"Yes - oh dear, yes - the novel tells a story." Or so says E.M. Forster regretfully.
What then of Maugham's "Ashenden"? Short stories around the same protagonist, in the form of a novel, therefore not a novel? It tells no story, only many stories.
What of Steinbeck's "Cannery Row", or Huxley's "Crome Yellow"? Novels, or not?
November 26, 2006
November 23, 2006
Strangers
Of course we dislike strangers.
Someone shows up at a farm or a village: they entertain everyone with their jokes and their stories of the outside world for a couple of days, and then they move on. And a pie is missing from the window sill where it was cooling. A chicken has gone, maybe taken by a fox, but you never find the feathers. A month later a young man, who has never stopped talking about the stranger, runs away to the city or the sea. Another month or two, and it turns out your daughter is pregnant.
If, in another couple of months, crops fail or the weather is particularly harsh, it merely confirms the power and the malice of strangers.
Someone shows up at a farm or a village: they entertain everyone with their jokes and their stories of the outside world for a couple of days, and then they move on. And a pie is missing from the window sill where it was cooling. A chicken has gone, maybe taken by a fox, but you never find the feathers. A month later a young man, who has never stopped talking about the stranger, runs away to the city or the sea. Another month or two, and it turns out your daughter is pregnant.
If, in another couple of months, crops fail or the weather is particularly harsh, it merely confirms the power and the malice of strangers.
November 3, 2006
EVA AGED 14
Some of the girls I know
Go to the University
Sit so pretty
Prissy
Kiss-kiss and cissy
With beautiful boys that they know
Friends to drink tea with
Chat with and be with
Feather-headed into the feather-bedded night.
Oh no sweet Jesus hear me I scream
Such a life of show
Is beyond what I dream
Give me a man who I'll never know
A man without feelings, without wrong or right
Without obligations
Except for the money
Let him be cold and hard as the money
And the money as dirty and evil as me
I can't trust feelings, I never trust feelings
And I don't care
That I can't care....
I don't dare.
Some of the girls that I've seen
Listen to that classy music, they sit
And play piano while they drink their tea.
That's somewhere I've never been.
Cello! Piano!! What SHIT!
Sweet JESus CATCH me beFORE i SCREAM
give me ROCK, ROCK, give me ROCK oh give me ROCK
ROCK, give me ROCK, give me ROCK
blast my MIND let me DROWN give me SO much of ALL
that my HEAD and my BODy are FINally SOUND
give me ROCK, ROCK, give me ROCK, ROCK
give me ROCK rock ROCK rock ROCK, ROCK
DROWN me DROWN me, LET me go DOWN
aWAY
aWAY
aWAY
Some of the kids from my school
Would sit down to a smoke, have a toke and cool down
Drift round the town feeling cool
Not me
Some of the students I've seen
Trip out on acid, they want to expand
They want to feel all that they can, and still more
Not me
Give me JUNK
Give me the rush and the bliss of fuck all
Give me the unsatisfaction of life
Give me the treadmill toward the next fix
The stealing or whoring, the need, the despair
Of being whipped up an unending stair
A problem of Now I can just about handle
The safety in knowing tomorrow's the same
And the whole problem thank god unthinkable
Only the treadmill toward the next fix
The fix of nothingness, of peaceful nothing
And let me not think
LET me not THINK
Sweet JESus if i THINK even ONCE
i'll SCREAM i'll SCREAM i'll SCREAM
i'll DIE.
Go to the University
Sit so pretty
Prissy
Kiss-kiss and cissy
With beautiful boys that they know
Friends to drink tea with
Chat with and be with
Feather-headed into the feather-bedded night.
Oh no sweet Jesus hear me I scream
Such a life of show
Is beyond what I dream
Give me a man who I'll never know
A man without feelings, without wrong or right
Without obligations
Except for the money
Let him be cold and hard as the money
And the money as dirty and evil as me
I can't trust feelings, I never trust feelings
And I don't care
That I can't care....
I don't dare.
Some of the girls that I've seen
Listen to that classy music, they sit
And play piano while they drink their tea.
That's somewhere I've never been.
Cello! Piano!! What SHIT!
Sweet JESus CATCH me beFORE i SCREAM
give me ROCK, ROCK, give me ROCK oh give me ROCK
ROCK, give me ROCK, give me ROCK
blast my MIND let me DROWN give me SO much of ALL
that my HEAD and my BODy are FINally SOUND
give me ROCK, ROCK, give me ROCK, ROCK
give me ROCK rock ROCK rock ROCK, ROCK
DROWN me DROWN me, LET me go DOWN
aWAY
aWAY
aWAY
Some of the kids from my school
Would sit down to a smoke, have a toke and cool down
Drift round the town feeling cool
Not me
Some of the students I've seen
Trip out on acid, they want to expand
They want to feel all that they can, and still more
Not me
Give me JUNK
Give me the rush and the bliss of fuck all
Give me the unsatisfaction of life
Give me the treadmill toward the next fix
The stealing or whoring, the need, the despair
Of being whipped up an unending stair
A problem of Now I can just about handle
The safety in knowing tomorrow's the same
And the whole problem thank god unthinkable
Only the treadmill toward the next fix
The fix of nothingness, of peaceful nothing
And let me not think
LET me not THINK
Sweet JESus if i THINK even ONCE
i'll SCREAM i'll SCREAM i'll SCREAM
i'll DIE.
Published in Ambit 186 (UK), October 2006
November 2, 2006
Underwater Neolithic Archaeology
Some time after the end of the last ice age, say 12,000 years ago, some human groups of hunters and gatherers began to settle down and farm plants and animals, and to live in settlements of increasing size and complexity.
That's the standard idea. But what if they had started earlier, during the ice age itself? What if the earliest such settlements were in the fertile river deltas, or along the flat shores of present-day China, Indonesia, South Asia, the Middle East, or the Gulf of Mexico?
That would have been unfortunate. As the icecaps melted, sea levels rose hundreds of feet, sometimes gradually, sometimes in a catastrophic event in which earthquake, tsunami and irreversible coastal flooding were combined.
That kind of event would destroy any nascent civilization, destroy all the artifacts of technology, destroy all the tools for recreating the life they had, destroy most of the population, and make scattered refugees in an unfamiliar landscape of some random survivors with their random skills. As that generation died out, not all the skills would have been transmitted properly, because the conditions for training and practise would not be appropriate.
Perhaps, over a period of hundreds of years, their descendants would reestablish the understanding of early farming, herding, construction, astronomy, mathematics, simple metalworking, whatever had been lost; and we, today, would naturally think they were developing it for the first time.
Because the oldest neolithic archaeological remains may not yet have been found, if they are two hundred feet underwater, and covered by a hundred feet of silt.
That's the standard idea. But what if they had started earlier, during the ice age itself? What if the earliest such settlements were in the fertile river deltas, or along the flat shores of present-day China, Indonesia, South Asia, the Middle East, or the Gulf of Mexico?
That would have been unfortunate. As the icecaps melted, sea levels rose hundreds of feet, sometimes gradually, sometimes in a catastrophic event in which earthquake, tsunami and irreversible coastal flooding were combined.
That kind of event would destroy any nascent civilization, destroy all the artifacts of technology, destroy all the tools for recreating the life they had, destroy most of the population, and make scattered refugees in an unfamiliar landscape of some random survivors with their random skills. As that generation died out, not all the skills would have been transmitted properly, because the conditions for training and practise would not be appropriate.
Perhaps, over a period of hundreds of years, their descendants would reestablish the understanding of early farming, herding, construction, astronomy, mathematics, simple metalworking, whatever had been lost; and we, today, would naturally think they were developing it for the first time.
Because the oldest neolithic archaeological remains may not yet have been found, if they are two hundred feet underwater, and covered by a hundred feet of silt.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
