An artist to watch...

 
 
 

Just discovered an excellent artist on fiverr who designed a cover for my collection of very short fiction named Dragonfly.

I like her work very much and looking at the range of subjects she is handling she can imagine and execute very complex projects from quite distant fields.  Her fiverr name is janielescueta

I hope she continues to develop her business and becomes the well-known artist she deserves to be.

Richard Ford: "You don't write it down, and it becomes a worry..."

Richard Ford at the St. Louis County Library on Lindbergh

Richard Ford arrived at 7:10 PM on March 8, 2013, at the St. Louis County Library on Lindbergh to find a steamy, hot room full of people.  The thermostat was perhaps playing tricks, a person who introduced the person who introduced Ford (ahem, the latter being John Dalton* from UMSL) said.  Ford did what writers typically do in situations like these: he read to his audience.  First, from one of his short stories taking place in St. Louis, then from the book he was promoting, Canada.  I do not believe he impressed with his reading skills (the way a T.C. Boyle did a year or so ago.)  But he did make a few interesting comments, and here are some that captured my interest.   

First, he discussed what happens in a writer's head, and asserted that a writer's mind talks in twenty voices at the same time.  "Now," Ford said, "everyone talks in voices - for example, when you go to the doctor and listen to what he's telling you, you play his voice in your head along with yours. But there is a difference between writers and the rest of the world," said Ford.  "We, writers, have use for it, this habit of playing a crazy assortment of voices in our head.   We write it down on the paper," he said, "and it becomes a story.  You, on the other hand, you don't write it down on the paper - and it becomes a worry."

 

About him choosing to leave a Mississipi plagued by racial tensions:

"I did not have the courage to stay, I just left.  Because if I stayed, I would have fallen in one bad place or another in an unpredictable way... Because I was not strong willed...I was callow, in a way...so I just thought - go off to Michigan State ...(who)... let me in, I think, as kind of a racial condiment..."

 

Why he hasn't written more about Mississipi:

"...Because everyone has done it before, and better than me! When I won the Pulitzer prize," Ford continued, "I wasn't even the first person on my block to win the Pulitzer Prize..." (referring to faimous Mississipians who lived nearby, Faulkner, Welty, or to Percy who lived in New Orleans.) 

Although short, I thought this was a pleasant evening, with remarkable insights.

*- I was happy to discover Dalton, who was all business, quite articulate and very much into marketing.  I'll check out his books.

The Avalon project at Yale - a treasure for writers

I discovered a treasure:  Project Avalon at Yale

Below I am pasting an official document pulled out randomly - but how fascinating it is that each such document carries chilling stories with it.  As an example, Hans-Georg von Friedeburg ("VON FRIEDEBURG" below) is the only german who signed the surrender of both the German Armed Forces in Northern Europe and of the German Navy.  He took poison two weeks later.

 

Act of Military Surrender Signed at Berlin on the 8th day of May, 1945

59 Stat. 1957; Executive Agreement Series 502

1. We the undersigned, acting by authority of the German High Command, hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Supreme High Command of the Red Army all forces on land, at sea, and in the air who are at this date under German control.
2. The German High Command will at once issue orders to all German military, naval and air authorities and to all forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European time on 8th May 1945, to remain in the positions occupied at that time and to disarm completely, handing over their weapons and equipment to the local allied commanders or officers designated by Representatives of the Allied Supreme Commands. No ship, vessel, or aircraft is to be scuttled, or any damage done to their hull, machinery or equipment, and also to machines of all kinds, armament, apparatus, and all the technical means of prosecution of war in general.
3. The German High Command will at once issue to the appropriate commanders, and ensure the carrying out of any further orders issued by the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and by the Supreme High Command of the Red Army.
4. This act of military surrender is without prejudice to, and will be superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by, or on behalf of the United Nations and applicable to Germany and the German armed forces as a whole.
5. In the event of the German High Command or any of the forces under their control failing to act in accordance with this Act of Surrender, the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and the Supreme High Command of the Red Army will take such punitive or other action as they deem appropriate.
6. This Act is drawn up in the English, Russian and German languages. The English and Russian are the only authentic texts.

Signed at BERLIN on the 8th day of May, 1945.

VON FRIEDEBURG
KEITEL
STUMPF

On behalf of the German High Command
IN THE PRESENCE OF:

On behalf of the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force
A. W. TEDDER

On behalf of the Supreme High Command of the Red Army
G. ZHUKOV

At the signing also were present as witnesses:

F. DE LATTRE-TASSlGNY
General Commanding in Chief First French Army
CARL SPAATZ
General, Commanding United States Strategic Air Forces

 

 

Irving: I seemed to have a need to want to be alone

"...I had a need to come home from school by myself...  There was that desire and a comfort on being alone…"

 

              John Irving - How to tell if you're a writer

 

 

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture

Just get people to stop reading them. 
― Ray Bradbury

"Language," she said, "is the one thing I really understand..."

I love A.S. Byatt for many things, chief among which being a slim book of stories she published about twenty years ago, named The Matisse Stories. One jewel after another, those three stories. I was reminded of her genius as I was looking the other day through one of them, named The Chinese Lobster. 

On a margin of that book of stories I had jotted down a comment Byatt once made about language. "Language," she said, "is the one thing I really understand more than I care about sex or cooking or families or anything.... My best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband."

And I thought: This is so true for us all!  We all go back to certain writers to find solace, and to be among people that show us that the world makes sense, after all. 

My best relationships, as Byatt would say, are with these people...

And so, here are, nine people who keep us honest.  They told the truth the way they saw it.  That's why it feels good to take a look at them from time to time and make fun of them.  To tell them how funny they are, how incovenienced, how bizarrely familiar, how necessary they are to us. 

For example, poor Kawabata in the middle ... he got all shinny because of the blitz and looks like a saint. 

Hesse, as you can see, in his upper right corner, is all severe and dispeptic. 

A look at Marquez, and you think, gee, look how happy this guy is (and no wonder why, he and Sir Vidia are the only one still alive among the nine!). 

Or Beckett! Remember the interviewer who made the mistake of asking Beckett about his difficult, hard chidhood?  I like to imagine Beckett looking puzzled at the interviewer, with that long bird face of his, and exclaiming, as he did: "What difficult childhood?  I had a very happy childhood!" 

And so it goes.

What brings the words to you

I have just finished Paul Auster's latest memoir ("examination of his life"), named "Winter Journal."  I found it to be an OK book, sometimes interesting.  The Guardian reviews it and utters the word narcisism, and perhaps rightfully so.  Overall, the book is like the bottom of the ocean: profound - here and there.  It is, however, easy to read, as most Auster books are.  What caught my attention is that Auster mentions a "scalding, epiphanic moment of clarity that pushed [him] through a crack in the universe and allowed [him] to begin again."  That "scalding" moment happened after the writer attended a dance rehearsal led by a mysterious choreographer named Nina W.  That moment of artistic fusion with an art otherwise "unknown to him", as he confesses, prompted Auster to write again.  In the fragment I am posting below, Auster takes his time to dissect the organic relationship between writing and dance.  Here it is - and remember, this book is written in the second person. 

"In order to do what you do, you need to walk.  Walking is what brings the words to you, what allows you to hear the rhytms of the words as you write them in your head.  One foot forward, and then the other foot forward, the double drumbeat of the heart.  Two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, two feet.  This, and then that.  That, and then this.  Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin.  You sit at your desk in order to write down the words, but in your head you are still walking, always walking, and what you hear is the rhythm of the heart, the beating of your heart.  "Mendelstam: I wonder how many pairs of sandals Dante wore out while working on the Commedia."  Writing as a lesser form of dance."  - Paul Auster, Winter Journal

PS: And, no, I do not agree with his last sentence above...