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My mystification that Muriel Spark isn’t more widely read has continued to grow, but last week her editor, New Directions publisher Barbara Epler, offered a theory in email that echoes what Howard Jacobson has said about the devaluation of comedy in literature.
“The fact that she is so unbelievably and witchily entertaining,” Epler argues, “has kept her from her full share of glory as the greatest British writer of the 20th century. Humor has never been the long suit of most critics.”
Spark really is hilarious, and her humor, like Twain’s, is the kind that doesn’t date. As my (new, thanks to Jessa) friend Elizabeth Bachner observed after I pressed Memento Mori on her as she headed to the train last week, she’s also incredibly sly.
Epler’s admiration was mutual. Spark praised her “wisdom, charm, humour and intuition, [which] must be the envy of every author.”
Reading Epler’s remarks on editing, it’s easy to see that she and Spark, who resisted all but the smartest and most intuitive edits, would have had a natural affinity. In 2008, Epler said, “Your job is just to worry, to check and double-check. One study pointed out that the difference between competent people and incompetent people is that competent people know they might be wrong and double- and triple-check; incompetent people know they’re right. (Or, as a Brazilian publisher joked, What’s the difference between ignorance and arrogance? “I don’t know and I don’t care.”) Editing doesn’t seem to be a process of knowing but of asking. You just do the best you can.”
And last year she spoke with Powell’s about, among other things, New Directions’ mission: “We really just try to find the best writing we can, albeit in a somewhat narrow bailiwick. (We are now owned by a trust and one of its provisions is that we continue to publish the kind of books J. L. wanted: a sort of baggy category, but with an emphasis still on experimental or what used to be called avant-garde writing.)”
Recently Neil Gaiman and Shaun Tan sat down at the Sydney Opera House to discuss their work. The result is a series of interviews on the opera house’s website. I once was speaking to a musician about Shaun Tan and offered the fellow his contact information when Gaiman swoops over and says that not only does he know Mr. Tan but he owns some of his original art. I came this close to yelling at him, “Doggone it, Neil! I’m trying to impress someone over here!” Thanks to @chavelaque for the link.
Kid fans are great. Particularly when they like books. Especially when they make raps about them. Here we have the talented niece of James Kennedy who posted this on her own blog recently. She’s pretty good at holding that camera, rapping, and turning the pages all at the same time.
David Almond is always worth listening to, particularly if he’s speechifying. Here you can find him receiving the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award. Very cool.
I won’t embed it, but the other day Jeanne Birdsall (author of The Penderwicks n’ such) wrote this to me and it is fantastic. Said she: “Did you know that if – on the SLJ on-line home page — you click on BLOGS, rather than on any of the actual blogs (yours, Heavy Metal, etc.), you get this? I can’t figure out which thrills me more — that the SLJ webmaster picked this video, or the spam comments that come after.
And for our off-topic video (if that wasn’t off-topic enough) we have French students lip-synching and . . . well. If this doesn’t perk up your day then your day is unperk-up-able.
But more importantly, I demand that everytime Jeanne Birdsall’s name is dropped in your blog, it is immedatly followed by the publishing date of the next Penderwick book.
Patricial MacLachlan (name dropping of my own) told me (and about 2000 others) over the summer that it was finished.
Madigan McGillicuddy said, on 10/24/2010 3:52:00 PM
The link for the SLJ test video appears to be gone. :\
That was a rather fabulous off-topic video, however. Consider my day officially perked! Thanks for sharing.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 10/24/2010 8:30:00 PM
Huh! Must’ve been removed at some point. Pity, it was fun. Anyway, I’ve removed the reference to it. And if I find out the release date for Penderwick #3, you can bet I will let y’all know immediately if not sooner.
Amazon Omnivoracious: End-o’-the-Week Kid-Lit Ro said, on 10/25/2010 1:56:00 AM
[...] Shaun Tan and Neil Gaiman. Fuse #8 found an excellent short video showing Neil Gaiman [...]
James Kennedy said, on 10/25/2010 11:54:00 AM
Thanks for putting Freya’s Lily Larouche rap, Betsy! And agreed, that off-topic video made my brain evaporate with happiness. THANK YOU.
Sarah Corcoran said, on 10/26/2010 11:57:00 AM
Hi just checked on Jeanne Birdsall website – The third Penderwick book, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, will be coming out in the summer of 2011.
I must have missed these but will check library shelves in the morning.
Sarah Corcoran said, on 10/26/2010 11:59:00 AM
Penderwick no 3 The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, 10th May 2011
I always find it interesting to watch how different author/illustrators confront audiences. Writing children’s books means, to some extent, that you’ve signed on to be a performer for children. So what technique suits you best? Do you have to rely on a chicken costume, or can you be relaxed and natural with your audience? This video of Peter Brown offers a great take on speaking to audiences both big and small.
So each week I show you book trailers and each week we discuss where they can go, what they can do, and why they’re different from movie trailers. We all know that they should take advantage of the unique qualities of the books themselves, but how do you convey that? One solution may be found in this video for My Name is Not Isabella by Jennifer Fosberry, illustrated by Mike Litwin.
It’s like I always say. Give the people process. Failing that, give ‘em a song where you read the whole book:
That’s Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg, the fellow who brought you Good Egg a year or so ago.
And now . . . Don’t Let the Pigeon Operate the Backhoe.
That would be author/illustrator Mo Willems switching gears (literally) for a moment or two. On his blog he says, “Man, I really hope books don’t disappear, because I stink,” which is blatant false modesty, if you ask me. I mean, clearly he has mad picking-up-pylon skillz. It just pains me to think what a brilliant construction career he could have had, only to discover that fact so late in life. Sad really. *sniff*
Typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische has done many a fine book cover in her day. Here she talks about her DROP CAP series, which I find interesting.
My fave is still their version of Kate Bush’s Heathcliff, but this is pretty great too. Have you seen the video where they have the whole audience playing ukuleles along with them?
Sara said, on 9/19/2010 9:25:00 AM
And nice proposal story, btw!
lisainberlin said, on 9/19/2010 12:16:00 PM
Wow! Mo does a brilliant job! What a waste of talent! Well, he could always moonlight.
“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory… The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours.” — Jorge Luis Borges, speaking to Argentinian filmmaker German Kral.
In the same clip, Kral, standing outside Borges’ apartment in 1998, recalls visiting the writer there many years before. “Borges, who had so intensely loved books and for whom literature was alive, advised us not to read any book we didn’t enjoy,” he says. “Reading it by force did no good to the book, the author or ourselves.”
From now on, when people inquire how I feel about working a day job, I think I’ll defer to Philip Larkin. Asked about his life as a University of Hull librarian, the poet replied:
Taking it all in all, work and I get on fairly well, I think. There are just these occasions when one would like to prove it by not working for a bit.
And to feel that you’re spending your life on the one rather than the other I think is perhaps the most depressing thought that work can bring you — that when I bind up library committee minutes at the end of five years it makes a big fat volume, but it’s not the same as a volume of poetry. They are very good minutes — but the minute as an art form has its limitations.
The stakes there and then were even higher, in that the literary world didn’t contest the artistic centrality of authors to literature, whereas the world of movies resisted the politique des auteurs, the interest of the young Cahiers critics in directors as the key artists — the auteurs, or authors — of their movies.
Brody observes that “portable” recording devices (which weighed about nine pounds then) made these conversations possible, and wonders about the effect of technology on our “expectations for information and aesthetics” generally.
“Magnetic tape implied both duration and (as Glenn Gould famously proved) the possibility of editing, thus, of recording as a kind of art form independent of the preservation of an event,” he says. Moreover, “the habit of recording makes the prominent ever more accustomed to the sound of their own voice.”
These days, thanks to You Tube and its kin, we can even see our favorite authors and filmmakers, including dead ones, discussing their work on old talk shows.
Some of the most maddening (but also entertaining, and not in the way intended) of the exhumed clips are the “arty” interview biodramas like the one these segments (above and below) of Patricia Highsmith are taken from. Dig the swelling music and weirdly composed shots, and the part where Tom Ripley turns the TV off on his creator.
Flaubert, by the way, would have disapproved of all these artist-chatterboxes. So would Henry James have — at least in theory. But secretly, in the privacy of his own study, James would have scoured the Internet, noting every last unfortunate shawl and too-wide tie, not to mention every liaison and sexual indiscretion, when not hitting reload on publishing comment threads at Gawker.
Anthony Burgess, Jerzy Kosinski, and Barbara Howar ask talk show host Dick Cavett about writing and reviews as his book (published in 1974) appears.
“I don’t know why we have to suffer reviews,” says Burgess, who reveals that he once wrote five and a half books when he believed he had one year to live. “Reviews don’t sell books. Reviews don’t sell books in any country.”
Joan Acocella’s profile sent me off on a Hilary Mantel binge several years ago, so I’ve been dying to sit down with Wolf Hall but won’t until I have a chunk of time to focus on it properly.
Meanwhile, I’m bookmarking this video of Mantel discussing the novel, so I remember to watch it when I’m done. I also look forward to discussing the book with Levi Stahl, whose comments have been getting me more and more amped up to read it. (Further adventures in Mantel video: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.)
I’ve never before seen Walker Percy speak and am posting this clip, in which he analyzes the diminishing publication prospects for young writers, in case you haven’t either. For some reason his pronounced southern-aristocratic accent surprised me.
I’m also in the midst of watching a longer video in which the author accepts a medal from Notre Dame although he says he doesn’t deserve it. Percy, a latecomer to Catholicism, notes the scarcity of Catholics in the south during his childhood, and recalls that two of his closest friends in medical school were Notre Dame graduates who attended Mass regularly. At the time, he says, he “accepted their strange behavior as yet another Yankee eccentricity.” (He begins speaking about four minutes in.)
Last night I wrote a thirty second scary story. Actually I wrote a 90 second REALLY scary story, then chipped at it, hacked and deleted and rephrased until it was thirty seconds long. Afterwards I wished I'd saved the 200 word version.
This morning I went to the local NPR radio station and recorded it -- we cut out another sentence, and I slowed down a hair -- for an NPR Hallowe'en special...
....
I believe that the curious can see the whole, uncut, me getting an award at Scream 2007 thing at
Neil Gaiman accepts "Hell's Dildo" at the 2007 Scream Awards.
It cuts off before I welcome Roger Avary and Ray Winstone to the podium to introduce Beowulf, but if it hadn't you would have seen Roger wearing his "Scary Trousers" tee shirt in front of a billion people.
I should mention that the amazing Cat's Neverwear site is over at http://www.neverwear.net/ and you can get your Kendra Stout "Scary Trousers" or your Dagmara Matuszak "Anansi Boys" tee shirts there. (I suggested that Cat should do a tee shirt with the full "I believe" speech from American Gods on it next...)
Which reminds me -- I've now finally seen the bound insides of the Hill House ANANSI BOYS (you can see pictures at http://hillhousepublishers.com/hh-update-22oct07-01.htm) and they are astonishingly beautiful. Hill House are still trying to get straight answers out of the Polish printer about when he's actually going to have the books bound and delivered to the US -- he's made too many promises to them that haven't come through -- but it looks like it's getting closer and closer to being a reality.
This is more of a marmite locating datalet then a question.
There is a large and rather unusual store near Cincinnati, OH called Jungle Jims.
Along with Jim's collection of large animatronic singing creatures, there is a decently size section of foods from England in the international part of the store.
They have a website at junglejims.com at which you can view some off the strangeness under the attractions section.
Marmite, of course, is there and also Hobnobs and various and sundry other foods of interest.
I feel like I'm writing a pamphlet for a tourist attraction now, so I'll stop.
Whenever I drive across America -- which isn't often -- I try and stop in at Jungle Jim's on the way back. And not just for the UK food, but for the amazing variety of world food. It's an amazing place. Would that all supermarkets could have that magic.
...
I just heard about the event chronicled in http://117hudson.blogspot.com/2007/10/show-must-go-on.html We were lucky in that the actor who was hurt was the only one who was sort of understudied (as one of the wolves had also played Lucy's brother in an earlier production) so they reconfigured the second half for seven people instead of eight to do the wolf party...
... Mr. Gaiman,
I checked to see if you've mentioned it yet this year, and saw that you hadn't-- would you mind taking a second to remind your fans who haven't already signed up that National Novel Writing Month begins in a week?
I'm a first-timer, but a lot of your journal entries recently have really inspired me to sit down and write, and NaNoWriMo is a great way to combine your advice and a great community. Figured I'd send in reminder in case there are others who feel the same way I do. Thanks!
-Laurie
I can do even better than that. I can point people to http://www.nanowrimo.org/ And I can finish my Letter Of Encouragement to the troops...
0 Comments on And now a word for those we sponsor.... as of 10/24/2007 1:56:00 PM
Just watched my bit on the Spike Scream Awards -- I wished they'd left in the plug I did for the CBLDF, but I think they were probably right to have edited out me describing the astoundingly heavy award, when I was handed it, as "Hell's dildo".
So you know.
If you go to http://www.ugo.com/movies/minotaur-vs-centaur/?cur=main you can see me and many other people answering operhaps the most important question of this our modern age. Viz.: Who would win in a fight, a minotaur armed with a trident or a centaur armed with a crossbow?
0 Comments on Night Thoughts as of 10/23/2007 9:19:00 PM
Oh my, The Glory of Love, THAT was awesome.
But more importantly, I demand that everytime Jeanne Birdsall’s name is dropped in your blog, it is immedatly followed by the publishing date of the next Penderwick book.
Patricial MacLachlan (name dropping of my own) told me (and about 2000 others) over the summer that it was finished.
The link for the SLJ test video appears to be gone. :\
That was a rather fabulous off-topic video, however. Consider my day officially perked! Thanks for sharing.
Huh! Must’ve been removed at some point. Pity, it was fun. Anyway, I’ve removed the reference to it. And if I find out the release date for Penderwick #3, you can bet I will let y’all know immediately if not sooner.
[...] Shaun Tan and Neil Gaiman. Fuse #8 found an excellent short video showing Neil Gaiman [...]
Thanks for putting Freya’s Lily Larouche rap, Betsy! And agreed, that off-topic video made my brain evaporate with happiness. THANK YOU.
Hi just checked on Jeanne Birdsall website – The third Penderwick book, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, will be coming out in the summer of 2011.
I must have missed these but will check library shelves in the morning.
Penderwick no 3 The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, 10th May 2011