Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts, and Audio Interviews from The Biblio File radio program pertaining to same by a writer, broadcaster, bibliophile.
William Nicholson in a letter to publisher William Heinemann: ‘I have often wept in the dawn to think I only got £10.10s. for my little queen with which you have papered the world. I remember so well how you hated the idea of her and predicted failure and often I have wondered that you haven’t send me £1,000 hush money by a black-masked messenger boy – even now I would pay the boy at this end’
"What I find most interesting (no explanation of why) about CREDO, and conversely, most disappointing (no explanation of why, other than "I would have expected better‘), is the fourth section, the long poem "Cornage," a salvage-type operation (say again?) where he works to extend the range of his writing. Both stylistically and through content, many things are achieved (like what?) by Starnino, in a sixteen part piece on the changes in the English Language from medieval times. Through it, Starnino manages an ordinary series of sonnet-sized bits with some great lines (why are they great?). "There are accidents / so serendipitous it’s nearly impossible to stand / out of their way." (p. 54).
When Starnino isn’t playing clever for the camera (heh?) ("waes hail, dear reader! They call this sillyebubbe. / Its frothiness discovered by surprising some cider / with a spray of milk." p. 54), there are some rather worthwhile parts to the poem, (like which?) and interesting too (like what?), because he does manage to reach outside (how so?). Despite this, the attempt still isn’t enough to hold the series together (how come?), of a highly structured form of random bits that seem to go nowhere (where are they supposed to go?).
CREDO is a wildly uneven book, by a poet I would have expected better from( tsk, tsk). In the collection, about every fourth poem is a very good poem (why dat?), and admittedly, Starnino has always been good at what he’s good at ( what dat?). But still. Critic, heal thyself."
"Take cornage. The first poem in the sequence concludes: "I have thereby stationed this poem on a tout-hill, were,/in time of danger, it will blow a horn as warning." What does this metaphor mean? Particularly in this context and given that this poet frequently writes about a group fo people some reactionaries might call invaders – immigrants speaking a different language born out of a different culture? Answers to these questions should keep in mind the definition of scrynne - "a medieval marvel coffer" of reliquary – and, generally, the poems in the sequence that explicity address the evolution of usage that lets dead metaphors live as literary meanings die. Buckram is "cotton linen stiffened with glue" ‘ but comes to mean ": to give a false impression of strength,"’, and sillyebubbe, "doer/with a spray of milk," comes to mean "writing/ that lacked substance, a spendthrift of phrases/ that pleased the mouth but ignored the stomach." The sequence’s metaphors frequently round on poetry (or writing generally) like this: a poem is itself a scrynne for word-relics, one can "buckram" "stanzas with such long lines," and yes, "deception is part of the game" in the Aristotelian sense of metaphor as misnaming. Starnino insinuates his own, language-changing mepap[hors inot his descriptions of the way the language changes, colouring interpretations of the sequence much the way a pigment (vermiel) made by digging worms out of the ground (words out of the land) gives a blush of colour that makes hoaxes seem holy )"a duab or two // helped an artist trick the Shroud of Turin into life.") Cornage fuses mediam and subject, but it’s the best kind of poem about poetry, one that shows, rather than tells, what is possible. Along with changes in voice and focus that were its preconditions (here words are objects with the same physical properties as the namesakes of "The Goblet" or "The Clothesline"), "Cornage" is Starnino’s bridge from a poetry defined by its subject to a poetry defiend by its craft."
sillyebubbe might be the right word to describe what the Antigonish Review here has printed…save for the fact that it doesn’t even please the mouth.
I’d like to dedicate this advert to my mother (difficult cow, 65) who is responsible for me still being single at 36. Man 36. Single. Held at home by years of subtle emotional abuse and at least 19 fake heart attacks.
7 million is good for me. Most days though I plateau at around 3 million. Any advances? Man with low sperm count (35- that’s my age) seeks woman in no hurry to see the zygotes divide.
Bald, short , fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.
You’re a brunette, 6′, long legs, 25-30, intelligent, articulate and drop dead gorgeous. I, on the other hand, am 4′ 10", have the looks of Hervé Villechaize (Fantasy Island) and carry an odour of wheat. No returns and no refunds.
Bastard, complete and utter. Whatever you do don’t reply, you’ll only regret it.
List your ten favourite albums. I don’t want to compare notes, I just want to know if there’s anything worth keeping when we break up. Practical forward thinking male, 35.
Source: They Call me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books, edited by David Rose (Scribner, 2006).
Writer, comedian A. L. Kennedy lives and works in Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2003 she was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. Her novel Day (2007), won the Costa Book of the Year Award. She reviews and contributes to most of the major British newspapers, and has been a judge for both the Booker Prize for Fiction (1996) and The Guardian First Book Award (2001).
Her first book, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains (1990), a bleak collection of short stories, won several awards including the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award.
Other short story collections include Now That You’re Back (1994) and Original Bliss (1997), and her novels include: Looking for the Possible Dance (1993); So I Am Glad (1995), winner of the Encore Award, which focuses on child sexual abuse and its consequences in adulthood; and Everything You Need (1999), the story of a middle-aged writer living on a remote island and his attempt to build a relationship with his estranged daughter.
We met recently at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto to talk about humour, the buzz of post-Suicide attempts, living as if you are going to die, self esteem, making other worlds, changing reality, fictional rehearsals, Buster Keaton hats, the physicality of great comic actors, storytelling and investing in lies, Lolita, Nicola Six, Shakespeare, Hamlet, Yann Kott, Benny Hill, Blazing Saddles, freedom and child molestation.
MA: Coetzee, for instance—his whole style is predicated on transmitting absolutely no pleasure.
TC: Do you admire his books at all?
MA: No. I read one and I thought, he’s got no talent. The denial of the pleasure principle has a lot of followers. But I am completely committed to it, to pleasure.
TC: Why have people felt the need to do this to the novel: is this puritanical?
MA: Dryden said, literature is instruction and delight, and there are people who think that if they’re not getting delight then they are getting a lot of instruction, when in fact they’re not getting that either. But it has a sort of of gloomy constituency. If there is no pleasure transmitted then I’m not interested. I mean, look at them all: Dickens, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Smollet, Fielding, they’re all funny. All the good ones are funny. Richardson isn’t, and he’s no good. Dostoyevsky is funny: The Double is a scream. Tolstoy is funny by being just so wonderfully true and pure. Gogol, funny. Flaubert, funny. Dickens. All the good ones are funny.
This, plus stand alone accusations of cliche mongering.
I agree that Disgrace was no chuckle-fest; In the Heart of the Country even less so…pleasure tops my canonizing criteria chart…damned it, if it weren't for Dostoyevsky we wouldn't have 'as loyal as seven hundred poodles' would we?…but, pleasure isn't everything. There is something to be said for pain. Here's a squib I wrote on the topic written a few years ago shortly after reading In the Heart of the Country:
Coetzee delivers like few others on this planet when it comes to eliciting intense feeling, in this instance, anguished, dull-faced loneliness. He does this by drawing negative space so convincingly that the reader falls helplessly into it, forced to inhabit, fill, an often bleak outer world. With superfine pencil he sketches just enough, in just the right way, to trigger an often overwhelming emotional, empathic response. No other contemporary writer I’ve read makes you live his character’s lives so completely. Coetzee stands with the great Russians in this regard, and with Kafka on bleakness. But its a bleakness that’s strangely bracing in hindsight; you’re filled with gratitude when you get out, relieved that real life isn’t as bad as where you’ve been. Reading Coetzee reminds me of something Oscar Wilde once told Andre Gide: "My duty…is to amuse myself terrifically…no happiness only pleasure. One must always seek what is most tragic."
While the Amis interview is worth reading, it would have benefited greatly from a bit more flesh.
"I wanted to thank you for your many generous and intelligent words about my new book How Fiction Works (and other stuff)...I get great pleasure from reading your blog."
Critic, James Wood, The New Yorker.
"You can find very bad writing and sloppy impressionism in literary blogs, but also incisive, fresh, thoughtful criticism from voices unencumbered by the politics of Grub St". I would put your blog in the latter category, which is why I’m responding here…Congratulations on a very fine blog."
Scholar, Dr. Ronan McDonald.
"You ask the most brilliant, thoughtful questions, it's really a pleasure to do an interview where someone actually wants to talk about writing and literature in general."
Novelist Margot Livesey.
"The happy result of all this (the Salon des Refuses experience) from my own perspective was my discovery of the wonderful "Note Bene," which I added to my "favourites" early in the summer and which I have read --- and listened to --- with great pleasure ever since."
Novelist Jane Urquhart.
"I spent a bit of time last night perusing, as I often do, Nigel Beale's Nota Bene. My suggestion is that you do the same. It is truly a remarkable site."
William Nicholson’s Queen Victoria handcoloured woodcut. 
