reeling and writhing

flash fiction

Would you just look at what Ben Harper found at his cafe.

No doubt some of you have similar stories? Do share.

Lorrie Moore's bandages - The Observer

Typically, she makes light of being 53. "What does that mean ? When I was 52 I used to say, at long last, I have a full deck. Now I say we're into the joker years. I mean, every deck must have two jokers..." Professor Moore (she teaches creative writing) can laugh about "my first joker year" but – as in her short stories – there's an undertow of melancholy. "Actually, it's not funny, or wild, but we'll see. It's only March." In the next breath, comparing her 40s to her 50s, Moore, who was divorced in 2001, remarks, "at 53, you think I've had my marriage, my fun. I'm moving towards the solitaire years, the nursing home..." Her conversational arpeggios of gravity and mirth are delivered with such a sparkle that you know she's only half serious. But which half?

Not also is its author fun (interviewed a couple of weekends ago by Robert McCrum) but A Gate At The Stairs is also very good. I do hope to read Ms Moore's earlier novels sometime.

I'm not sure if this is quite what I think has happened in the book I've read (for a start there are several wounds, not just one), but her epigrammatic summary of her way into fiction does sound like those painters who need to make a mess in order to find their way into the work:

She herself says that she relishes those moments when the even flow of time gets snapped by a sudden crisis and "something's broken". She says her stories begin "with an injury. Then the story becomes like the bandage round a wound."

It's quite a long interview, but worth persisting with for her remarks on creative writing programs, one of which she has been involved with for over twenty years:

She concedes a certain scepticism about creative writing. "I have a friend," she says, "who says it's a pyramid scheme – but at least it's our pyramid scheme." She also evinces a distinct toughness about the necessary qualities of the professional writer. "My students," she says, "are so competent and sympathetic – and nice, because that's what the course requires. I'm not sure that niceness is what we should promote in writers."

William Skidelsky, in the same publication, does point out that David Mitchell is considered to be 'extraordinarily' nice. But as his readers know, that's a different pack of cards entirely.

other reading, other writing

At the Varuna blog, Cate Kennedy talks about the need for feedback during the writing process from other writers and editors, and her appreciation for readers' remarks on her work.

It’s one thing for a critic to praise your deftness with imagery or whatever, but when someone feels moved to write that they’re planning on staying alive to read what you might come up with next…well,  that’ll get you back to the desk – elated and close to mysterious tears, not sure whether to laugh or cry.

There's a review of Judith Beveridge's latest collection, Storm and Honey, by Libby Hart up at Cordite.

Here's another beautiful bit of writing from Ampersand Duck, this time on some of her own work. What a fine photo-essay this is, on the story and making of pillow books. Get her into Black Inc tout de suite.

Looking for something silly? John Williams' personal collection of personals from the LRB is a hoot.

And here is something rather gorgeous I will get in my letterbox at some point, as a subscriber. John Williams comments that "It looks stunning. Not sure how it’s supposed to make the newspaper business feel any better, though. Not exactly a feasible model . . ."

Finally here's a great post by Alec Patric about the latest issue of Page Seventeen, and the life of small mags in general.

oh what a feeling for a man with no qualities

Jon Faith excerpted quite a bit of this on his blog, and it looks like we can read it all for free anyhow. I know Joe Queenan wasn't de rigueur amongst the US bloggers a while back, but I can't remember why. So here it is.
Pretty funny.

The Speakeasy blog at Australian Writers' Marketplace Online pointed me at this lovely article about collecting books in the Wall Street Journal by author and writing teacher Luc Sante.

They've quoted one paragraph - I'm going to quote another, because this article appeals to me for its notes on weeding and the underlying reasons for collecting in the first place:

For me it tends to be more a matter of finding the links between things. I need to fill out my knowledge of Prague, 1949, or the Elizabethan prose writers, or the cross-migration between New York newspapers and Hollywood in the '20s and '30s. I buy every book I see about Gypsies, and most firsthand accounts of vaudeville, and almost everything by lesser-known New Yorker writers of the old regime. I'm always on the lookout for memoirs -- frequently by the less-than-famous -- that supply concrete details of daily life, rather than simply lists of names or dates of parties or, heaven forfend, litanies of traumas.

I like books published before 1940 that are illustrated with photographs; even if those are frequently small and murky, they are rare windows into the past. Books help me construct whole worlds in my mind, and I require an army of books to complete the picture, not that it's ever truly complete. When I'm truly passionate about a subject, anything can be grist for the mill. Poetry can be as materially informative as journalism, and railroad timetables can be as evocative and lilting as poems. I derive nourishment from the copyright pages, from the publishers' ads in the back, from even the most misguided attempts at cover design.

novelists in the time of Web 2.0

Heehee. Book Launch 2.0, borrowed from Louise Swinn. This guy is very amusing - neighbours and email have always sold lots of books, haven't they. Not only that, his ratso video has been so popular that it has assisted his booksales considerably; probably something that could only be done once, but it shows imagination. He is having some hiccups with Blogger and his site at present, but don't let that stop you visiting his blog to congratulate him on a job well done.

the meme (it's all about moi)

El tagged me last week, when I was in the thick of a few things (don't try saying that five times quickly). I've finally cleared these items for release.  So here we go:

What was I doing 10 years ago?

Helping with a Safety House committee, playing piano for a school choir occasionally.

Writing a romance, in a totally non-theorised litsnob kind of way, just to see how hard it could really be - and hey, it's harder than you think to write one you'd actually like to read. As I told my sister at the time, it was like completing a toile (calico or cheap fabric mock-up) for a haute couture garment and deciding, nope, this design is not really cutting the mustard, is it.

In 1998 I attended a twenty-year school reunion and realised I did not want to go around for the rest of my life telling everyone my son has autism and my life is screwed, and resolved to go back to university and try to get whatever a real job might be, so that I had something else to talk to people about. (I just realised that now, tarting up this draft. That was ten years ago. Whew.)

For that year and several following I was also trying to make sure none of us disappeared under the collective weight of autism and epilepsy, being the linchpin and main communicator with disability service providers, doctors, and three schools while my husband consolidated his career. Ten years on, we have fingers crossed - give or take more than a few glaring inadequacies in TEH SYSTEM, we seem to have broken on through to some kind of 'other side' - so far, so good, nobody's dead yet. In fact, we're 'feeling rather better' on a few fronts. Unrealistically, almost foolishly so, for the next ten years may be even busier. But at least I'm no longer terrified of the prospect of the next five minutes. (As Therese Rein has said, sometimes you just need to get through the next five minutes...)

All that said, I am looking forward to our thirty-year school reunion later this year. It's going to be a blast, and I may even turn up unfashionably half-grey, or nude. Or both. Nude reunions on Facebook - now I'd like to see that.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. King Island Roaring Forties blue, crackers and good red wine (all ingredients are part of the snack). David, whatever you bought us at the Standard the other week was very impressive, I hope you find out what it was because I am in need of some more.

2. Lindt dark chocolate with orange in it (both kinds).

3. Left-over burgundian beef casserole, OR curry, OR veg and gravy beef stew with tomato and paprika, cold, in chunks from the fridge. (Also cold pizza. YUM.)

4. Crumpets. Usually cooked and hot, though.

5. Doughnuts shared with young nephews and nieces.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world:

6. All of the above, but I try to eat less of them.

7. Those rosemary grissini you can get in Safeway.

8. Coffee from Atomica in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. Or Culinaria at Brentford Square, Forest Hill, which is getting better all the time.

9. Baby carrots, celery sticks with raisins, rice crackers (getting a bit sick of them though).

10. Viognier, sauvignon blanc and semillon blends, brandy and lemonade.

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Get a collective of billionaires on the job. Given that along with the money I have the networking skills of a media mogul, right? the world in the palm of my hand, so what am I waiting for? what are they waiting for?

2. Fix climate change with said billionaires, and make everyone promise NEVER NEVER to mess up the ecology again.

3. Buy several farms and set up cluster housing co-ops with other families with disabled children to care for.  Harass all state governments to provide permanent support and staffing, as well as ongoing third party insurance to provide for supported accommodation in the future.

4. Bribe the Brumby government to change its mind about the desalination plant and recycle Melbourne's water instead. And install a fleet of cloud seeding aircraft at Ballarat and Bendigo, and put some serious scientific research and/or funding into this.

5. Buy that gorgeous creamy yellow and black schooner that's always moored at the St. Kilda marina and learn how to sail her. And blog about it.

Five jobs that I have had:

1. Shop assistant in Clark Rubber

2. Parent/ disability advocate (ongoing and permanent position)

3. Wedding singer - just the church,  no opportunity to abuse the crowd there though.
Unfortunately.

4. Personal care worker

5. Cataloguer

Three of my habits:

1. Drying the skin under my rings (quite a new one actually - there are good strong ridges on both ring fingers that require attention several times a day).

2. Not putting the packaging from shopping away immediately - leaving it lying around so I can feel I have achieved something by handing over cash and carrying something home again. I think.

3. Stopping in the middle and wishing, quite abruptly sometimes, that I was somewhere else.

Five places I have lived:

1. Kingsbury, Victoria

2.  Heathmont, Victoria

3. Mitcham, Victoria

4-5. Ocean Grove and Wye River (Vic.) for so many holidays that they almost qualify as two additional places.

Tagged: anyone who would like to do it  :-)

file under whimsical

Tssk. If only the specs had gone missing instead. It's a wonder The Great Gatsby survived my HSC in 1979 sometimes. Link via Maud.

in case you're still thinking about 2007 and all the coffee you drank - corrections

From a terrific looking blog for Chin Music Press comes this link, which I wanted to post a while ago, to the top business report of 2007.

(The following scrambled post is a very good example of how not to blog when your handicapped son is drying dishes loudly and would really like some attention...)
Very pretty, personalised and highly detailed. The Feltron chart is the personal activity report for 2007 (including coffees, taxi trips and burglars confronted) NOT of Henry Sene Yee, Picador book designer, as I reported erroneously earlier, but of this guy. And he's written a few of them before too - see his site index.

My apologies to Mr Feltron, who has taken the trouble to pay for his own domain and does not deserve such misappropriation of his fine work.
The category of 'Literary Things and Otherwise' at Chin Music Press is worth checking on a regular basis - actually I reckon nearly all their categories are worth following.

And serendipitously, as I opened Google Reader and subscribed tout de suite to their feed, I found a link to local news on one of their latest publications.

oh shucks

Not a bad joke, though a bit on the corny side. Link via ReadWriteWeb.

to criticise the critic

I've just read a very spirited piece on the role of the critic, and the state of Australian theatre in the early '90s on Alison Croggon's excellent blog, Theatre Notes, in an extended post from her archives which she prefaces with a disclaimer - things now are not quite so bad as they used to be when she embraced theatre criticism as a public literary mode:

I used the style of tabloid journalism in order to write seriously about art, for two reasons. One was to destabilise the privileged art-speak that dismissed an audience as stupid. I wanted to demonstrate to the people who read my reviews that the audience, also, has a vital place in the theatre, that it isn’t there merely to worship at the hallowed shrine of culture, which is often more accurately the hollow shrine of money and cultural status.

so much to tell you

If that's not a misleading title in Google terms, I don't know what is  - it's also the title of a very popular children's book from the '80s by top Australian author John Marsden. Sorry about that if you've come by looking for a review. Check out Libraries Australia to find out where to get an audio recording by the author, here. If you're a university student, talk to your librarian about the Austlit database sometime, and if you're from a public library, ask your librarian to show you book reviewing sources in the databases they subscribe toOne day I may even review those sources of information. But today is not that day. (See also this link at Leisa Reichelt's blog, for further discussion on this and other matters.)

In other words, there is news about, and here it is, printed in bits and bytes...

australianblogs.com.au is here

Welcome in Australian blogging to a very useful new site, australianblogs.com . Cloud tags, nearly 300 blogs and rising and some interesting names among 'em. It would be great to see more, especially useful if they are tagged with their capital city to boot.

SInce its opening just over two weeks ago, Jon Yau and team have put me in touch with several sites hitherto unknown...

weeding the collection

A constructive use for all those extra endocrinology texts...here. While you're there check out the link to the Harvard Sucks prank as well. (Thank a younger Australian librarian for the link).

this phone has moshed

An exciting saga chez nous today. My daughter's friend from primary school dropped in with her mobile. Said mobile was last seen in her pocket prior to the White Stripes' gig at Melbourne's annual music day, the Big Day Out, held yesterday in sweltering conditions at Princes Park in Carlton.

Get this, the phone fell out of her pocket at an evening gig, was picked up, the mate was called at random and just happened to be at the festival as well! making it way convenient for him to collect the phone for us. So there you go, honesty amongst 25-30,000 people. The number has been disconnected and reconnected today, the phone is a bit the worse for wear but still functions. And I thought I was so cool this morning telling Hutchinsons that the phone was last seen in a mosh pit.... Over here we call it 'doing a Lazarus'.

And just to be completely frivolous - here's The Battle for Broadband according to Chris Buzelli. Link from Bibliodyssey.

latrine humour

Here, from Collective Apathy. (While you are there, check out the nominees for the Australian Blog Awards.)

in the spirit of the staircase

From the ALIA lists, this link to a nice article on why George Bush says 'nucular' instead of... you know. Thanks to the poet who never fails to cheer up the library list with some intelligent and witty flimflammery.

I like this, from the word list at the end - 'Blog - a syllable whose time has come'. Hehe.

There's a New Kid In Town. And she looks so shiny ( my Polyester Girl). Also her website designer has a link to a tremendously important quiz on "Which File Extension Are You?" which is way riveting. (Haven't done it yet, though. I reckon I might be a .dll somehow - add one letter in Australian and that makes you a bit of an idiot.)

This ole syllable, I dunno- just when you're about to chuck it in, it starts looking fun all over again.

Not all of this post is frivolous, however... from Freepint, an online journal for information managers and librarians (which has a suspiciously obvious Lexis Nexis/Butterworths logo at the head of the website), comes this book review by Martin White of Steve Arnold's book on Google, which is only available as a download of 24MB so far and will be updated before its final release:

This excellent book really goes behind the scenes and it is a tribute
to Steve Arnold, that he has managed to write a book of such detail
and insight without the cooperation of Google itself. Indeed, I would
not be surprised if Google employees were among the early readers of
the book!...
This is not a journalistic approach to Google but the outcome of the
author's lifetime involvement with search applications. The result is
a level of technical detail and analysis which I cannot see ever being
bettered. Equally valuable is that Steve Arnold looks at some of the
issues that might yet derail the Google train. After all, I can
remember the days when no one could conceive of there being a
competitor to AltaVista.

I don't know much about Freepint, however there is a link to a shop, so how independent is this reviewer, I wonder? We've been given two articles from SearchEngine Watch about the deviousness of Google this semester, so it would be interesting to see if Arnold has in fact managed to open the company up a little to the outside world.

I have INFORMATION

Righto, this is Real News. If you wait long enough and log on quick enough it comes to you. Link via Foreword, a blog on book design (see, I did have quite good intentions really.)

In other news:

Mark Sarvas has posted the first instalment of his long boozy lunch with John Banville (I blinked and I missed that - how? I've just added it into this post post-haste.)

Tim Porter is mad as hell and he's not going to take any more - well not just yet. He still has a few things to say about blogging to a couple of people:

that it is fun, that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing printed in newspapers, and that one-in-five people who call themselves newspaper readers primarily use the paper's online edition rather than read articles in print.

Also he notes that the number of blogs - now at 14.2 million (55 percent active) doubles every 23 weeks, with major spikes occurring in the midst of big news events like the London bombing.

Jacqui Lofthouse makes her mark on a beach in East Anglia. Anne has finished her book on Virginia Woolf, and there is much rejoicing. (I lasted two weeks without blogging, but have enjoyed hanging out at other people's spaces, as well as rereading Tender Is The Night.)

my loneliness is killing me...

From the Salon at Larvatus Prodeo:

Liam at a certain domestic airport in Australia, 8pm Friday night.
Also present: couple with toddler in stroller, who is joyfully playing up, throwing her toys away.
Mother:

Britney! If you do that one more time…

Liam and rest of Gate 4 stifle hysterics.

peter hall's boots have been pinched

Irish and British Guardian readers tell us that Peter Hall has a whinge about being upstaged by the Barbican as the anniversary of the first English language production of Waiting for Godot approaches. Grumpy Old Bookman provides first-night notes from Hall's production at Bath, and some personalised background:

I first saw the play in the late 1950s, in Cambridge, where the audience was young, sharp, and alert. Last night's audience was, as is always the case in Bath, middle-aged at best, and perhaps slightly sleepy.

Just occasionally life deals up some amazing opportunities. If you had told me at age 17, when I was introduced to Beckett in my final year at high school by an enlightened English teacher, that I would be enjoying the privilege of sharing the Irish TV production with my own personal vaudeville star, my precious, mercurially gifted in-house clown of a 17 year old daughter, in 27 years' time, I'd have told you... whatever (or the 1977 equivalent therein). Must get the video out again soon.

In other news from Slugger O'Toole, this humorous tale on the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival:

As well as the happy convergence of Ireland and eastern Asia, the festival has received another unexpected fillip in recent years. "Some of the men who were coming in the 60s were saying they were getting too old for it all," explains Mr Daly.

"And then they made this Viagra, and they're all back again. A couple of years ago there was a man from the village selling blue Smarties to the men. And the men were coming back saying: 'This Viagra is the best, you'd better sell me some more.' He bought all the Smarties they had, because you only get one or two blue ones in each packet, you see. It was all right because I have lots of grandchildren and they all lived on Smarties for the rest of that summer."

In a less humorous vein, Sheila O'Malley discusses diasporean illusions about Ireland while trying out a Jell-O drink in a Dublin hotel that is yet to feel the pinch from cafe bars. (Come on Fianna Fail, Melbourne did that last century) Link from Slugger again.

human services blues

...lead one to post links like these ( plus my daughter asked me to save it). Thanks to Laura for the link.

we're not going on a bear hunt again

This is quite humorous.