fay and the Green Knight

I have received favourable feedback from my tutor regarding my creative response to the romantic text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:

I do think this has worked out exactly along the lines you described to me. While the first paragraph, perhaps in taking off, read to me like the story was geering up to pour in all the fantasy clichés (flaxen hair, eddies of the stream, thundering torrent, rugged slope, tinkling bells), it then strikes out on its own and becomes quite irresistible. Really enjoyed it and found the take on the romance imaginative, enthusiastically realized, and coherent in terms of both the ‘logic’ of the narrative and the consistency of your writing style. You are convincing me of the approach you’re taking.

I guess then, it is time to revisit the textual elements I have used but not yet covered...

You will remember from my blogs posts in November, Part 1 and Part 2, how I broke down my decision making regarding descriptions, choice of subject matter and the use (or perception of use) of magic. You also know that I chose to base my creative response on Morgan le Fay - arch nemesis of Camelot - and opted, as I discuss in my analysis document of the piece (a requirement of the course), to consider my subject matter thusly:

The romance of Gawain exists as a quest, but through my response I am subverting the genre. Bertilack is a Lord and therefore superior to other men, but as Morgana proves, he isn’t superior to his environment. Therefore my response falls in the mode of high mimetic. Northrop Frye states that “romance divides into two main forms: a secular form dealing with chivalry and knight-errantry, and a religious form devoted to legends of saints.[1]” I see the Gawain romance as treading both paths. Its focus is on knight-errantry but at its heart is a call of faith. While my response covers similar ground, much of the conflict regards the faith argument and I use it not only to highlight Morgana’s standpoint and the theme of the piece, but to create symmetry between the original text and my response, and between Gawain and Bertilack [2].

---

[1] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism p33-4 ISBN 0-691-01298-9

[2] “…he recited his Paternoster and Ave Maria and Creed with a promise to thenceforth serve none other than God.” – Richard Howse, Morgan le Fay and the Green Knight

Opening

The original opening isn't much different from the one I have written. Though, thanks to the workshop session, several things had to change. And here is where the workshops are essential in spotting those elements that will trip up the reader (as Solvejg once found with Tethered Light and our assumptions of Binky). First and foremost were the characters - the girl and the Green Knight. One wasn't properly depicted as a child and later when I talked about her being an infant, my readers struggled with the concept change (how old is she?). Next was the headlessness of the Green Knight: if he's headless, why isn't this put to the front of his description (it would be the first thing the girl notices)? And to stop the reader worrying... where is the head?

She waitied; the child, sitting naked but for the green girdle at her waist and the shroud of flaxen hair covering her shoulders and chest. High up in the linden tree she dangled her legs playfully amongst the heart-shaped leaves, as if she were dabbling her feet in the eddies of the stream that frothed and foamed far below the boughs. Over that thundering torrent, which twisted down the rugged slope, she heard the tinkling of bells from beyond the glade. A visitor, they intoned through the jutting crags and black jagged outcroppings that led into the valley. That was long before she saw him at the knarled rocks. Long before he’d guided the horse down the ravine.

He arrived headless; the Green Knight, built the size of a half-giant. Despite the mutilation he carried himself with both poise and grace, swaying with the rhythm of the horse’s lollop. He brushed a coat of snow from his charger’s green mane with the looped reins and nudged his golden spurs into its flanks.

The girl watched, fascinated, and the knight shook white clumps from his green shoulders and the bloody stump of his decapitation, which spat flecks of crimson upon his tunic and mantle as he rode.

But where was his head?

She fingered the leaves apart to better see him from bleeding-shank to unshod feet – every inch of him glorious, every stitch, green – and she grinned when she spied his flowing tresses. The knight was carrying his head beneath one arm, as a soldier might carry a stock of weapons, his piercing stare surveying the burial mound that rose up beyond the tree.

Knowing your Audience

In a submission, the opening is everything. Now the reader is intrigued by both the naked girl and the headless knight. For those who know the Gawain text, it will be just the girl, but then, they will understand the meaning of the green girdle. I was distinctly aware as I wrote the piece that it plays to two separate audiences in different ways, and I had to make sure that as the piece played out, those who don't know the Gawain text required as much backstory to the situation as possible - enough for them to let go of any concerns that there is a headless knight wandering around and, of course, a naked (and rather fearless) girl:

‘Was I not right,’ she said, ‘when I told you the game couldn’t be refused? That Camelot cannot resist a challenge to its valour? Come, for there is a tale to tell and I am an ear to hear it.’

‘Well, my lady,’ he said when he’d calmed his consternation, his throat belching and spitting, ‘I arrived at Camelot during the festivities of their Christmas feast, and there, as you instructed, I called them to action, setting down both the game of exchanging blows and the rules by which the players would abide. King Arthur was to strike at me, and I, so saying at your request, stated that he was to seek out the Green Chapel in one year and one day’s time, where he would receive a stroke in return.’

Point of View

This has been a large stumbling block for me up until this year. Not only would I sweep back and forth between the points of view of different characters, but I would switch povs mid-paragraph (sometimes mid-sentence), and then there were the times where I would accidentally change the subject of a sentence or paragraph, leaving the reader desperately confused about who meant what to whose which and why?

Confused?

With this piece, I believe I have solved these errors and specifically chosen to use multiple points of view to relate as much of both sides of the argument as I can - third person omniscient. In a short stories, point of view changes are not recommended because the reader needs to identify with a character quickly and empathise with them - otherwise in the majority of cases the writer is wasting their time because there are no hooks for the reader's interest to hang on. With my use of third person omniscent I am specifically choosing who the reader learns from and witnesses the scene, not as a means of identification, but so as to best understand at any given time, the important aspects of the story and what it means to each of the characters.

We start off with the girl, watching the Green Knight's arrival. We stay with her in a semi-distanced state, never once entering her head, but regarding what she does , what she observes and the questions she is wondering about. Then, towards the last half of page 2, we switch into the Green Knight's pov:

He hesitated. His horse drew back towards the river’s roar and both regarded the girl as if seeing her for the first time. She was barely tall enough to reach up to the horse’s flank, too fragile to bring harm to any but the tiniest of rodents, and yet surprise and suspicion furrowed the knight’s brow. This was no mere child.

And we stay with the Green Knight, because it is always more interesting for the reader to be on the back foot. The Green Knight doesn't fully understand the situation and by identifying with him the reader can be a part of his investigation and anxiety about what is unfolding. Along with him we observe the child:

The girl listened with her head cocked to one side and she made a steeple of her hands as if she might venture into prayer, but instead she let her fingers play and fidget... and the girl balled up her fists and shook from head to foot... The girl swore under her breath and stamped her feet and the golden carpet scrunched and crinkled; a thousand yellow leaves perishing to black... The girl halted, her hands at her sides, not balled but playfully stroking thumbs across fingers as if she were enjoying the texture of an oily substance. She spoke then with a malevolence that he’d have felt even in full armour for it pricked at his hackles.

Whereas we have the knight's concerns, questions and feelings:

The Green Knight turned his eyes down to the leaves and bowed his headless torso to hide his shock at her bloodlust. Morgan le Fay had said nothing of her intentions when they’d made their compact. She’d spoken only of the game... He had survived Gawain’s beheading blow, just as le Fay had said he would; snakes could do him no harm, though her wrath may yet... The knight watched, in awe that the girl’s desire yielded fruit from a fruitless tree... He saw no sign in that angelic face that she was deceiving him and yet he pondered her words about his faith and his God. Where had either been when he’d needed them in his quarrel against the Bastard Lords? Where had either been when those lords had intended to usurp his lands?

The Green Knight is our protagonist, we need to identify with him most of all (whether or not it will end well).

I will be posting my entry for the module over on my website as soon as it is ready for submission.

Sharing Reviews on Sea Room

As with the other week's shared review session of Sarah Water's The Night Watch, this week, in our last book group session for the NAW (National Academy of Writing) Reading into Writing module, we brought in our reviews of the last text - Adam Nicolson's Sea Room. We all kept in mind the points covered by our tutors (check the link above for hints on writing a balanced and fair review), and here is mine:

Nicolson’s love for the Shiant Islands is clear from the outset of Sea Room’s narrative. He is as keen and determined to relate the kingdom of the islands and his experiences as it appears he was to have his own boat built so as to sail there alone. So passionate is he about this very personal world that the book is brimming with deeply engaging anecdotes and colourful descriptions, stretching back through time to give the reader as much of a panoramic view as they might get stood at the head of the na h-Eileanan Mora.

Visceral images are plucked from the features of the land and the inhabitants as if, at times, Nicolson were writing a literary novel intent on unearthing the great mystery of the Shiants. But he’s not, and here the reader needs to be on guard. Sea Room is ostensibly a meshing of travel and history-cum-biography. The poetry of his writing manages time and again to fish ever more words from the briny depths to describe the land, the sea and all that is in between, while never once giving the reader a sense of repetition. The profundity with which historical, ornithological and archaeological facts are investigated and excavated are both staggering and exhausting.

Sea Room is at its best when related to Nicolson’s life, his observations, and his endeavours to reach and live on the islands. The building of Freyja, the dangers of the Sound of Shiant and the Blue Men, and the arrival at the Shiants themselves are all standout moments, expertly interspersed among discussions of ownership and introductions to bird migrations. Alas these are all to be found in the first half of the book. What were originally Sea Room’s strengths get caught in a riptide that thrusts the reader out among the swelling information so that the book and the islands begin to feel ever more cramped. At the half-way mark Sea Room drowns readers (who only have a casual interest) in heavily-excavated archaeological evidence and endless discussions on the presence, or lack thereof, of seabirds.

Nicolson revives reader interest towards the last third of the book, again picking up his warming writing once more. However, one gets the sense that the book’s intent lies as much in wanting to disperse Nicolson’s detractors – who would have him removed as owner and the land given over to the RSPB – as it does in presenting a grand understanding of island life.

It's a very differnt review from my last one, opting rather than using the author's own words against himself (as I did with Sarah Waters) but covering more of the subject matter. I made a clear attempt to use metaphors that relate to the text to give a singular feel to the whole thing and in this case my view is more balanced than the last (I suppose it helps that I liked it more).

Sharing Reviews on The Night Watch

On Wednesday in our last Reading into Writing seminar, we shared our initial reviews about Sarah Waters's The Night Watch, as an exercise to show that there are an infinite number of ways to review something, and to give us immediate feedback on what we have done, so as to advise on avoiding certain pitfalls. Especially in our case, where we only had 400 words in which to construct our reviews, word-use is essential and meaning is everything.

And, as the eight of us proved, there are so many ways in which to write a review, from the reviewer who discusses how the book affected them, to the reviewer interested in the timeliness of the work; reviewing the contents and the meaning; reviewing the structure and conceit, reviewing a personal response; a review shaped by the characterisation. Of course there's always the hatchet job. These can all be used in a much longer evaluation, but we didn't have that luxury.

My review of Sarah Waters's The Night Watch
- this version unedited (after in class comments)

“… people in the 1940s had become heartily sick of bomb stories…”[1] says Sarah Waters of her lesbians in the blitz showcase The Night Watch, touching upon the very problem that 1) she came up against in her writing, and 2) ultimately dispirits the reader.

Award-winning author of Tipping the Velvet and Affinity, Waters has cultivated a niche for intelligent, homosexually-charged fiction and escaped what might be considered a limiting genre: period lesbianism. This makes The Night Watch all the more conspicuous in its failure to capture the romping nature of her previous work. Not because she is mining the same sexual framework but because she has backed herself into a corner with her approach.

“It was the period which followed the war which really interested me, that bleak, shabby, exhausted time of social change and moral readjustment.”[1] says Waters; a feeling that, on the page, translates too well. The reader feels the ebb of hopelessness – let it not be said that Waters cannot elicit emotion with her fiction – in the plodding pace and tone, but ultimately feels detached. The characters are lost in every sense – physically, psychologically, spiritually – tripping over a morose reverie that makes the reader pray for the 1950s. It is interesting, therefore, when Waters realises that the story is going nowhere and starts part two three years earlier.

This is where the story falls apart. The book, constructed and published in reverse order, does, through Waters’s skill alone, execute nice revelations and reader epiphanies. But these aren’t enough to carry the book. Its nature, lacking any tension outside of the microcosm of any one scene, drags the reader to the final page and leaves them grasping at where the plot went with a bitter and unsatisfying taste of hindsight.

Not least is the hindsight more obvious than with the character of Kay, who, through the blurb, website descriptions, and the book’s opening, is presented as the main protagonist in this ensemble cast. It is her actions around which much of the plot revolves and she who the reader suffers the most sympathy for when all is said and done. But, for the majority of the first third she is little more than a phantom, and is forgotten about.

“Fundamentally a novel about disappointment and loss and betrayal.”[2] says Waters, who perfectly conveys the motivations and decisions of her characters, but who should have, rather than rehash the direction of the book when she herself lost interest, started from scratch

---

[1] http://www.sarahwaters.com/ints.htm - Guardian Article, Sarah Waters – January 2006

[2] http://www.afterellen.com/Print/2006/4/waters.html - AfterEllen.com, Malinda Lo – April 6, 2006.

I think, if any of them were hatchet jobs, mine came closest. But at least the class like that mine was an immanent critique and I was praised by the tutors for taking the interesting slant of using Sarah Waters's own quotes and using them against her.

Points of note

Our tutors had the following to say on not only reviews themselves, but on the transcripts of our discussions on the books we had covered previously:

The sheer variety of responses on Moodle has been an eye-opener that has made me re-evaluate the books, and I hope some of that can be captured in your reviews. Antithetical. Expanding ideas, but achieving some kind of unity as a piece of writing. There’s a drive to unify a response, when actually the dispersed remarks on Moodle are more interesting – the melding of the two is the difficulty. All too often a review can be a conduit for the self-importance of the reviewer. The challenge is to say what we really think without being pompous. There is no one way, no template. There is a sense of a horizon of expectation, but should one give in to it?

Of the reviewer or the book the book should be the most important.

Arrogance comes often from insecurity. We can resist it without failing to be an ‘authority’. It’s a difficult trick to pull off, but we have to try. The US tradition of deconstruction – find a fissure, an impasse, and look at how a text unravels, and the position of the critic too is undermined – and yet, at the same time deconstructionists reach neat conclusions! One needs to find a humility to be true but authoritative.

What to avoid in a review

• Ensure the writing doesn't drive the reviewer's thought - don't get caught up in flowery prose, or your own literary flow; avoid pure value judgements and puffery.
  
• Don't make wild references - the reader needs to feel intelligent, and they won't if they don't understand metaphors / allusions / comparisons. Always ask if the reader will understand. This also strikes to avoiding distracting the reader from imagining the book itself.
• The review requires at least one encapsulating paragraph to make the reviewers standpoint clear.
• Try to stay focused, don't start ponderously, and don't go off on a tangent to fulfill some personal need / interest.
• A good review will give a sense of the novel without giving away important moments or the ending.
• Word use is important. A growing list, such as "Rounded" and "Nice" are more commonly thought of as cliché. The TLS publish lists of words and phrases that are out of fashion.
• Second to Word clichés, is Journalistic clichés.
  
• Avoid the hatchet job, there is always a middle ground, where negative attitudes can be express without disrespect.
• Some reviewers carry themselves as much a part of the review and are read specifically for their voice - regardless of what they are reviewing and yet not at the expense of the work - and if you can turn a nice phrase and develop a distinctive voice then reviewing might be ideal.

Sebald - Chapter Analysis - Part Two

My thanks to Geoff for this in-depth analysis of what Sebald is doing within chapter five:

In section five we can see why Sebald considered this work fiction. On page 104 he comes out of a dream and into a world where he half remembers a documentary on Roger Casement. What follows may appear to be a disingenuous reconstruction of something half remembered used as a tool to allow Sebald to bring Conrad and Casement into the narrative. There follows an extensive 'remembered', exact quotation from Conrad beginning 'I've seen him start off…' which could be taken at face value but is surely too precise. Sebald takes a device (a 'few' lines remembered) and stretches it's credibility for a reason. It sets the scene.

This sleight of hand eases the reader into Sebald's intention, to talk about Conrad and Casement in a way that reflects on the nature of history and reality. We're not given a reason for the decision to retell the stories but given the stimulus. In approaching Conrad, Sebald marshals his research and presents us with something approaching 'faction' - facts dramatised. At the top of 105 he imagines how Conrad would have felt. Sebald complements this with a direct intervention by Conrad - an extract from his letters, which prepares us for another 'reimagining' - leaving the family home in the Ukraine. Sebald imagines the time where Grandmother behaves 'stoically', Mama is 'inconsolable' and a cousin 'indicates horror'. What follows, Conrad's life story, for another half page is a mini historical re-enactment/historical fiction.

The historical reconstruction moves through Conrad's life with his father and at one point (page 108) becomes almost lyrical - Apollo burns his manuscripts and a 'weightless flake of soot ash like a scrap of black silk would drift through the room'. As his father dies Conrad has 'fear in his heart'. Given Sebald's dislike of sentimentality and cliché there seems at this point to be a degree of contradiction inherent in the retelling. Again on 109 Sebald makes no pretence of attempting objectivity, instead he speculates as to whether or not the funeral prompted Conrad to think of becoming a 'sea captain'.

Sebald manipulates the reader's response at this point. He has prepared Conrad to be launched on the world but delays that first with a diversionary picture (Mount Pele) and then with a digression into the life of Dona Rita who may or may not be Paula Horvath. It's as if at this point Sebald wants us to see that he is holding together both what is real (the photograph) and what is uncertain (the question of Rita's identity).

Again Sebald moves Conrad's life along but throws in an attempted 'suicide' to hold our attention before reminding us again of the overall physically journey of the book by returning us with Conrad to Lowestoft and the East Anglian coast.

As if to mark this moment of restatement on Page 114 we see again one of the book's constant preoccupations, Sebald's concern to look at the way in which life and expectations, reality and imagination are layered. Using the local papers from the time Sebald shows how Conrad's arrival in England was insignificant. Sebald shows how the world turned without him, how time changes perspectives.

Returning to Conrad's life Sebald can't resist the storyteller's urge to enliven a tale - he uses Conrad's journey home to entertain us with the story of the deaf mute with a map of the small country world in his head. In some ways this light, almost magical interlude, works to reassure the reader and leave him unprepared for Sebald's real intention in this section - to reveal man's darkness, inhumanity and depravity. What follows is a terrible indictment of the Belgian rule and exploitation, grimly mocked by Sebald on 122 where he depicts their Belgian descendants as a population blighted by ' a 'strikingly stunted growth'. He damns Belgium as a country where in a day he encountered 'more hunchbacks and lunatics than normally in a whole year'. It's as if he wants the race to be poisoned by their past. He wants us to see their spiritual sickness made physical.

At this point, Sebald wanders off into a Belgian interlude and we visit Waterloo. Here he slyly introduces us to mummers re-enacting the war. That is what Sebald had been doing in his prose. Remaking the past. To make sure we register the point he says simply, 'This then, I thought as I looked about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective.' To make sure we dwell upon the heart of the book Sebald asks 'Are we standing on a mountain of death. Is that our ultimate vantage point?'

(Interestingly Sebald fails to connect with the battle until in his minds eye he sees 'a cannonball smash through a row of poplars'. It's not damage to people that moves him but damage to nature (126) an emotion echoed in the later storm section.

Sebald finally introduces Casement after conjuring up the picture of a contented Belgian pensioner cutting up meat. This is how people are who have forgotten the 'utterly merciless exploitation of the blacks'. Casement is someone who cannot forget. In Sebald's hands Casement becomes a tragic hero. Sebald presents Casement's lone and ineffective fight to change conditions in Africa. Equally we see in this fight the seeds of Casement's own destruction. It's inevitable that Casement, exposed and sensitised by his experience should respond so strongly to the plight of Ireland. Casement's story is not romanticised - that history is factual, objective, complemented by pictures of the man and his writing as if to say, this was real.

Only in the ending does Sebald become subjective - he draws a conclusion - Casement's own isolation as a homosexual sensitised him to the oppression of others. By being this overt Sebald demands a response from the reader. After all the facts he turns to them and asks them to make choices. Responding to history, approaching reality, is all about making choices.

Sebald - Chapter Analysis - Part One

Breaking down a Chapter of Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, paragraph by paragraph - this serves to show the subject of the paragraph and the sweeping contents, the nature by which Sebald expertly (or in some cases, inexpertly) crosses from one time or topic to another. In so producing this text it should be possible for you the reader to work out 1) how Psycho-geography is manifested (the change between Sebald and Conrad or Casement as subject in the text), and 2) how relatively easy it is to jump topics simply by shoe-horning in one topic on top of another (though you still need to read the chapter itself to really appreciate it)

Observations of the text:

• Paragraphs run on for pages, covering multiple topics
• Quotations exist within the main paragraphs. Not delineated by quotes, or on separate line – so that the reader feels almost as if Sebald is still speaking (which, of course, he is – through his research). At some points backtracking is required to ensure the reader knows who is currently speaking: Sebald or one of his topics
• October and April (especially) play a big role in the text – major events occur during these months – Autumn and Spring – Death and resurrection
• When references to Konrad are changed to Korzeniowski I became lost as to who he was (no longer the writer to be, but someone else). Lost in the text I became confused as to who he was and why any of what I was reading had any relevance. There were hints of Heart of Darkness, and I was sure that he was Joseph Conrad, but I couldn’t relate it midtext
• Opens and ends with Casement, but the majority is about Conrad – Casement becomes a subnote – Sebald is more interested in Congolese holocaust, and Casement’s his way in to that
• Description which accompanies Sebald’s sleep is the key to other moments of colour in the rest of the chapter – possibly true, but not really accurate.
• Sebald forgoes quotations because he wants everything to serve his purpose – theme and synchronicity. Reality and quoting wouldn’t allow this. So, by avoiding quotes he can put words in the mouths of the historical figures. This doesn’t distract from the facts – because much of what is covered (if not all) really did happen and that’s what’s important. Glossing up the text with these semi-fictitious anecdotes allows Sebald to avoid didactics while making clear the horror of the human race. When he fills in Conrad, he is doing what thousands of writers have down to people like Achilles – mythologizing. The big facts and the character remain the same.
• Pictures are sometimes irrelevant but like the made up anecdotes these fictional descriptions help provide hooks for the reader to keep them going

Paragraph 1

Sebald in Southwold

• BBC documentary about Casement (executed in 1916 for treason)
• Sebald sleeps through it and wakes only to remember its opening (Casement met Joseph Conrad in the Congo)

Conrad’s account of Casement
Sebald to reconstruct the documentary himself

Paragraph 2

Jozef Teodor Konrad and his parents (the Korzeniowskas) - 1861

• Russian revolt; Polish National Committee meetings (mid October)
• Konrad observes and initiated (end of October); his father (Apollo) arrested
• Military tribunal exiles Apollo to Vologda
• Apollo describes (in letter of 1863) Vologda – green winter (death)

Paragraph 3

Konrad and his parents

• Konrad’s mother’s (Evelina) tuberculosis worsens in Vologda
• Authorities allow Evelina and Konrad a longer stay in Ukraine before going to Vologda
• Evelina on the day of departure (more dead than alive), neighbours looking on
• *Slips into present tense with this paragraph: I didn’t realise until: “Not a single word is spoken”*
• Description of the carriage, and of Konrad inside; cousin’s finger tips (indicate horror)
• The governess, the leaving, district police, the commandant

Paragraph 4

Konrad and his parents

• *Back to past tense*
• (Early April 1865) Evelina dies; Apollo, a writer (as Konrad will become), can’t work – trying to translate Victor Hugo
• 1867 (days before Christmas) Apollo released from exile – poor and ill
• Travel to Lemberg, short stay, then Cracow – grief stricken for wasted years
• Konrad’s patriotic play, and Apollo having burnt all his own manuscripts
• Description of burning – mention of ash like black silk
• Apollo’s death – waning away, witnessed by Konrad (reading adventure books)

Paragraph 5

Konrad

• Apollo’s funeral – silent cortege lead by Konrad (aged 11)
• Observation of the place and weather, and suggestion that Konrad decides to become a sea captain
• Three years later, Konrad expresses his wish to his uncle (Tadeusz)
• Tadeusz tries several things to stop Konrad
• 14^th October 1874 – Konrad (not yet 17) leaves Cracow by train to Marseilles (not to return for 16 years)

Paragraph 6

Konrad

• 1875 – he crosses the Atlantic (barque: Mont Blanc) and travels
• Narrowly avoids the eruption of Mount Pelee
• Description of cargo and Konrad in Marseilles (salon of Mme Delestrang)
• Description of Mme Delestrang’s husband (a banker) and his shady involvements
• Konrad (here forth referred to as Korzeniowski) involved with a mysterious lady
• Lady (lacking true identiy in history texts), called Rita (perhaps also Paula) – mistress of Don Carlos (to be instated on Spanish throne)
• Nov 1877 – Don Carlos returns to Vienna with his lady – suspicion of them being same person (Rita vanished when Baroness arrives)
• Konrad avails himself upon the lady and shoots himself (Feb 1877) either attempted suicide or in a duel
• Some mention of Operas and what Konrad could have written but…
• 24^th April 1878: Konrad leaves for Constantinople
• 18^th June 1878: arrives in Lowestoft (England)

Paragraph 7

Konrad

• Konrad’s time in Lowestoft – unfamiliar place, people and language (but which he will learn to write with)
• Konrad learns from the local papers
• List of news items from the time (Wigan mine explosion; Mohammedan uprising in Rumelia; suppression of kafir unrest in South Africa; education of fair sex suggestion; inspection of Indian troops; Whitby housemaid burns herself alive (accidentally); Largo Bay leaves with Scottish emigrants; lady suffers a stroke when her son returns home; Queen of Spain grows weak; Slaving coolies work on fortifying Hong Kong; highway robberies in Bosnia – travelling at a standstill
  

Paragraph 8

Konrad

• Feb 1890 – Konrad returns to aunt and uncle
• Description of arriving and boy (mute) – lots of deaths, boy survived, impeccable sense of direction
• Description of the place and weatheriness

Paragraph 9

Konrad

• Before 1890 (and going home) Konrad signs up for the Congo trip
• He writes a letter to his aunt; description of unchanging coast
• The travelling; then description of the Congo

Colonialism and The Opening of the Congo

• King Leopold’s reach for the Congo
• Leopold becomes (1885) ruler of the Congo; ruthless and greedy trade/slavery begins
• Disease and death for the labourers (Congolese slaves) 5,000,000 deaths in 10 years, but increase in share prices

Paragraph 10

Konrad

• Konrad’s arrival and travelling across land
• Description of Matadi
• Description of slave labour (as per Marlow from Heart of Darkness)
• Death, continued work, massive workloads
• Konrad’s further journey – despicable Harou (companion)
• Konrad’s guilt, and on the Roi des Belges
• Konrad’s sickness (body and spirit), and writing
• Konrad leaves the Congo, reaches Ostend (same port used by Kafka’s uncle, Loewy, a few days later)
• Loewy and Panama, then at Matadi, then awarded Gold Medal by Leopold
• Konrad arrives in Belgium – sees the Congolese secret in everybody

Sebald’s recollection

• *No paragraph change – narrator interjection*
• Dec 1964 – Sebald in Brussels
• Billiard player
• Hotel Bois de la Cambre and its African trophies
• Ugliness of the Lion Monument on site of the Battle of Waterloo
• Emptiness of Waterloo, then Napoleonic costumed parade
• Waterloo Panorama – observations of the fields and the fake replication
• Waterloo mural – falsification of perspective
• Meditation on truth of battle and the mountain of death
• At Brighton – told of two copses of trees (Wellington and three-cornered hat)
• Listens to recount of battle in Flemish (only understand minute bits)

Waterloo survivor’s retelling

• Observation of the field, injuries, etc

Sebald

• In Waterloo, watched a hunched pensioner (she would have been born at the time the Congo railway was completed)

Paragraph 11

Casement

• Awareness of Casement to Congo problem in 1903
• Casement’s report against the horrors and inhumanity of the Congo
• Leopold invites Casement to Brussels to placate him
• Casement praised for work but nothing done
• Casement transferred to South America
• Casement exposes similar horrors in Peru, Columbia and Brazil
• Casement’s new report pisses off London
• Casement next brings up the “Irish problem”
• Description of the Irish problem
• Casement raises up the Irish against the British
• Casement tries and fails to rally Germany to help
• Casement arrested, advises the uprising of his failure but they go ahead
• Uprising fails and Casement tried (Black Diary brought up – homosexual slur used against him)
• Plausibility of Black Diary called into question

Sebald’s observation

• 1994 – Diaries proved to be in Casement’s hand
• Sebald suggests Casement’s homosexuality lent him sensitivity to all this horror

Casement

• Casement tried, found guilty and hanged

Sebald’s observation

• 1965 – Casement’s bones unburied from lime pit in Pentonville prison

Psycho Geography

As far as W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn goes, I'm not quite sure, one way or t'other, whether I like it or not. I'd never say hate, because, as with that strange Uncle one always has an affection for, but who seems to fill himself up with random and intolerably oblique facts and histories, and who then decides that one would love to hear these oft irrelevant bits of knowledge, I find that I have a great need for it!


Let me let Wikipedia explain:

Sebald's works are largely concerned with the theme of memory, both personal and collective. They were in particular attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people. In On the Natural History of Destruction he wrote a major essay on the wartime bombing of German cities, and the absence in German writing of any real response. His concern with the Holocaust is expressed in several books delicately tracing his own biographical connections with Jews.

His distinctive and innovative novels were written in German, but are well-known in excellent English translations which he supervised closely. They include Austerlitz, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, and Vertigo. They are notable for their curious and wide-ranging mixture of fact (or apparent fact), recollection and fiction, often punctuated by indistinct black-and-white photographs, which are set in evocative counterpoint to the narrative rather than illustrating it directly. All of his novels are presented as observations and recollections made by Sebald while travelling around parts of Europe. Two literary projects, imagined though never written, by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, are keys to the work. The first (described in the short story "The Garden of the Forking Paths") is a maze-like anti-plot embedded back and forth within a conventional novel, or series of novels. The second (from the preamble to the tale "Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius") is a "novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality ". The fact that Sebald, a professional literary academic, managed to construct all this in minute detail and with Bach-like grandeur, then foist it on his unsuspecting fellow de-constructionists, illustrates another key to understanding the oeuvre.... an inscrutably dry, mischievous sense of humour!

- Wikipedia

I couldn't help, at times of immense melancholy (during this trudge through Suffolk) - I should be clear here and say Sebald's melancholia and not my own - wondering what any of this has to do with me. But then, the beauty of Sebald's work - which does feel meticulously planned - moves from topic to topic almost with every step and the details, though at times listed and semi-listless, always find a font of interest.

The book, as with much of Sebald's work, regards the memory, and though this book is melancholic, and the theme regards the destruction of nature by man; and if not nature, then the destruction of man, and serves to raise the question of where does the fact lie.

On the rear of the 2002 copy are the three words that designate what this "book" is all about: Fiction/Memoir/Travel.

Fiction?

There's 296 pages of a several day stroll through the Suffolk landscape, relating personal moments of Sebald's own life that emerge in his psyche (allegedly) as he wanders, and historical dioramas that relate to the melancholia and downward spiral of man, but draw us constantly back to some undefinable thing: why is he trudging, why is he spewing these memories, why am I still reading? More importantly, some of the facts of history aren't true, but how are we to discover that?

That final question is ever more intriguing in this digital age, where places such as Wikipedia and Media are busy presenting you with the "truth", and doing it often enough to make sure you agree with them. Wikipedia in itself is at the mercy of the public writing what ever it will - we've all heard the scandal of Capitol Hill Government workers altering Government based pages on Wikipedia, to subvert meaning, or cover up some issue, or description.

So, what is the truth, and what is it's purpose? Is it, like with Sebald, something to be played with for the sake of matching up the main theme and tying off a chapter's topic?

If one was to write one's own psycho geographical work, would one look for synchronicty in topics to discuss:

It was Wednesday night and I'd been on the road for a good hour, listening to the randomised playlist of my MP3 player and watching, somewhat passively, the flash of white light streaming towards me from the other carriageway and the burst of reds pulling around me. I dipped into the outside lane, floored the pedal and fell into procession behind the car in front. Another sped up behind so that all I could see were the bright double halos bearing down upon me , angels in the dark, come to bring their retribution for some crime I was- 87-88-89mph. I signalled to swing left, we were going too fast, and I having got caught up in following the car ahead, and forced ever onward by the lunatic behind had long ago crossed over my own threshold. I had to get out quickly, and so pulled over.

Except that a lorry on the inside lane was signalling and pulling out into the middle lane, where the two of us were bound to collide. As I swung in, flashed hard on the break to avoid the impact and the angels that had hounded me for at least a mile flew past, I was reminded of the heartache of Abel. After all, I was only keeping up with the guy in front, and trying to appease the one behind. I wasn't really speeding, my driving not forced to dangerous measures, since it was all out of my control. And yet I was endangering lives; perhaps my own, perhaps not. I was certainly thinking of only myself and how to keep up with the Jones's.

Abel had been of a similar mind, in that backward time long before machinery and death by metal. He may not have been driving so very fast, but he was yet in a race to provide his offerings to God. Was it not that need to be somewhere - mine to be home, his to be in the good graces of God - that spurred him to kill his brother, to take a life so that he might be that little bit closer to his goal?..

The alternative to finding a synchronicity is to take a topic and change it... just tweak one element to make it fit. Say, for example, as I've done above - for it was really Cain who killed Abel, not the other way around. That's actually a really loose example, but it gives you an idea of what I mean, and how psycho geography works. It's oft a little crazy, but there's something about it, in the history it unearths and the questions it raises on purpose.

Surviving the Fugue State of Writers' Block - Part 2

You see, the key to evading Writers' Block is to plan around it (or be inspired), for planning/inspiration are your only weapons - and planning doesn't necessarily mean never write anything until you've meticulously plotted what your character will have for breakfast after the next scene.

Not to big myself up then, but I received positive feedback from my short story from the critiquing workshop on the Fiction module, and my tutor for Reading into Writing (who's an author and lecturer of poetics) quite liked some of the imagery I presented him with yesterday - though I did flounder a bit in our discussion with the innate sense that I was an inferior intellect with regard to knowledge of what I was talking about (a lot of mine seems like popcorn knowledge - I never even finished Tolkein). But, good a positive feedback all the same - here's hoping I can live up to it.

Nevertheless, how did I keep myself on the ball with this new piece, and avoid writer's block?

1. Decide upon the scene - it's located at the Green Chapel, so will require relevant descriptions of the feel of the place (not my usual overwrite - which funnily enough, my tutor suggested was the staple of some fantasy fiction and might be a thought)
2. Decide upon the characters and what they're doing there, what they hope to achieve (together or personally) - I've discussed this in my previous post; it's Morgana and Bertilack, mid-way through the Gawain text (and not covered in that volume), discussing their agreement and what occured.
3. Conflict - this comes in the disagreement between the two, and their religions, and Morgana using Bertilack
4. Desciptions - this, I've found is most important, and has helped me particularly in this instance. By securing a big list of descriptive words relevant to the setting and the people, I could dip in and out of them, dropping them into the narrative, rather than pausing as I thought I needed to concoct an explanation/description, which, for me, usually destroys the pace. Here I think it works.

So, in more depth, I took those descriptions directly from the Gawain text. I wanted to rely on it for its language (and tried to mimic also that semi-mythological speak they might use, or at least we might associate with them). So:

Get a sense of the place from the description:
No snow falls. No flowers. No birds or animals. Silent. Chapel is more like a grave, a burial mound - unholy/unhallowed. Openings on all sides leading inside. Down a hill - follow the stream - through a deep ravine (jagged black rocks - shut out the sun). Stream is a raging torrent. Giant oak tree?

Extract specific descriptive words:
Rock, thicket, rugged slope, brook, valley bottom, wild spot, no habitation, steep and lofty hills, rough, knarled rock, rugged outcrops, jutting crags, graze clouds, glade, knoll (rounded mound of side of slope by water), burn seethed and foamed in its bed as though boiling, rough branch of linden tree, old cave-fissure in an old crag, patchy grass

Extract descriptions of the Green Knight:
Square-cut neck to waist; thick-set, long in the loins, arms and legs; half-giatn; handsome; burly body, back and chest; stomach and waist becoming slender, clean-cut features; handsome locks, fall out to enfold his shoulders; great bushy beard hangs over his chest - along with splendid hair falling from his head trimmed equally just above his elbo

And his clothing:
Close-fitting straight tunic; gay-mantle, the inside of which is pure white ermine (the hood too); close-trimmed; tight-drawn hose upon calves; bright spurs of shining gold on silk straps (richly striped); unshod feet; Metal bars on his belt, various bright jewels (richly disposed); silken embroidery; embroidered birds and butterflies (green) amongst the gold

And his horse:
Breast-harness has pendants; splendid crupper; studs on bit, enamelled metalwork; stirrups; saddle-bows; magnificent saddle-skirts - gleaming and glinting in green jewels; great stout green horse - restive in his embroidered bridle; mane (massive horse) well curled and combed; ornamentalknots plaited with green hair; tail and forelock plaited the same; bound with a band of vivid green and threads of gold; decorated with precious stones to cropped ends; tied off by a thong - intricate knot; many bright bells of pure gold tinkled; his glance flashed bright as fire

With these inspired choices in my toolbox I can dip in and out as I choose - without feeling like I have to use a certain choice. Thusly (a first draft):

Over the thunder of the torrent, which twisted down the rugged slope, she’d heard the tinkling of bells. Beyond the glade the bells had intoned of his arrival through the jutting crags and black jagged outcroppings that led into the valley. That was long before she saw him at the knarled rocks. Long before he’d guided the horse down the ravine.

And there he was, a half-giant, brushing a coat of snow from his charger’s green mane, shaking white clumps from his own green shoulders and the bloody stump of his decapitation, which spat flecks of crimson upon his tunic and mantle as he rode. Here in the dell, where the steep and lofty hills rose up like toothed cliffs, no snow would fall. It was deepest winter beyond the confines of the basin but early autumn within. Yet, there came no sound but for the tinkling of those bells and the boiling of the brook, for this was no place for habitation. Not the chatter of mammals nor the song of birds.

Surviving the Fugue State of Writer's Block - Part 1

I list within the vortex, matching sun-blessed days of work against super-nova nights thrashing against the confines of my NAW course, springing more and more exhaustedly between modules, trying to keep ahead, trying to stay on top.

Worst of all has been the past two weeks, my task: to write the next 3,000 word piece of my novel for the critique workshops this coming Wednesday. Could I do it? I'd already written 1,600 words from one point of view; how hard could it be to write it from the new pov I'd chosen?

By the beginning of this week I was desperate. It had come down to that most troubling of matters: Writer's Block. And of course, by now, I know enough to understand why I couldn't write: I hadn't set down any thoughts on the characters involved in the scene; where they came from; where they were headed; who they thought they were; what they wanted; what made them tick; and most importantly, what they should discuss.

I am a fool to still be trying to work without such plans. Though, my tale doesn't end here, for, there is another...

Fortunately at the start of the weekend I had reached the stage at which I felt ready to begin writing my creative reaction to the Sir Gawain text. Unlike with the Fiction module task, I did all the right preparation; I made my plans:

Story Subject

On Wednesday, in class, we discussed the impossibility of the perfect knight; the codes of faith, of chivalry and of the court; of how Morgan le Fay (Morgana) wished to humble the Court of Camelot for their presumptions; and, how Camelot died out because of this presumption - there aren't any kids at Camelot. All the knights are too busy on grail quests and playing foolish games.

What then gripped me most about the Gawain text is Morgana's involvement behind the scenes. She wants to deconstruct their humanity and religion and their violent assumptions over their games, by making one of them (hopefully Arthur, but ultimately Gawain) face his own mortality (to have his head hacked off at the neck) and then be offered to first put his faith in enchantment (instead of God - by accepting the green girdle that will protect him from harm) and then subvert the chivalric code he holds so dear (by not handing the girdle to Lord Bertilack when he ought), making him a liar (not really knightly is it?)

I Wondered what Morgana's intention would be? Surely just to humiliate Gawain (or, at first, Arthur) isn't enough. We know she'd hoped to kill Guinevere with terror at the sight of the headless knight climbing back to his feet, but we have to give Morgana more credit - she knows that the knights will accept the game of exchanging blows, that Gawain will come, good on his word, in search of the Green Chapel for the return blow; she sets up the Lord and his castle for another game (that of the Lord's wife seducing Gawain as per the rules of the courtly code) and that Gawain would accept the girdle and hide it from the Lord, because no man can stave off mortality. Finally she knows that Gawain will survive the beheading and return to Camelot. So why this ruse?

I have decided the following:

Morgana believes that Arthur's court will one day grow bored of their games (for they make games of everything). By involving the Green Knight, she will give the knights something else, something new in which to place their pride and valour; ever ignorant of faith, prudence and the future. She knows that because of their games, their bravado and quests, they will begin to decline and Camelot will fall. She fears that if they are ever aware of the emptiness of their codes, then they will save themselves and procreate, and Camelot shall never fall.

Therefore, she knows that Gawain will take the girdle as a sign of his weakness, his lack of faith, and his forsaking of the chivalric code. But she also knows that because the household at Camelot are so full of their games, they will take the sash and make a new game of it as a sign of honour (over the sign of perfidy it represents for Gawain). This, she believes, will keep the knights from foreseeing their final doom.

My grounding for this idea came from reading around the Arthurian Legend, and Morgana in particular. Though her purpose changed as the Legend was developed by many writers it seemed to settle on her witchery in opposition to Camelot and Merlin. There was mention too that she is a pagan, and this (for those of you in the know, or who've read The da Vinci Code) means that she is against Christianity's canon, its slant on men, and favours the old "women as the focus and nature as the tool" theory - Christianity, as we know, kind of blames Eve for the fall of man, etc, etc. So, Morgana will be at complete odds with this. She wants not only the fall of Camelot but the fall of Christianity, and to this end she will want to prove the inherent fallibility of man and his faith (which lacks at every corner and conflict). The game, as Gawain realises, proves that for he covets the girdle, hoping to save his own life.

Themes and Allegory

In order to illustrate all of that I decided that Morgana had to be the focus of my creative response, and what better location to choose than the Green Chapel; what better time than the Green Knight's return from having his head cut off. I could then show how Morgana had wrapped the Green Knight (the enchanted Lord Bertilack) around her finger; how he too has forsaken his faith in favour of her enchantment (I decided he'd only become embroiled in her situation in a compact) - in the Gawain text a squire informs Gawain of the Green Knight's ferocity and murderous nature, and so I used that with the pretense that Bertilack had been suffering at the hands of other Lords wanting to usurp his land. With the Green Knight enchantment, Bertilack would be invulnerable. But then, of course, she still needs him in a year's time, so she needs to user her cunning and wiles and his fear of her abilities to force him to do her bidding - hence the use of the apple (alluding to the fall of man at the hands of Eve) and the suggestion it will ressurect Bertilack's sick wife.

I tried to steer clear of using the words: magic, and spell, because they conjur up ideas of magicians or wizards of the ilk of Gandalf, with great staffs and firebolts from their fingers. I wanted Morgana to remain earthy, and refer instead to her enchantments, as if magic and wizardry are something mechanical and man made. Enchantments and the incantations that Morgana uses in my piece all manifest in appearances more than anything else - the knight becoming a green giant, her own appearance as a child, the tree shedding its leaves, those leaves turning to snakes, the appearance of the apple, even her own explosion and transformation - all are charged with misdirection, striking fear and challenging faith rather than causing harm or producing something physical and tangible. She uses nature to her advantage. The apple, like the girdle, is a cipher. It doesn't serve any real power. The girdle doesn't save Gawain, and the apple won't save Bertilack's wife (though since in the Gawain text, the wife is fine, it is easy to suppose that Morgana's natural skills at herbs/medicine may help - and of course, with my Morgana instructing Bertilack to share only two kisses with his wife, and no more, this sets up a deeper thread in the bedroom/courtship scenes of Gawain - the wife is no longer playing, but desperate for companionship, lustful even - again alluding back to the apple Morgana forces Bertilack to eat).

... Knight and horse wheeled about, all rearing hooves and clamorous bells. Beneath them the girl, resplendent in green sash and naked innocence, was motionless, indifferent to the beast’s flailing feet that might, at any moment, trample her under its weight as it might a hounded deer...

... The Green Knight glanced from girl to apple. He didn’t have a choice for he knew of no other restorative measures. He steadied his head upon the stump of his neck with one hand and threw the fruit into his mouth, swallowing it whole. There was a faint nuttiness within the sweet nectar soothing his throat, the trickle of something perfumed, like crushed lilies and then a bitter tang. Before he could distinguish its taste his body contorted and bent double, wracked by the latent pain of having his head hacked off. He spied the boiling stream, felt its fury eating at his neck and tearing down his arms and back, and bayed like a stuck boar...

... The child imploded in a shower of lights the colour of green’s and gold’s, as if for an instant she had consisted of shooting stars. Bertilack reeled, dazed, too slow as the coloured comets exploded into existence on his right. A wily feminine shape lunged at him out of the phantasmagoria. She struck him down, this lady, with her tumultuous red tresses streaming behind her; felled him, loosing his sword upon the ground. There she stood, over his prone body, in a gown of yellow’s and green’s, her long fingers drawn and crooked, threatening violence. And in her eyes she flashed with cunning.
‘And still your God does not save you,’ she barked.
Bertilack raised his hand to ward away the fox...

- obviously this is the first draft, lots to sort out!

The Village By The Sea - A Reading Group Discuss

Village By The Sea really polarised the book discussion this week with some livid that something like this could: 1) get published, and 2) win prizes. There was a little upset that it was in the schools, however the counter argument is that it’s language is appropriate, easily accessible; is the only book of its type, aimed at that age group; and raises so many questions. Actually, considering the argument about the outcome of the book it’s interesting that we didn’t discuss how dreary life is for them all at the present tim5: all the men looking to drink to solve their anxieties.

1: Lots of plot elements are built up but dealt with off page – poof – it’s wasted.

2: P. 110. There are sixteen lines describing the night, and then one about Hari being there asleep.

3: Yes, the descriptions don’t really add to either plot or place do they? They seem levered in there.

2: The problem with flowery prose is a blind alley.

4: I agree but Michael Ondatjee and Lewis Durrell are just two examples that have wonderful prose that works.

5: Well, I liked it. I first read it and it was almost like Desai had taken out the interesting things and left just the carcass. But it’s Penguin.

3: Yeah, I missed that. What? It’s a kids book?!

5: It’s lovely. Difficult to get round the flower list. But, do you consider it as fiction or a tool for teaching?

1: The problem; is it in excusing the age of the book or the age group?

6: This isn’t better/worse than other books of its ilk. It raises issues without beating you over the head. It’s a dark book. Prescient.

7: The darkness brings it to life.

8: You judge as a piece of writing instead of fiction.

6: Enid Blyton wrote good stories, but you wouldn’t teach her work. Philip Pullman is the same. It’s wonderful but not all should be written like that.

5: Wouldn’t use Harry Potter.

8: As a book it works. Conflict is constant – environment/family/drunks/ecology. Hari lacks a father figure – has a fairytale aspect of storytelling. Didn’t think it patronising. It’s supposed to be easy reading. Such a dark/dismal life is coming in the future. So it had a good storytelling technique.

4: Desai is trying to be optimistic.

6: No. Like Sebald, it’s ll about the ending of things. Nothing’s positive.

9: Mixed message. We have a Westernised view that these people are a sad waste; the change is awful.

8: Ironic ending. He’s happy but his way of life is coming to an end.

4: I was reading about the Bhupal disaster. I thought that was where the story was leading to, but it was published before the incident.

3: It’s interesting to consider the irony of that in this context then.

9: Human misery is quelled by the humanity. It makes it all better. These people are goodies and these people are baddies.

3: I’d disagree. Desai seems to have a problem with wanting to show fallibility. The character of the chef who takes Hari in, is a stoic, but supportive and caring person. He supports Hari whilst getting his help in the work. Then she has him take Hari home and completely burns down everything we’ve thought about him – he argues with his wife, dumps Hari on her (with her whingeing away) and he goes off, like Hari’s father to get drunk on Toddy.

4: Characters are not strong. We don’t know them. Lila doesn’t come over at all. Harry is inconsistent.

3: And all the conflicts and problems end in Deus ex Machina/Fairy Godmother scenarios.

2: Enid Blyton’s kids did everything for themselves.

1: Harry’s passivity was disturbing – way he runs away. He’s not grounded, so I didn’t have to deal with it, and I wasn’t concerned.

2: It seems to work on lucky accidents.

8: I ran away from home when I was a kid (14), saved up my money (I was angry at my family), and I travelled 300 miles. When I reached the furthest I could go (I had a return ticket), I met a Nicuraguan Taxi driver who took me home to meet his wife and spend the night (I had nowhere else to go). I got up the next morning and returned home. Mum was paralytic with rage. Looking back on it, its scary and stupid, but in Desai’s it’s not because the kid doesn’t appreciate it fully. It’s believable.

4: But I believe your story. Not Hari’s. The dialogue is much better than I originally gave it credit for, however.

1: I worry about it patronising. Why can’t they deal with emotions – anger/fear? Is it right to make concessions?

6: There aren’t any concessions.

1: Not pictured for us, but allowing us to connect with it. Amazed it takes so long for Hari to send the postcard and then when it’s received, it’s with enmity!

2: But Re’s story has danger.

1: Very happy that Hari goes to the apartment, into the lift (for the very first time), but it’s a lost opportunity as he doesn’t react to these new places.

6: But that would take it off the topic. Reading fairystories – off fighting a dragon. The storyteller doesn’t say that the Prince cuts off the ugly sisters’ toes, and the blood goes everywhere, and the people react with horror. Toes are cut off, the kids fill in the rest.

1: But there’s no opportunities, no moment of linking with the environment. No reactions.

2: It wasn’t one person’s story.

7: I wanted more peril for the family. I wanted a death. The ash in the mouth of the mother made me wonder if she would go, but no.

8: Expectation of death?

7: Different culture but kids do know about these things.

2: But the father just ups and stops drinking. Why did he suddenly care about his wife?

4: Keep giving him money! Why’d they do that?

8: But it’s a Cinderella story. Is it finished?

1: It’s all wrapped up.

7: I read Adrian Mole when I was 6, and I could deal with the girl’s nipple etc,

8: Because of the way events transpire it shows the denigration of society.

3: As an eight year old reader none of the subtleties or subtext is going to matter to me.

6: Lots of fatalism in Indian Culture. Accepting of the caste system, their place in life. This book swims against that tide.

7: You can do something to change it if you’re lucky.

4: Hari thinks the watchmaker is naïve. No watches in the village. Sayid Ali, the bird watcher, what did people make of him?

5: I was in India, in a traffic jam and I bought Kiran Desai’s booker winner of a lady who was going between the cars selling books. What a brilliant way to sell books! Our friend is Sri Lanken, and she read The Village By The Sea, thought it nice but nothing happens. Couldn’t get her kids to read it. Sarah Waters’s book is a good read for someone with pneumonia. You’d read Anita Desai’s when you’re hot, as it’s not too excitable. The protagonist is a camera so that kids can project onto him.

9: Hari’s worried but excited by change. – it’s not an extensive inward journey.

8: As far as contrast/compare the two heads are missing (ala Gawain). Parents are cut off – 1 stuck back on by medicine, the other by sobriety.

6: Strong nature and death of nature.

7: It’s very beautiful but not deep.

9: Work with an editor. Must understand how to write for the age group.

Western culture it seems is too jaded for this Cinderella story. Desai was the only one writing about India for kids at the time (80s), and it was picked up by schools to fill the gap rather than because of choice.

9: When I was travelling in Africa I was taking pictures of the places and people, but when a tribal group came through one village and I went to take a picture of the children, they were so fearful of it. There is a big divide, not just between Western and Eastern cultures. There is so much fear and deprivation.

Reading Like a Writer

A strange convergence has brought me to this moment - and that's without considering the strange coincidence that (having gone out of my way to drop my wife off at her work today) I was queued behind a Porsche bearing the license plate: GO RIX - In Reading into Writing we have been dissecting the meaning of texts both young and old, genre based and literary, translated and as originally intended, picking apart the reasons for inclusions and exclusions. At the end of last week's Fiction module, my tutor advised us to read not only short stories (ie: Checkov in particular) to better understand a writer's intent, but also to hunt down Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer (A guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them).


The book does perfectly what we've been trying to do in Reading into Writing. It does exactly what Solvejg has been telling me for years, thumping my literary endeavours into pulp over.

Jessica Murphy discusses the book with Francine Prose here.

So, why haven't I listened to Solvejg? Well, I have... I've just been ready to put it all into practise (there's still a lot of other errors in my prose to sort out). The other reason is that it's a big step. I've read your latest opening to Tethered Light, Solvey, and to tell you the truth, I'm awestruck. I will produce a more detailed report for you, but right now I'm reeling, because I'm not even in the same game, let alone league.

And the same goes for Prose's chosen extracts for analysis. Whilst I struggled through Sarah Waters's Night Watch, I began to lose hope in writing in general, but a book such as Reading into Writing, so beautiful by inclusion of the extracts, and so eye opening in its meaning really makes you fall in love with writing and literature. Just the sheer flow of some texts that I'd otherwise avoid (my wife and her English class had to do The Great Gatzby for A-Levels and hated it), but check this out:

The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an achored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out through the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

Francine Prose says:

You could almost get a sense of the passage by sorting the words according to what part of speech they represent, the participles and verbs (gleaming, rippling, ballooned), the adjectives and adjectival phrases (the white windows and skirts, the fresh grass, the pale flags of the curtains, the frosted wedding cake of a ceiling), the nouns (the whip and snap of the curtains, the groan of the picture, the caught wind, the boom of the shut window).

She says a whole lot more - really insightful stuff that I'm sure we could all pick up with no trouble if we weren't all hurriedly skim-reading to finish the book. Prose teaches us to read slowly (like I need any more encouragement to do that - I'd never finish a book), looking at specific word use, sentence us, paragraph use, character use, narrative use... etc.

I cannot recommend this book enough - and guaranteed, once I've got my course out the way, I'm going to have to go back and read it again and again.