A proper Russian Novel

The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin.

What happens if you reach a certain age, and realise the path you chose was all sham, that what you put aside in youth, was your life. Anatoly Sukhanov is 56 years old and is in charge of the USSR’s premier art magazine, to all, including himself, he’s made it, his job is to edit the magazine’s content so that it reflects the official party line. This allows a really privileged lifestyle for him and his family, an exquisitely decorated  large apartment in the right part of Moscow, and a beautiful Dacha in the countryside a couple of hours outside the city. His future  is golden and secure. Yet, as this story begins cracks start appearing in his life, like vine shoots slowly growing into all aspects of his world.  The story starts with Sukhanov stepping out of a chauffeured limousine, with his gorgeous wife to attend an exhibition, a retrospective of his father-in-law’s work. Whilst at this event, he makes a faux pas in a conversation with a culture minister, he goes outside for some air, and bumps into an old friend, a painter and former rival for his wife's affection, who still believes in the ideals they shared in youth.

It’s from this point that his world implodes, he starts to experience intense hallucinations, and finds his cherished family life collapsing, then with a slowly  gathering inevitability everything he once held firm spirals, further and further out of his control. Everything he had repressed, now reappears, all those memories, beliefs, faith, now surface, not merely to haunt him, but to split open wide the carapace he’d built around himself, sending him sprawling into a surrealist nightmare, constantly attacked by his repressed memories until punch-drunk, Sukhanov ends up alone in a darkened old and ruined chapel.


“It was perfect, just as he knew it would be. Here, then on these ancient walls, he would deposit the riches of his life – here he would paint his own angels and saints and gods, and perhaps a self-portrait or two – here he would live, eternally free, triumphantly unencumbered by the muddle of tedious  obligations, the shame of daily compromises, the chaos of ordinary life…….”


In the title I've called this “A proper Russian Novel” and by this I mean that Olga Grushin has  invested in the character of Sukhanov, all the angst and pathos, all the weakness and hubris that I remember reading in all those great Russian novels. Sukhanov goes on an epic journey of rediscovery, he is constantly assailed by images from his past, haunted by all those ideals he repressed for the sake of a career in the USSR. Yet things change, and it’s in this change, Sukhanov is left to question his choices….


The Independent described this as “So good, I felt like buying 10 copies & sending them to friends…….Grushin reminds us of what makes the best of Russian culture soar to fantastic heights”. This is a fantastic heart-breaking novel, about the price paid for denying your self, about a mans descent into madness, about a brilliant underground artist who settled for security and comfort, and lost it all to end up alone, some holy fool.

This book was shortlisted for the “Orange award for new writers 2006” and I can understand why, it’s just a wonderful tale, beautifully written, you follow Sukhanov on his journey, laughing at points, astonished by the wonderful prose, and heartbroken by this pompous ass, who becomes a  human being.

Olga Grushin (Wiki)
Olga Grushin

Discuss your thoughts on sentimentality in literature. When is emotion in literature effective and when is it superfluous? Use examples.

                   XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda(100 Love Sonnets)

Welcome back to the fine Ladies of The Blue Bookcase, and in answer to the question – “Discuss your thoughts on sentimentality in literature. When is emotion in literature effective and when is it superfluous?”. My answer is that anything written is reliant on artifice to convince the reader of it’s veracity, it becomes more a case of how they deal with it, to make it work, like sleight of hand, when done well, all you see is the magic. If not, what you see is some fool playing with their hands. If we then apply this to something as fundamental as our emotions, then the strings the writer uses to pull at us must be finer than gossamer, must be of the most subtlest art, if we are not to see them standing there, just a clown with their box of tricks.

Which brings me to the poems here, both deal with the idea of love, and yet both deal with the subject as a normal expression, Neruda speaks of love as elemental, it’s not fireworks and roses, it’s more basic, soil-like, it’s more essential and yet this poem is full of emotion, this is a love that has not diminished either parties, but created a greater whole.In the 2nd, the poem is even more  routed in the everyday, specifically states the individual doesn’t want all the Mills & boon, she’ll be loved by men not flowers, & yet it’s still magical.

WHEN SHE wakes drenched from sleep

She will not ask to be saluted by the light

Nor carolled by morning’s squabbling birds,

Nor lying in his arms wish him repeat

the polite conversations already heard;

She’ll not be loved by roses but by men,

She will glide free of sweet beauty’s net

And all her senses open out

to receive each sensation for herself.

If I could be that real, that open now

And not by half a light half lit

I would not gossip of what beauty is and what is not

Nor reduce love to a freak poem in the dark.

                        Brian Patten (Love Poems)

So my answer to the question “When is emotion in literature effective”, that for it to be effective it must be part of the whole, not an add on, it must be more shade, not a spotlight highlighting every vague nuance “ Nor reduce love to a freak poem in the dark.”

The Faber Book Of

20th-Century Italian Poems
edited by Jamie McKendrick.
Twentieth century Italian poets are largely unknown, barring a few names such as Eugenio Montale (1896 – 1981), who was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor, translator and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975, and who came to hold the same level of importance as T. S. Eliot did within his own culture as well as internationally. Then there’s Salvatore Quasimodo (1901 –1968), also a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1959), and is considered alongside   Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 –1970) as one of the foremost Italian poets of the 20th century. Then what? D’ Annunzio?(Gaetano Gabriele D'Annunzio-1863 –1938) better known nowadays  as the precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism and for his strong influence on the ideology of Benito Mussolini (although never directly involved in fascist government politics in Italy) for which he has acquired a certain infamy.


Jump forward to recent times, say the last  twenty odd years, and there has been an improvement, a breach in this lack of curiosity, a slight awakening from the world of English language to this nation’s verse, brought about by the publications of translated  books by the likes of - Cesare Pavese,  Attilio Bertolucci, Primo Levi, and Bartolo Cattifi, yet even these - outside certain circles - have varying levels of success, or critical notice.
Another issue that can confuse & bewilder the individual entering this world for the first time, can be the degree of division within its sphere – “Italian poetry has as many different schools and factions as it’s politics has Parties – I Crepusculari, Hermeticism, Gruppo 63, etc.”. Which is where a broad based Anthology such as this can help, it sides with no particular group or faction, it merely offers an overview and as such can introduce - even if on a basic level - you to a whole new world of verse.


Yet this Anthology wants more, James McKendrick’ s knowledge of Italian literature and culture is profound, as is his love and respect, this he wants to share with us, to give an impression of the depth and complexity of Italian poetry in the twentieth century. Although this is not a Bilingual edition, which probably would improve it, would allow comparison with the original poems, but this is a minor foible, and one unrelated to me as I read no Italian.



.

Woman from Genoa

You bought me a little seaweed
In your hair and a scent of wind

                that came from afar and arrives weighted

      With warmth on your bronzed body:

                                                         --oh the divine

                                                         Artlessness of your slim figure-

                                                         Not love not agony, a ghost.

                                                        A shade of necessity that wanders

                                                        serenely and ineluctably into the soul,

                                                        And dissolves it in joy, in serene enchantment

                                                        so that the sirocco may carry it

                                                        Into infinity.

                                                        How small the world is and light in your hands!

(Dino Campana-1885-1932)trans, Isadore Saloman

Jamie McKendrick.

Faber & Faber.
Contemporary Writers.

Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words - Jay Rubin

 

Jay Rubin is an American born academic  and  translator, he   has  a Ph.D. in Japanese Literature and currently is a professor at Harvard University. Apart from translating some of the works of Haruki Murakami, he has also written a guide to Japanese, Making Sense of Japanese (original title Gone Fishin) and translated books by Soseki Natsume and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

Jay Rubin is also a self-confessed fan of Haruki Murakami  and has written this book as a guide for other fans who would like to learn more about the man behind the books, but who are prevented from doing so by the barrier of the Japanese language. It appears that Jay Rubin has been inundated by a mountain of questions from readers over the years he has been known as a translator of the works of Murakami, combining that with comments on internet forums, has been the inspiration behind this project.

The Translator's Murakami

 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

After Dark

Norwegian Wood,

after the quake

1Q84 - first two volumes translated by Jay Rubin and the third by Philip Gabriel, will be released in North America and the United Kingdom on October 25, 2011

 

Where this book does really well is in breaking down the tales of Haruki Murakami,  as Jay Rubin says, that being a translator also means being a critic, and he does a really fantastic job of interpreting the novels and short stories, so much so that he has made me want to reread at least a couple of Murakami’s books. But he kind of scrimps on the autobiographical detail, using just enough to flesh out the exploration of his subjects oeuvre, offering a skeletal history, most of which is either known, or is easily accessible – married whilst at University, opened jazz Bar (peter cat), escaped to America after early success  etc. At first I was a bit disappointed with the meagre offerings on the personal side of one of my favourite authors, and yet it soon became irrelevant, I became fascinated as jay Rubin dissected the stories, offering up his diagnosis, his interpretation of a series of works that have mystified readers for a while now, and in doing so shone a light into the many levels of Haruki Murakami’s novels.

Appendix: A – Translating Murakami.

(1) Translation & globalization.

(2) Translators, Editors, and Publishers.

Appendix: B – A Murakami Bibliography.

Appendix: A, This deals with  Murakami’s  status as a world literary  figure, and the task of translating him into other languages, and the re-translating from a different language other than the source  - for example in 2000 the translation of South of the border, West of the sun into German was a retranslation from the English, which caused some controversy on the German literary scene.

Appendix: B, Is a  Bibliography of Murakami’s books, short stories, Essays, Interviews, Travel Writing, Picture books, Reportage, Illustrated children's books, works translated by Murakami, films, and  special issue magazines (Japanese), plus a small sampling of studies & commentaries on the man in English and Japanese. Blimey, I was amazed at how much was out there, which made this section an interesting read for those who want to find out more.

AUTOFICTION *

By  Hitomi Kanehara
Autofiction is a literary term, coined in 1977  by Serge Doubrovsky, he used it in reference to his novel Fils, it refers to a work combining fiction & autobiography. By using these contradictory styles, a writer may tell their story in the third person, change significant details or characters, with the aim of searching for, or revealing, their inner workings, their self. It has parallels with a genre devised by Truman Capote  called faction, and used in his novel Cold Blood.
It is also the name of a novel by Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara.
Hitomi Kanehara was born, and currently lives in, Tokyo. She wrote her first novel Snakes and Earrings when she was 21(2003). It won  the Subaru Prize, before later the same year  winning the  Akutagawa Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Japan, making her one of the youngest people ever to receive this honour, it was also highly praised by Ryu Murakami who said that “the novel was an accurate depiction of a new generation” going on to sell a million copies. Autofiction is her second novel to be translated into English
AUTOFICTION

““Look! Look! it’s amazing.”
“You’re right. It really is.”
“Come on, though. Take a good look for yourself! See how amazing it is.”
“All right.”
“WOW!”
I take my pale fiancé's hand in mine and continue to stare out the window as the plane makes its steady ascent. I pray to the orange lights below me. Pray that next year he’ll take me another trip to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.
I don’t want to go back to Japan. That’s how wonderful our honeymoon in Tahiti had been. Anything and everything is just so much fun when the two of us are together.” 

Rin is flying back from her honeymoon. She’s absolutely head over heals in love with Shin, her husband, and the future appears bright and wonderful, until the flight stewardess comes along offering drinks, innocently igniting Rin’s jealousy . Later on, thinking Rin’s asleep, Shin goes to the toilet, which she thinks is a cover to seduce the flight attendant, and she starts to imagine all sorts of scenarios that they could be up to, her thoughts spiralling further & further out of control, her jealousy burning out any reasoning process she once had, going so far as to imagine that the stewardess must have drugged her, so she slept. This, according to her now jaundiced view, leaves her no option but death, so she prays for the plane to crash.
This state of mind lasts no more than the time it takes Shin to use the toilet, by the time he’s sat down any thoughts of death & suicide are replaced by her adoring, madly in love self, with neither Shin or anyone else aware of the turmoil she just  went through.
In this book we meet Rin, aged 22, a successful writer married to a literary editor  and a paranoid, jealous, angry woman capable of imagining this husband committing infidelities on the way home from their honeymoon. The book then spirals backwards through her 18th, 16th and finally 15th years. On the way we see Rin, the Barbie doll bar-hopper, exchanging sex for her other needs, Rin the school girl, hating it and dropping out till we reach the 15 year old Rin strung out on pills, pregnant, facing the prospect of an abortion.

Although this book is called Autofiction, and as such would appear to be some version of the author’s (Hitomi Kanehara ) life - you’re never sure how much or even if any – for example, on page 49 there a scene where the author/Rin meets her publisher (Shinagawa) and they discuss writing a work of autofiction.

“Shinagawa “ I’d like you to write a work of autofiction”.
Rin “ autofiction?” I say, and the words begin to feel real. “Autofiction”, I whisper to myself again and the word feels more real. But no matter how it feels when I say it, I still have no idea what it means. It is best to be honest in situations like this, so I ask him
“What do you mean by autofiction?”
Shinagawa “ Well in short, it’s autobiography-style fiction. A work of fiction that gets the reader suspecting that it’s actually an autobiography. After reading your short story  set in the plane, I thought you might be interested”.”

The short story set in the plane????, i.e the first few pages that you read about Rin’s jealous rage, is actually a short story written by the writer who is being asked to write a work of autofiction.
Rin claims not to understand Shinagawa, and asks him if he meant writing about her childhood in a sanatorium, or that she was born in this village 22 years ago, neither of which is true & both know it. So where does the blurring start ?, is any of this real?, and does any of this matter to the story?
The honest answer is no. At the top of this post is one of the versions of Scream ( Norwegian: Skrik ) created by Edvard Munch and I chose this because the book appears to be written as though it were, one long scream, whether this is for help, anger or frustration. Or is it, as Ryu Murakami states, an accurate description of a modern generation. If this is a work of autofiction, Kanehara’s life was a dangerous turbulent existence full of seedy haunts, rape clubs and pathetic boyfriends who contributed no positive input into her life, that one is amazed she survived. If this is purely a work of fiction, it’s presented in a way that is so visceral, disturbing, powerful, yet immaculately written.
This book kept me guessing, but more importantly kept me turning the pages.

There is one proviso, before wholeheartedly recommending this book to anyone, and that is, if you are offended by foul language, descriptions of sex or genitalia, leave this alone. If you can take this in the spirit of the book, then this is an extraordinary spellbinding journey into a truly disturbed soul.


HITOMI KANEHARA
H.K, Vintage Originals

National Poetry Month (April)

April 2011 is America’s chance to discover its wealth of poetry and maybe if it’s not there already, inspire a love of poetry that could last forever. Inaugurated  by the Academy of American Poets National poetry month was inspired by the success of Black History Month (Feb) and Women's History Month (March) when in 1995 The Academy convened group of publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary organizations, poets, and teachers to discuss whether the same idea would work for poetry. The first one was held in 1996 and now every year thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events all with the one aim – to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture, although I’m from Europe (England) any excuse to celebrate, what for me has been a life long love is valid, so for my first contribution to National Poetry Month, here is a Poem from an American Poet.

Oatmeal



I eat oatmeal for breakfast.

I make it on the hotplate and put skimmed milk on it.

I eat it alone.

I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.

Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if somebody

            eats it with you.

That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.

Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.

Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal with John keats.

Keats said I was right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture, gluey

        lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to disintegrate,

        oatmeal must never be eaten alone.

He said it is perfectly OK, however to eat it with an imaginary companion,

and he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser

         and John Milton.

He also told me about writing the “Ode to a Nightingale”.

He wrote it quickly, he said, on scraps of paper, which he then  stuck in

        his pocket,

but when he got home he couldn’t figure out the order of the stanzas,

        and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made

         some sense of them, but he isn’t sure to this day if they got it right.

He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,

and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a

         Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, then lay

          itself down slightly off the mark, causing the poem to move

          forward with God’s reckless wobble.

He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about

            the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some stanzas

            of his own, but only made matters worse.

When breakfast was over, John recited “ To Autumn”

He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words

          lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.

He didn’t offer the story of writing “To Autumn”, I doubt if there is

         much of one.

But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started on it

and two of the lines, “For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells”

        and “Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours” came to him

        while eating oatmeal alone.

I can see him – drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the

           glimmering furrows, muttering – and it occurs to me:

maybe there is no sublime, only the shining of the amnion’s tatters.

for supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from

        lunch.

I’m aware that a leftover baked potato can be damp, slippery, and

       simultaneously gummy and crumbly,

and therefore I’m going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

                                                                                  Galway Kinnell.

Galway Kinnell was born on February 1st, 1927 in Providence, Rhode island, as a youth he was drawn to the poetry of Emily Dickinson And Edgar Allan Poe. He graduated fro Princeton university in 1948. After serving in his countries navy, he decided to travel for a few years, spending periods of time in Europe and the Middle East. He published his first book of poetry  “What a Kingdom It Was” in 1960 followed in 64 by “Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock”.  After he returned to the United States, he joined CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), spending a large part of the 1960’s actively  participating in the Civil Rights Movement, at one point being arrested whilst participating in a workplace integration in Louisiana. His experience of this time fed  into works such as Body Rags (1968) and The Book of Nightmares (1971), a book-length poem, whose subject matter is the Vietnam War. Over the years Kinnell has published several more collections of poetry which include Strong Is Your Hold (, 2006); A New Selected Poems (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; Imperfect Thirst (1996); When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990); Selected Poems (1980), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; and Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980).

He has also published translations of works by Yves Bonnefroy, Yvanne Goll, François Villon, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Prose works by Kinnell include collection of interviews, Walking Down the Stairs (1978), a novel, Black Light (1966), and children's book, How the Alligator Missed Breakfast (1982).

Galway Kinnell(Wiki)

Galway Kinnell.com                                         


es  ALL SIZES  pomes ALL SI

Please feel free to suggest any poet/ poem, as

I would welcome an introduction to new verse.

Thanks Parrish.

Post

BLIMEY-HASN’T THAT GONE QUICK (happy anniversary)

Serendipity-

or how to make a

positive out of a negative.

April 2nd a year ago, I started this Blog “The Parrish Lantern” because I realised that I had the correct mixture of wisdom and high ideal the world was waiting for, that I contained within my person the high octane mix of erudition & humility needed for this crusade, that without my sage words, the literary world was heading down the Niagara Falls without a barrel………………ERhhhhhhmmm, hummm (embarrassed coughing), sorry about that---- I’ll start again, April 2nd a year ago, I started this Blog “The Parrish Lantern because I was BORED yep truly, deeply, BORED, I was recovering from a bike accident, which had involved surgery on my knee (6 months off work). I was  reading, an enormous amount of books of all natures, including a lot of detective tales, ( a phase I go through once in a while) because they take no effort, when I came across a new detective book, “ The Savage Detectives” by Roberto Bolano. You can imagine my surprise when on starting it,  I discovered it’s true nature. Well I wanted to find out more & whilst searching, hunting, tracking down information about this fantastic new author (to me) I discovered blogging and the book blogs. So on this day a year ago I posted my very first missive, predominantly to set out my intentions..

 What it says on the tin

Hopefully when I find my way round, this will be a place to discuss the books we like, music that soundtracks our lives & that glass of fine malt that rounds of a fine evening. So to start this with my list of the moment it’s subject to change as part of life's discovery process & my mood.

Books of the moment are or have been a journey through the works of Haruki Murakami, at the moment “what I talk about when I talk about running” &”The making of Scotch Whisky” by John R.Hume & Michael S. Thomas.

Music I am listening to Is Tom Waits & Scott Walker.

Ardbeg 17yr old is my favourite Whisky all though  I am willing to have my mind changed by trying any others I find or am advised upon.

thanks for now.

Parrish.

Now, around a hundred posts later and what has changed? Well, apart from my detective phase has passed (again) my reading has expanded, I’m again reading on a scale I used to in my younger days. I’ve discovered loads of fantastic blogs and made a few friends, also although I’ve retained the right (in my cantankerous obstinate way), to post on my favourite music, whisky etc. this has faded to a certain extent, with books taking the prominent place. I have read more literature from around the world, as I become more aware of what’s out there (thanks to those blogs that specialise in this)  and as I’ve grown more comfortable in this role, one of my first loves -  Poetry has increased it’s role on the blog, with posts on specific books, and my picking of a particular poet/poem once a month under the banner

  pomes  ALL SIZES 

But the mission statement is the same, as the idea here is to create a virtual private club with this statement on the sign……….                     

             A club for the discussion of our obsessions

I want this to be a place that when you join, you can express  your own likes. This is where we can exchange ideas on Authors, Artists & Whisky. So please feel free to join & add your own thoughts. As a polite introduction to a new idea, whether its a book, some music or malt whisky is always welcome.

 

So this is the first anniversary for “The Parrish Lantern” & hopefully will be the first of many.

Now  back to the subtitle, Serendipity – how to make a positive out of a negative, well that’s easy to answer, and I will do it in the form of a Big Hearty thanks to all those that have supported this blog, from those who’ve been there from the early days, to those who follow now.