Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Monday, 6 December 2010
waleshome.org
I meant to flag up this great site to readers who might not be aware of it some time ago. It fell through the cracks. I'll rectify that. waleshome.org features comment across the spectrum of politics, literature and the wider culture, and is an invariably good read. You can comment, too – which is fortunate since most people seem to disagree online, I find. But you'll get none of the tedious trolling that tends to be unfortunately magnetically-attracted to the Grauniad's Comment is Free and, more pertinently, you'll find Wales. Here's intelligent, constructive disagreement and debate on Wales and its interests by smart people. waleshome.org fills an important space in Welsh reporting. Enjoy.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Congratulations...
To New Welsh Review board member Tiffany Murray, who wins a place on the shortlist of the 2010 Wodehouse Prize, alongside Ian McEwan. The winner will be announced at the Guardian Hay Festival.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Simon Harris on The Art of Finishing
It’s something of an embarrassing admission, but I can’t remember the last time I actually finished reading a book.
As reading is a more or less constant activity for me, there is always something on my 'to read' list. Aside from the plays and other work-in-progress I am asked to read, there is always an array of new material jostling for my attention.
Firstly, there are all the published plays that I feel I should keep up to speed with. Without being able to visit all the new writing theatres, a published text is generally the next best thing, so I keep a ready supply of recently published work to hand. Robert Holman is my current victim.
Additionally, there is a burgeoning range of assorted theoretical and practice-based theatre books. Routledge and Nick Hern seem to be leading the field in this, offering the interested reader a goldmine of insight and access that at one time would have been beyond reach. This is not so bad, I would argue, as I juggle these on a constant basis and constantly cherry-pick ideas that will be useful for my work.
Beyond that, there is a range of non-fiction writing that I feel I should read for one reason or another. This can range from historical writing – for example, reading up on the French Revolution seemed to be something I simply had to do recently, although it doesn’t seem quite as necessary now – or reading semi-philosophical writing that challenges my preconceptions. On that score, I can partially recommend Truth Matters by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom; I say partially, as I haven’t actually finished it yet.
These days novels are a lesser priority for me, but contemporary American fiction still attracts my attention. It may take a while, but I can usually get to the end of a Phillip Roth or a Saul Bellow. Eventually.
Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter was a book I did recently finish.
However, superb as it was, it hung around so long that I had to re-read long sections I had forgotten about in order to make sense of where I was supposed to be starting from. When that became interrupted also, I was temporarily lost in a fog of déjà vu (or maybe that should be déjà lu).
Then there are the guilty pleasures. For me that involves the graphic novel. When I was young, comics were not particularly welcome in our house, as it wasn’t considered proper reading. Pocket money was usually deployed on this surreptitious pursuit and the result was an abiding love of Herge’s Tintin books. However, it’s taken until quite recently for me to accept that reading Frank Miller and Alan Moore was okay. That said, the pictures are really quite handy for short bursts.
The net result of all this is that I now have a churn of about seven or eight books that are in a sad limbo, waiting perpetually to be finished. One of them – David Mitchell’s rather brilliant number9dream – is probably destined to remain unread. I have semi-abandoned it at the second chapter. Having read Mitchell’s Ghostwritten about ten years ago, I know it‘s absolutely necessary to stick with it, which, of course, I haven’t. But there is always hope that I will return to it one day, whereas that will never be true of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic - One Hundred Days of Solitude. I will never forget the look on a friend’s face when I said that I’d given up on it about eighty pages from the end.
I felt like a criminal, as opposed to the restlessly curious junkie that I am.
As reading is a more or less constant activity for me, there is always something on my 'to read' list. Aside from the plays and other work-in-progress I am asked to read, there is always an array of new material jostling for my attention.
Firstly, there are all the published plays that I feel I should keep up to speed with. Without being able to visit all the new writing theatres, a published text is generally the next best thing, so I keep a ready supply of recently published work to hand. Robert Holman is my current victim.
Additionally, there is a burgeoning range of assorted theoretical and practice-based theatre books. Routledge and Nick Hern seem to be leading the field in this, offering the interested reader a goldmine of insight and access that at one time would have been beyond reach. This is not so bad, I would argue, as I juggle these on a constant basis and constantly cherry-pick ideas that will be useful for my work.
Beyond that, there is a range of non-fiction writing that I feel I should read for one reason or another. This can range from historical writing – for example, reading up on the French Revolution seemed to be something I simply had to do recently, although it doesn’t seem quite as necessary now – or reading semi-philosophical writing that challenges my preconceptions. On that score, I can partially recommend Truth Matters by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom; I say partially, as I haven’t actually finished it yet.
These days novels are a lesser priority for me, but contemporary American fiction still attracts my attention. It may take a while, but I can usually get to the end of a Phillip Roth or a Saul Bellow. Eventually.
Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter was a book I did recently finish.
However, superb as it was, it hung around so long that I had to re-read long sections I had forgotten about in order to make sense of where I was supposed to be starting from. When that became interrupted also, I was temporarily lost in a fog of déjà vu (or maybe that should be déjà lu).
Then there are the guilty pleasures. For me that involves the graphic novel. When I was young, comics were not particularly welcome in our house, as it wasn’t considered proper reading. Pocket money was usually deployed on this surreptitious pursuit and the result was an abiding love of Herge’s Tintin books. However, it’s taken until quite recently for me to accept that reading Frank Miller and Alan Moore was okay. That said, the pictures are really quite handy for short bursts.
The net result of all this is that I now have a churn of about seven or eight books that are in a sad limbo, waiting perpetually to be finished. One of them – David Mitchell’s rather brilliant number9dream – is probably destined to remain unread. I have semi-abandoned it at the second chapter. Having read Mitchell’s Ghostwritten about ten years ago, I know it‘s absolutely necessary to stick with it, which, of course, I haven’t. But there is always hope that I will return to it one day, whereas that will never be true of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic - One Hundred Days of Solitude. I will never forget the look on a friend’s face when I said that I’d given up on it about eighty pages from the end.
I felt like a criminal, as opposed to the restlessly curious junkie that I am.
Entrances
For those who've yet to discover the pleasures of Canongate's ambitious, fun and eclectic cultural hub, Meet at the Gate, here's a belated link. A truly wonderful thing to behold, with independent comment on literature, film and music. The site features Welsh authors on Welsh authors and looks at some of the most exciting work out there. Hot and very now. Enjoy.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Friday, 13 November 2009
Questions of Identity
I’m writing a biography of a woman routinely described as Welsh and sometimes, more specifically, Cardiff – as in ‘Cardiff girl’, ‘Cardiff actress’ etc. To be fair, she has also, occasionally, been described as Irish – but my point is, she is rarely identified by the nationality she actually holds. She is now seventy-five years old and a full sixty-nine of those years have been spent outside Wales – including the first fourteen of her life.
This makes me think long and hard about what qualifies you (aside of the Vinnie Jones rule) to be claimed as Welsh.
For instance, at the other end of the spectrum is the distinguished writer Penelope Mortimer who was born in Rhyl, yet doesn’t merit an entry in either the New Companion to the Literature of Wales or in the Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales. She does, however, make the following appearance in the Oxford Companion to English Literature: ‘MORTIMER, Penelope Ruth, nee Fletcher (1918...) novelist, born in North Wales and educated at London University; her works, with their emphasis on frankness about female experience, contributed to the development of the woman’s novel in the 1960s.’
Her career as a writer was actually far broader than this entry suggests; as well as publishing nine novels, a collection of short stories, two volumes of autobiography, a travel book and (bizarrely) a biography of the Queen Mother, she was also film critic for the Observer, an Agony Aunt for the Daily Mail and adapted Nigel Nicholson’s, Portrait of A Marriage, for the BBC in 1990. With her then husband, John Mortimer, she wrote the screenplay for the Otto Preminger film Bunny Lake is Missing and, in 1974, The New Yorker printed her novel Long Distance in its entirety – the first time they had done so since J. D. Salinger’s Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction a decade earlier. Hard to know then, given all that, why she has been wiped from the Welsh literary canon...
She, of course, may not have identified herself as ‘Welsh’ and she certainly didn’t set any of her novels here. She did, however, write about her childhood in Rhyl and the clergyman father who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate the Soviet persecution of the Russian church. She also wrote about the universal experiences of women in the post-war world of illegal abortions, illicit affairs and paralysing marriages – experiences which were as familiar to Welsh women as they were to their English and Scottish counterparts. It’s ten years ago last month since Mortimer died – time perhaps to acknowledge her existence?
Sarah Broughton
This makes me think long and hard about what qualifies you (aside of the Vinnie Jones rule) to be claimed as Welsh.
For instance, at the other end of the spectrum is the distinguished writer Penelope Mortimer who was born in Rhyl, yet doesn’t merit an entry in either the New Companion to the Literature of Wales or in the Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales. She does, however, make the following appearance in the Oxford Companion to English Literature: ‘MORTIMER, Penelope Ruth, nee Fletcher (1918...) novelist, born in North Wales and educated at London University; her works, with their emphasis on frankness about female experience, contributed to the development of the woman’s novel in the 1960s.’
Her career as a writer was actually far broader than this entry suggests; as well as publishing nine novels, a collection of short stories, two volumes of autobiography, a travel book and (bizarrely) a biography of the Queen Mother, she was also film critic for the Observer, an Agony Aunt for the Daily Mail and adapted Nigel Nicholson’s, Portrait of A Marriage, for the BBC in 1990. With her then husband, John Mortimer, she wrote the screenplay for the Otto Preminger film Bunny Lake is Missing and, in 1974, The New Yorker printed her novel Long Distance in its entirety – the first time they had done so since J. D. Salinger’s Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction a decade earlier. Hard to know then, given all that, why she has been wiped from the Welsh literary canon...
She, of course, may not have identified herself as ‘Welsh’ and she certainly didn’t set any of her novels here. She did, however, write about her childhood in Rhyl and the clergyman father who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate the Soviet persecution of the Russian church. She also wrote about the universal experiences of women in the post-war world of illegal abortions, illicit affairs and paralysing marriages – experiences which were as familiar to Welsh women as they were to their English and Scottish counterparts. It’s ten years ago last month since Mortimer died – time perhaps to acknowledge her existence?
Sarah Broughton
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Gift Subscription Offer
Give a gift subscription to New Welsh Review and you'll be giving someone a year of memorable reading: four issues a year that are dynamic, curious and lively, with engaging articles and the finest poetry, fiction and new writing from Wales – and the wider world. Subscribers also have the chance to enter our free prize draws, with the chance to win fabulous literary prizes.
And all this for just £19.
Visit our Gift Subscription page now and save 20% on the usual price for a wonderful – and different – gift that will last all year.
And all this for just £19.
Visit our Gift Subscription page now and save 20% on the usual price for a wonderful – and different – gift that will last all year.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
When is a biography not a biography?
Answer: when it’s a metabiography.
I’ve been thinking about how to write a biography of a woman whose major claim to fame (or, in her case, infamy) is that she was briefly married to a man who has, at my last count, generated fifty-seven different biographies, one autobiography and countless newspaper inches and television documentaries. Typing his name into ebay reveals one thousand and forty-five items currently up for grabs. That’s forty odd pages of talking birthday cards, T shirts, thimbles, mousemats, cuff links and fully poseable action figures (with ‘real-like heads’) – never mind the ubiquitous DVDs, posters and photographs. The man isn’t an actor, he's a manufacturing business like no other!
I wondered about who in Wales might be metabiographical material. Richard Burton and Dylan Thomas, of course, spring to mind, but the ebay test disappointingly throws up only six hundred and eleven items for Burton (some of which are actually for the other Richard Burton – translator of The Kama Sutra) and four hundred and twenty for Thomas. There are no thimbles or mousemats and certainly no fully poseable action figures with ‘real-like heads’ – definitely a gap in the market there. In fact, the items are almost all DVDs (Burton) or books (Thomas). Of course – one was an actor, the other a writer. Yet although entire, industrial-sized, myths have also grown up around these two, this is not reflected in wider popular culture – as in the case of the man who was once married to the woman I’m writing about.
My final, deeply scientific, bit of research was checking out the Brontës on ebay. This is largely because the current trend of metabiographies includes the acclaimed The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller (as well as The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Sarah Churchwell. Marilyn on ebay – don’t even go there. A whopping five thousand and twenty seven items including ballpoint pens and pillow cases. I myself bought a pair of Marilyn flip-flops from a charity shop in Newmarket last weekend which, come to think of it, I could now sell on ebay thereby upping the count to five thousand and twenty eight.). Back to the Brontës. For all that they are now collectively known as a phenomenon, they could only rise to one hundred and seventy six items. Interestingly, these were largely books about them rather than by them – meat and drink for the metabiographer of course, with multiple representations galore!
So, how am I to write the biography – meta or otherwise? ‘Why?’ is the most useful starting point: the career is small and the books about her add up to one, unreliable, autobiography. Yet the legacy is lasting and notorious – why? Because the fifty-seven biographies and miles of column inches about her erstwhile husband continue to peddle myths and rumours about her as ‘the indisputable truth’. And because it’s a great story.
Sarah Broughton
I’ve been thinking about how to write a biography of a woman whose major claim to fame (or, in her case, infamy) is that she was briefly married to a man who has, at my last count, generated fifty-seven different biographies, one autobiography and countless newspaper inches and television documentaries. Typing his name into ebay reveals one thousand and forty-five items currently up for grabs. That’s forty odd pages of talking birthday cards, T shirts, thimbles, mousemats, cuff links and fully poseable action figures (with ‘real-like heads’) – never mind the ubiquitous DVDs, posters and photographs. The man isn’t an actor, he's a manufacturing business like no other!
I wondered about who in Wales might be metabiographical material. Richard Burton and Dylan Thomas, of course, spring to mind, but the ebay test disappointingly throws up only six hundred and eleven items for Burton (some of which are actually for the other Richard Burton – translator of The Kama Sutra) and four hundred and twenty for Thomas. There are no thimbles or mousemats and certainly no fully poseable action figures with ‘real-like heads’ – definitely a gap in the market there. In fact, the items are almost all DVDs (Burton) or books (Thomas). Of course – one was an actor, the other a writer. Yet although entire, industrial-sized, myths have also grown up around these two, this is not reflected in wider popular culture – as in the case of the man who was once married to the woman I’m writing about.
My final, deeply scientific, bit of research was checking out the Brontës on ebay. This is largely because the current trend of metabiographies includes the acclaimed The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller (as well as The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Sarah Churchwell. Marilyn on ebay – don’t even go there. A whopping five thousand and twenty seven items including ballpoint pens and pillow cases. I myself bought a pair of Marilyn flip-flops from a charity shop in Newmarket last weekend which, come to think of it, I could now sell on ebay thereby upping the count to five thousand and twenty eight.). Back to the Brontës. For all that they are now collectively known as a phenomenon, they could only rise to one hundred and seventy six items. Interestingly, these were largely books about them rather than by them – meat and drink for the metabiographer of course, with multiple representations galore!
So, how am I to write the biography – meta or otherwise? ‘Why?’ is the most useful starting point: the career is small and the books about her add up to one, unreliable, autobiography. Yet the legacy is lasting and notorious – why? Because the fifty-seven biographies and miles of column inches about her erstwhile husband continue to peddle myths and rumours about her as ‘the indisputable truth’. And because it’s a great story.
Sarah Broughton
Guest blogger – Sarah Broughton
Over the next three months, Sarah Broughton will be joining us with guest posts. Sarah is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and her excellent debut novel, Other Useful Numbers, was published by Parthian in 2008. Sarah will be dropping in to contribute news and views.
This marks the start of a series of guest bloggers on the NWR blog. Enjoy.
This marks the start of a series of guest bloggers on the NWR blog. Enjoy.
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, daughter of Dylan Thomas, dies aged 66
Tributes paid following the sad news of the death of Aeronwy Thomas. Read the full story here.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Forward Prize nomination for Meirion Jordan
Congratulations to Meirion Jordan, who has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Read the story here.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
TV Matters and Culture Coming Out of the Closet
A blog post over at The Kenyon Review on the power of television in bringing literature to the people, picking up on the sales hike for poets featured on the Beeb's recent poetry season. Myself, I've been fairly astonished at the number of friends and acquaintances, unlikely suspects many, who've tuned into, and actually (whisper it, now) enjoyed, the season. Could it be that Britain is secretly home to many thousands of people whose interests actually extend beyond Kerry Katona's lipo?
The season was, on the whole, stylishly executed. A few misfires, sure – the Donne programme had rather a little too much of Fiona Shaw, and an Eliot documentary, sanitised as it was, managed to make one of the most self-contradictory and complex figures in twentieth-century literature seem quite squarely dull – but some expert negotiation of the difficulties of balancing accessibility with intelligence elsewhere.
I hope the season's success will prompt the BBC to start regularly developing more of the programming that once marked them out as a gold standard of arts broadcasting in the world, rather than be simply regarded as an exception, a curio.
Let's have contemporary writers and other artists talking about the tradition. Let's have contemporary writers and other artists talking about the now, while we're at it. Can someone rescue Monitor from the archives and press play? Can someone develop a Monitor fit for the twenty-first century?
The season was, on the whole, stylishly executed. A few misfires, sure – the Donne programme had rather a little too much of Fiona Shaw, and an Eliot documentary, sanitised as it was, managed to make one of the most self-contradictory and complex figures in twentieth-century literature seem quite squarely dull – but some expert negotiation of the difficulties of balancing accessibility with intelligence elsewhere.
I hope the season's success will prompt the BBC to start regularly developing more of the programming that once marked them out as a gold standard of arts broadcasting in the world, rather than be simply regarded as an exception, a curio.
Let's have contemporary writers and other artists talking about the tradition. Let's have contemporary writers and other artists talking about the now, while we're at it. Can someone rescue Monitor from the archives and press play? Can someone develop a Monitor fit for the twenty-first century?
Monday, 22 June 2009
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Required reading?
Scottish literature cut out of English GCSE syllabus
You may now turn over your papers and begin.
You may now turn over your papers and begin.
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