martin amis. literature and violence.

On Thursday, 1 July 2010, Martin Amis will be discussing literature and violence at The Martin Harris Centre with guests Blake Morrison and John Gray. They’ll be mulling over…

The psychological and cultural roots of violent acts, and the ways in which writers from Shakespeare to JG Ballard depict and respond to it.

I’ve always read a great deal by and about Professor Amis but I never seem to find time to sit down and write about him properly. Ce la vie. I’m sure this discussion, like all the others, will make for good copy. If you’d like to attend, tickets are £7 from the venue – the University of Manchester’s Martin Harris Centre (0161 275 8951 / boxoffice@manchester.ac.uk) located on Bridgeford Street just off Oxford Road.

prospects and recollections.

Flynn and I are going on a mini-break next month. The last time we were together we were both living in the North of England. I was working for the Crown Prosecution Service and she was studying literary criticism and pulling pints in the Northern Quarter. I have some vague recollection of looking at bones and mummies…anthropological brain candy.

Images, compliments Flynn and me, were all taken at Carl Sandburg’s home, Connemara. There’s something very comforting about Connemara. Like it’s waiting to be someone’s Walden Pond. Like it was.

When Sandburg died, his wife, Paula, just up and left. She took nothing with her. The house remained as it always was, donated to the National Park Service.

to dream

When I was about twelve I decided there was nothing to it but I had to learn Russian. (I often took on grand ideas during my summer holidays.)

Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gorky. If these wonderful writers could be transliterated so beautifully into English, imagine how wonderful they must be in their own language.

I still haven’t done it. Learned to read Russian. Though I still think I should. What I’m doing now, right this moment, is leafing through Nabokov’s translation of Eugene Onegin. Next, I plan to move on to Anna Karenina. I’ve had it laying by my bedside for some months now. I’ve only read it once. I was still in high school and imagine a lot of the subtext was well over my head.

My sister insists I get to it already. “Go read Anna,” she says, “so that we can have a proper discussion.” She really does heart the socks off old Leo and rereads what she sees as his great masterpiece whenever she has time to do it.

Me, I fancy Chekhov. (I’ve told you this before.) There’s a fair number of books out on how to imitate the man, including “How to Write Like Chekhov” which is quite good. But if you really want to learn from the master, read his correspondence.

Below, Chekhov, in a letter to D.V. Grigorovith, critiques a story called “Karelins Dream”.

the art of fiction – no.85

No one does interviews quite like The Paris Review. In a 1984 interview, Thomas Frick asked English novelist and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction, JG Ballard, how a book took shape for him. Ballard’s reply follows:

“That’s a vast topic and, to be honest, one I barely understand. Even in the case of a naturalistic writer, who in a sense takes his subject matter directly from the world around him, it’s difficult enough to understand how a particular fiction imposes itself.

But in the case of an imaginative writer, especially one like myself with strong affinities to the surrealists, I’m barely aware of what is going on. Recurrent ideas assemble themselves, obsessions solidify themselves, one generates a set of working mythologies, like tales of gold invented to inspire a crew.

I assume one is dealing with a process very close to that of dreams, a set of scenarios devised to make sense of apparently irreconcilable ideas. Just as the optical centers of the brain construct a wholly artificial three-dimensional universe through which we can move effectively, so the mind as a whole creates an imaginary world that satisfactorily explains everything, as long as it is constantly updated. So the stream of novels and stories continues . ..”

Download a PDF of the full interview

pause

forgiving dr. mengele

The documentary Forgiving Dr. Mengele (2005) follows Eva Mozes Kor, a Holocaust survivor, and her decision to forgive the Nazis who killed her family, in particular Dr. Josef Mengele who experimented on 1,400 pairs of twins including Eva and her twin sister, Miriam.

In 1944 Eva’s family were taken to Auschwitz where she and her sister were separated from the others – they never saw them again and believe they were murdered in the gas chambers. For nine months the girls were experimented on, injected with potentially lethal bacteria and given no treatment.

After World War II Eva immigrated, first to Romania, then to Israel and, finally, to Terre Haute, Indiana, where she created the C.A.N.D.L.E.S Museum (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiment Survivors). The museum’s mission is to “eliminate hatred and prejudice from our world.”

Eva’s metamorphosis from embittered survivor to tireless advocate for reconciliation is sparked when she, in an attempt to get information about the experiments, meets with another former Auschwitz doctor. Her ideas about justice, revenge and the possibility of healing through forgiveness – as well as the passionate opposition from other survivors- become a window to a larger discussion of the many ways people define forgiveness.

“Who are you,” Eva asks, “to tell me how to heal myself?”

If you haven’t already, please watch the documentary about Eva – “Forgiving Dr. Mengele”. Email me and tell me what you think.

i dont know how i ever fly

I have the loveliest back garden. With climbing ivy and purple flowers and white hydrangeas and a massive rose bush covered in little yellow sprays. Two tomato trees I’m determined to grow. My mother grew hundreds. Quite literally, hundreds. I can grow two. Probably not.

I thought, for a moment, back in May, I’d like to have tanned legs this summer. That thought came back to haunt me. The legs remain, as ever, poultry-coloured.

The tops of my neighbours’ houses, lined up all symmetrically, remind me of Brighton Beach houses. This makes me smile.

I want a hammock. Something bright and colourful. To swing in and catch Vitamin D in and just be all good-feeling in. But I don’t want ticks in my hair. Ticks terrify me. I use to love sleeping in the grass. I don’t do that anymore. Ticks are why.

Maybe I’ll put up a massive Moroccan canopy instead. I saw something like this once, at a friend’s house in Greece. It shaded patios and pillows and pools. Books about espionage. I could do nothing but sit beneath it until it got too hot for me to sit any more. With a tea set my mother gave me.

There’s always the problem of the sun, of course. My splotchy hands – my leopard spots. And that fat ole Robin that keeps mistaking my hat for a nest.

le sigh*

I love these houses. They’re on the beach, next to where we stay, and I take tons of photos whenever we’re there. I want to live in the green one and write on the widows walk in the early a.m. I want to pull my hair up, slap on some factor fifty and drink something-fruity while writing query letters to the publishing gods. That’s all I want.

*© Flynn

fist city. the original coal miners daughter.

Being a coal miner’s daughter myself, I’m contractually obligated to bring up Loretta Lynn whenever I can swing it. But I’d like to think I’d do it anyway. Even if I weren’t.

When you grow up on in a holler like I did, wanting to overcome the mountains with your art, you sometimes think there’s not a whole lot of women for you look up to. Of course, you think wrong. Of course, I was wrong. I was surrounded by them. Strong, beautiful, creative sorts. But I was a child, and didn’t see it then. Like I see it now. Then, I only saw Loretta and her bologna. Sometimes Dolly and her greasy pole.

So, because she came from a holler and ate bologna sandwiches and had a father who trucked down into a hole in the ground to make a living, I thought she was like me. And I loved her for it. We all did.

Loretta Lynn wrote songs for women just when they needed writing. Whether she realized it, or not. Women adored her. Even if you weren’t a woman, and even if you’re not – even if you’re Jack White – you still take a bow. Because it’s Loretta Lynn. And she’s a bloody force of nature.

My grandfather thought Loretta had lost her mind when he first saw her perform Portland Oregon. As for me, and all things Jack, that’s a love affair for another day.

2 June 2010: Interview with Loretta Lynn: American Public Radio

all rivers go down to the ocean and drown

I’m allergic to the sun. More or less. Mostly more. I don’t exactly burst into flames. Not exactly. But there is that blinding light that radiates from my legs. (Although I like to think of it more as a Twilight-Style sparkle.) Still, there’s something hypnotic and pulling about the ocean. It’s the four elements thing. And our caveman selves.