Hope in dark times
Just when things couldn't get any worse, they did. But it turned out they didn't really, and Sara's right, I worry too much.
I've just come back into my office, and I heard this horrible rasping from the left wing of my iMac. My mind is going, "It's the fan, right? It can't be the hard drive, it can't be the hard drive, aiyeeeee."
Careful investigation has revealed the real problem. I had an online jazz station playing, way down low, and what I heard was the drummer's hi-hat going tska-tska-tska and scaring the shit out of me.
Good News 'R Us, eh?
Earlier case of falling-sky syndrome.
Worrywart (alt. worry wart) from eymonline.com: 1956, from comic strip "Out Our Way" by U.S. cartoonist J.R. Williams (1888-1957). According to those familiar with the strip, Worry Wart was the name of a character who caused others to worry, ... the inverse of the current colloquial meaning. The Word Detective has more.
The Book of Answers
C.Y. “Gopi” Gopinath, a Bangkok-based writer of note, has just published his first novel, which promises even greater success than his globetrotting chronicle Travels with the Fish (HarperCollins India, 1999). The Book of Answers, released just this month, also by HarperCollins India, has already soared to #10 on the bestseller list in that country.
I’m going to don my “let’s pitch this book to a modern market” hat, something I find hard to do with my own books and hesitate to do with Gopinath’s debut novel for fear of doing it an injustice. Anyway, here goes:
Think, an Indian Jonathan Swift turns to magical realism with a message for readers everywhere.
Alternatively, we could describe the novel as a fabulist satire wherein a Clarke Kent hero represents the potential of Everyman to take a stand and fight against those absurd and often evil (often bureaucratic) forces that shape our lives. Readers in Thailand might almost believe that former and newly de facto PM Thaksin Shinawatra had seen the book in manuscript and used it as a manual for retaking power.
The book is compulsively readable. I found myself reluctant to skim passages for fear of missing any of the gems scattered across every page. Gopinath sketches his hugely entertaining characters with sure and economical strokes. I enjoyed all of them, from the Convener and the godman to B Plus and the “doctor of venereal diseases,” with his very entertaining medical examination of Pat and Rose, the central characters. The author’s treatment of Indian English, meanwhile, is both warmly funny and minimalist, in no way obtrusive. In the course of one entertaining dialogue, for example, “codswallop” devolves by stages into “shit,” the speaker’s Anglophiliac try for elegance nicely derailed. “More banging for a buck,” in another conversation, is enough to comically conjure, without further ado, the voice Gopinath wanted. “Gourment” (see the extract, below) is how Indian bureaucrats pronounce “government,” and it includes connotations sorely missing in the conventional expression.
The book is also a structural success. Among other features, it presents an excellent conclusion, something too many otherwise good novels lack. En route, Gopinath consistently leaves the reader hanging at the end of each chapter, wanting more, and introduces each successive chapter with a surprise.
In the first chapter, the hero’s proto-obsessive compulsive negotiation of Mumbai's streets and his collision with the Fat Man is superbly realized. And what an idea is introduced shortly thereafter! A blind calligrapher of unknown provenance has inscribed wisdom for times not yet here in a mysterious tome known as The Book of Answers, recording details of a future foretold by that calligrapher's lover, chief cook for a client's household. That’s followed hard upon by an introduction to “The Ministry of Errors and Regrets.” This venerable institution applies the principle of wringing every possible lesson from any mistake by repeating that error as often as possible. Gopinath adopts a wonderfully comic voice, kind of like Flann O'Brien describing a meeting chaired by the Mad Hatter, the agenda set by Kafka. (The latter individual would have appreciated a ministerial interview to determine whether Pat, the hero, and Rose, his companion, were rich or poor.)
The story as a whole is a delightful tapestry woven from such threads as the eponymous Book of Answers itself; the Ministry for Errors and Regrets; Rose's scrapbook of omens; the dynamic between Pat, his friend Arindam, and Rose, who turns out to be Arindam's wife; Pat's comic love-life with Rose; and the rather moving development of Pat's relationship with his son Tippy, as Tippy himself is gradually revealed as much more than the klutz we first meet, the lad with “content-free eyes” tipped back in a chair chewing gum.
Here’s just a taste from the hilariously barbed banquet:
“We live in times of world ending. Kali yug, as we say in the scriptures. The Convener believes our country is in doldrums. Gourment is committed but man can only do so much. Shri Ishwar Prasad is facing challenges of lifetime, struggling with national problems such as upcoming elections, crime, literacy, terrorism, democracy, women's liberation, abortion, sexual slavery, judicial backlog, and a bankrupt treasury. While he is doing all this —”
“We are not fooled,” said Rose. “Your boss heads a government in charge of pulling wool over people's eyes. The reality is that it’s a government of lies.” Her eyes blazed at the Convener’s Personal Assistant.
“You make a good point,” Janki Ram continued reasonably. “But concept of pulling wool is rooted in Hindu philosophy and spirituality. Shri Ishwar Prasad says reality is overrated. It's a nice idea, of course, but it doesn't exist. The Convener’s only wants to make this acceptable to our struggling millions. He is not sidetracked by the facts. He is concerned with the truth.”
Such ideas, expressed differently, figure prominently in another book I've just read. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, by Chris Hedges, is a bleak jeremiad that appears to leave little option other than fleeing the planet. I prefer the darkly comic recourse offered by The Book of Answers.
Available as an e-book from Smashwords.
Another great story, in my opinion, one that also hinges on the discovery of a strange and magical book, is Gould's Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan.
Extra, added bonus: a couple of Salmon Rushdie takes on “magic realism” and “truth” in fiction.
Freeing the teabags
“Tedium is my medium, and boredom is my game.” (original coinage, Mr Jack Shackaway, Esq.)
Currently I'm producing most of my adrenaline at night. And this morning I awoke tired and anxious, haunted by a dream wherein a gang of Irish writers threatened me with terrible things, the details of which I can’t remember. I do know groupies played a role in developments, which maybe explains why my personal timecock was pointing insistently to noon or thereabouts, even though it was only 6.30am. This kind of dream typically appears when I’m getting really bored. Right now, e.g., I haven’t had an adventure in months. It’s time to kick over the traces, get out of town and into trouble somewhere.
But this morning I haven’t got any farther than the Sugar & Sweet Coffee Shop, a ten-minute walk down the road. In this coffee shop, they tie the teabag strings to the cup handles as though they fearred the bags will try to escape. If it weren’t for the bumper crop of miniskirted and short-shorted humdingers that infest this place, I’d never come in here.
Still, I really hate having to free my teabags and then find a place to put them till it’s time to ask for a refill of hot water.
Thai lesson for the day: kee niaow = stingy, mean.
And maybe I am. But karmic merit from my emancipation of the teabags cancels out the meanness.
Meanwhile I sit here with my laptop computer and tea, indistinguishable from hundreds of thousands of other people sitting in coffee shops around Thailand looking writerly in front of their laptops, except for the fact most of the others are drinking coffee instead, and don’t have to cope with hobbled teabags.
And I’m purely bored.
Click on the miniskirt for a haiku by Collin Piprell.
See how bored I am?
Nirvana, freedom, etc.
I'm reposting this item (originally put up by Jack Shackaway 22 April 2010), in light of the fact that Bill Page's Nirvana Experiments are now available in e-book form. Well worth reading.
July 2011 update: The Nirvana Experiments are now available in e-book form on DCO Books, Amazon, and Smashwords.
Goodbye writer’s garret in town and hello moobaan at the edge of the universe, ostensibly in suburban Bangkok. Bill Page, Bangkok old-timer and columnist of note under various names, has recently bought a townhouse and set up shop with his companion, her daughter and two demented imps from Hell passing themselves off as dogs. He’s been thinking of ways to lure old cronies to join him, probably seeking confirmation that he himself has done the right thing. This is from his latest pitch: “You would love to see some of the stuff they've got lounging around the swimming pool. Woooo-eeee! I think you can still get a 100,000-baht discount on a townhouse if you hurry. We'll put in a good word for you in case they're afraid of downgrading the neighborhood.”
Yeah, but.
First—as my own companion du jour expresses it, aptly if not so happily—I’m afraid home-owning would infringe on my freedoms. (We won’t even talk about my bank account, here.) And if I did want to buy a house, I can’t think of many places I’d more rather not live in than the outskirts of Bangkok. Besides which fact, Bill has been misled, from what I hear. What he calls a swimming pool is really an ornamental fish pond, and those babes he refers to aren’t lounging; they’re fishing for carp. Given his profile, furthermore, if he should hear the cry "Thar she blows!" while he’s floating in this pond, he’d best watch out for incoming harpoons.
Yeah, well, those who live in glass houses, right? But rest assured that any houses I live in, glass or otherwise, will be rented.
William Page’s collection of stories of spiritual quests from around Asia, The Nirvana Experiments, (formerly published by White Lotus [Bangkok], which no longer handles fiction), deserves a new home.
Home-grown back therapies rool!
Caption: Our adventurer, with his new office chair, just after summiting the roof of his apartment building five times in a row without oxygen.
Breaking news on the old-crockish falling-apart front: I've just cured a rogue back, gone bad in the prime o’ me loif and all, by giving my office chair to the guard downstairs in favor of sitting on an exercise ball at my desktop computer, alternating this with standing at my filing cabinet with a laptop on a shelving plank resting across the second drawer from the top. The rest of the self-prescribed therapy has entailed running up and down the fire-escape stairs till I'm all fucked up.
And it has worked. One day last week I had trouble getting off a bed; now I appear to be fighting fit.
But the really good news is that I narrowly missed paying 45,000 baht for an Aeron ergonomic office chair instead. (Cost of alternative therapy: 450 baht for the 75cm exercise ball—that’s 100 times less than the Aeron technological miracle.) Medical note: That makes me feel good all over, not just in the back area.
By way of celebration, Sara yesterday bought a leather-upholstered lounger for the living room, which means I now have a third work station.
A link just provided by Jeff the Giant Anthopologist, the NY Times on what to do with a back.
Here's a theme song I can safely pack away for future reference, sometime way down the road, I hope:
Ain’t Gonna Need This House No Longer (Stuart Hamblen)
And an extra, added bonus, only because I like it:
Truckin' (The Grateful Dead).
Digital technologies: The great levelers
Lonely Planet has long made everyone an adventurer, IMHO, thereby sapping much travel of any real adventure. The Discovery Channel and National Geographic, from what I hear in the street, have made nearly any experience you can imagine accessible from the comfort of your own armchair.
"So you went walking in Antarctica? (Yawn.) Whatever. I saw Antarctica on TV last week. Yeah, it was awesome. All those fuckin' penguins, eh?"
Etc.
And now Google Goggles will make anyone with the price of a smartphone a polymath, a know-it-all.
"Yo, what's that?"
"Just a sec'. Okay, yeah. Seems it's a three-dimensional shadow of a tesseract... With a ribbon on it.
“A tesseract? What the hell is a tesseract?”
“Just a sec'…"
“Whoa! Forget about tesseracts. Lookit that babe at the bar."
"Awesome."
Penguins and babes are equally awesome, as it just about anything else that impinges on one's phenomenal field, unless it's "fuckin' awesome," in which case it might be mildly interesting.
He holds his phone up so he can let Google Goggles check it out. "Uh-oh."
"What?"
"See the way the muscles between her eyes push up when she's smiling?"
"Yeah?"
"She's gaming us, my boy. A sincere smile, the muscles would be pulling down."
"Yeah?" says the other, pointing his own phone at the cutie-patootie,* snapping her photo and then consulting Google Goggles. "Check this out. Here's her Facebook page, and look here at what she says her interests are. I don't care if she's sincere or not; I want me some of that."
His friend, who is really no friend at all as you can tell by his smile, neglects to mention the medical report that's just popped up on his own phone.
Digital technology is making everyone a writer, robbing real writers of any respect for their calling or their craft. Digital technology is leaving us with fewer and fewer genuine readers; issues of relative literary quality are being drained of any force. Digital technology, together with TV, mass tourism and mass tourism guides, has trivialized travel and adventure. Digital technology, now, is giving us all the power to learn anything there is to know about everything and everyone, but we still won’t know what to do with all this information. Information is not wisdom, I am a reactionary old crock, Kindles are better reading devices than iPads, etc.
What else can I say to cheer you up this fine afternoon?
*Note. I used ‘IMHO’ earlier, which cancels ‘cutie-patootie’ in terms of my with-itness creds.
Incoming, incoming! Or, the problem with glass houses
I've decided one of the comments on my last blog installment merits a post in itself, together with my response. This is from a friend and professional editor:
"Is “Eyes filled with disquiet” a full sentence or is it a noun modified by a phrase? Do you mean to say the eyes, they filled with disquiet? Or these are eyes that are filled with disquiet?"
My initial response:
"The latter, of course."
Then, following further reflection:
If that isn't "of course," then I suspect a failure of style and a lesson in humility. If the latter, then how would this ride?
"Disquieted, street dogs slink panting from shade to shade."
OR
"Street dogs slink from shade to shade."
Arguably, "slink" includes the notion of disquiet, in this last draft.
OR
Maybe I shouldn't have worried about it in the first place, since--as some had already suggested--no one would have noticed a touch of stylistic tinniness anyway.
Stones hurled from a glass house
Bangkok Noir is enjoying favorable review, both locally and abroad. But I’d like to critique the second sentence of my own contribution to that story collection, “Hot Enough to Kill.” In fact, I suggest that readers take a pen and revise it.
Here’s the printed version (not mine—I swear that some gremlin on my computer vandalized the sentence; I have two copies of the story that read the way I wrote them, and two more corrupted versions):
Eyes are filled with disquiet; street dogs slink panting from shade to shade.
Here’s the way it should read:
Eyes filled with disquiet, street dogs slink panting from shade to shade.
Okay, maybe. But like, whatever, eh?
Style? I don’t need no stinkin’ style.
This is my point. Friends and others have said why worry? It reads okay the way it is. “Nobody’s going to notice.”
What? A writer labors over every sentence, every word, and nobody’s going to notice? What the hell are we talking about, here?
Here’s Laura Miller’s fourth tip for writers (“A reader's advice to writers: A word to the novelist on how to write better books,” Salon, Feb 23, 2010, emphasis mine):
“Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can't recognize "good writing" or don't value it that much. Believe me, I wish this were otherwise, and I do urge all readers to polish their prose and avoid clichés. However, I've seen as many books ruined by too much emphasis on style as by too little. As Leonard himself notes at the end of his list, most of his advice can be summed up as, "if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." Or, as playwright David Hare put it in his list, "Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it." But whether you write lush or (please!) transparent prose, keep in mind that in most cases, style is largely a technical matter appreciated by specialists. You probably don't go to movies to see the lighting and photography, and most readers don't come to books in search of breathtaking sentences.”
Miller is an accomplished critic and journalist (see her bio, below). But I believe she has muddled “style” proper with “voice,” which too often amounts to little more than affectation or literary idiosyncracy. I’d argue that style refers to the mechanics of accomplishing what a writer intends in a way that makes the reader’s job as easy as possible, and that competent writers will always do everything they can to respect rules of style. (Though competent writers may break any and all rules of style in a good cause, as I’ve suggested in an earlier post.)
But Miller first sentence (my emphasis) could be interpreted as confirming an ever-more prevalent attitude that prose style is no real issue. It’s all “like, whatever; let’s just get on with the story.”
That attitude suggests the difference between a potboiler, e.g., a ripping good yarn nicely plotted, but one best read aboard a lurching bus somewhere in upcountry Burma, where you enjoy the advantage of catching no more than every fourth phrase or so—making do with the gist of things—plus, in a country short on toilet paper and long on stomach bugs, you can apply finished pages to emergencies. It can be a mistake to stop and actually read the prose. Attention to the cardboard characters and wooden dialogue reveals apparent contempt for the reader—a blithe assumption on the part of author, editor and publisher that it doesn’t matter, no will notice anyway.
With writers such as Robert Bolano or David Foster Wallace, no mention just two currently popular “literary” authors, every phrase, every sentence, rewards attention. Or stop to consider a V.S. Naipaul story, where the prose is all but invisible, a minimalist prop for this magician to conjure characters and settings. Elmore Leonard’s prose is similarly transparent. This master of style aims to do no more than entertain, and that he does, in spades. However much I’ve enjoyed his books, though, they disappear from my mental palate the moment I finish reading. Naipaul’s stories can remain with you forever after, coloring the way you experience you world.
Anyway, here's a parting word from Elmore Leonard. “My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
10 Rules of Writing, Elmore Leonard
Bio from Miller’s page on Slate:
In 1995, Laura Miller helped to co-found Salon.com, where she is currently a staff writer. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, where she wrote the Last Word column for two years. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" (Little, Brown, 2008) and the editor of "The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors" (Penguin, 2000). She lives in New York.
Get your free books here: What’s good enough for Paulo Coelho…
This is to announce a new feature of this blogsite—a new page, and a source of free books for those who ask. (Click on “FREE BOOKS,” at the top of this page.)
I’ve been inspired by eminent author Paulo Coelho and his recent blog about his own “Piracy Page,” and the merits of giving his work away for free. (Comments on his post express a range of attitudes toward the issues of piracy and creative products being offered for free. For other perspectives see my post from a year ago.)
One advantage of giving books away for free, or so goes a common argument, is that this actually boosts sales. So, willing to believe anything, I’m climbing on the bandwagon. Exactly which books will be on offer will change from time to time. (Sometimes none may be available for free.) Visitors are encouraged to check to see whether there isn’t something new they’d like to read.
Sara raises a good point, a possible lesson in humility. What if no one wants these items, even for free?
Writerly occupational hazards: Ersatz creativity (boozing)
Inebriation is a false Muse. As seductive as they may be, chemical substitutes for true creative intoxication don’t work.
Maybe there are exceptions that prove this rule. Malcolm Lowry, e.g., did much field research for his brilliant novel Under the Volcano, which included a main protagonist who was drinking himself to death. (Lowry, unfortunately, perhaps in his quest for verisimilitude, was himself to go all the way at an early age.) Emulating his own hard-boiled detective protagonists, writer Micky Spillane claimed he’d go to the office, get his feet up on his desk, crack a bottle of whiskey and dictate the next book off the top of his head to his (leggy) secretary. I can almost believe him, having read a couple of his stories way back when I was a boy. Though I suspect he asked his secretary to have a quick look at his punctuation, after she washed out his shot glass and ashtray and before sending the ms. to the publisher.
Generally, though, writing and boozing don’t mix.
James Joyce had this to say about matters:
Boozing does not necessarily have to go hand in hand with being a writer, as seems to be the concept in America. I therefore solemnly declare to all young men tyring to become writers that they do not actually have to become drunkards first.
Samuel Johnson, with his usual verbal parsimony, suggested this:
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
What the hell. I’m moved to coin an aphorism of my own:
Our fiction-writing faculties may also produce splendid daydreams. Especially when inflamed by alcohol, these in turn conduce to celebrating one’s literary awards before they’re awarded, not to mention counting one’s groupies before they’ve hatched.
Our friend Jack Shackaway says all that’s rubbish. He tells me that boozing provides him with much literary lumber for the building. In fact, here’s something he has just passed me:
“Doctor, doctor,” I say. “I am suffering from a chronic hangover.”
“Yes,” she tells me. “That is an occupational hazard of piss artistry, and there is no cure unless you find another line of work.”
“But all I know is writing.”
“Then we can only treat the symptoms. There is no cure, although I personally find that a Bloody Mary with double vodka and a megadose of vitamins B and C on the side can work wonders.”
At this point in my dream the doctor takes to looking much younger and shapelier and she starts to remove her clothes, and I’m wondering whether this is part of the treatment, when I’m awakened by a nurse.
I see my doctor riding shotgun in the background. Then she comes forward to say, “It’s confirmed. You have dengue fever.”
Dengue fever, eh? When you’ve had as many force-10 hangovers as I’ve come up with these past months, you laugh at dengue fever. Almost.
I make a grab for the nurse, but then I wake up again, and I’m at home.
And it’s really a hangover I’m looking at after all
QED, eh? (Referring to my earlier claim re. drinking and writing.)
A last perspective, this from Philip Larkin:
Get stewed.
Books are a load of crap.
That, and the other literary quotes, aside from my own, are from Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anedcotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights, by John Winokur.
The cartoon illustration is from “The Joy of Hangovers" in Bangkok Old Hand, by Collin Piprell (out of print).
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