Empty Vessels………..Party Going–Henry Green

As the book starts, there is a fog so dense that it coats and hides everything. A bird drops down dead at the feet of an elderly lady- Miss Fellowes, who picks it up as she enters the station. After picking up this bird, she takes it to a public toilet and washes it before wrapping it in brown paper. Welcome to Henry Green’s world of satire, make yourself comfortable because there’s no service out. Party Going tells the tale of a group of wealthy people, hoping to travel by train to some swanky house party, but the fog being no respecter of wealth has descended and shut down all the train services, they take rooms at the adjacent railway hotel & this is where all the action takes place. Although action, may not be the right word, as what we have is a rolling scene of individuals of varying wealth attempting to communicate with each other. Although Communicate may not be the right word, as most of the time is spent in deciphering the meaning from the barbs and sweet talk that passes for small talk. I mentioned on twitter my problems, not with the book which I liked, but with the characters of said book which I didn’t and they were described to me, as “The bright young things” a bit like the top football players of this age. I had a problem with this statement, as footballers may be wealthy now, but most didn’t start out that way, yet these characters have known no other world than the one they inhabit, in which their own position is marked on a scale from who has the most and then in degrees down to where they see themselves, this also marks how they relate to the others about them, with all deferring to Max (Top Dog).


Communication is the activity of conveying information, deriving from the Latin word “Communis” meaning to share, this requires a sender, a message and an intended recipient.  Effective communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality, and this process is complete once the receiver has understood the message of the sender. Feedback is critical to effective communication between parties. Now although the characters here share “an area of communicative commonality” they are all of a similar social standing, share the same codes of behaviour etc., yet there is something failing, they have the same coding apparatus, but the wrong keys.


Which takes me to my heading, Empty Vessels, this is the old adage “that empty vessels make the most noise” and by this I mean that although a lot is said, these are characters that abhor a silence, nothing is really said, it’s as though you have three or four people occupying a room and shouting into the void, then waiting for the echo. Whilst researching for this post I found this quote, which I found made sense


“Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries except Samuel Beckett, Green exploits the trivia and minutiae of life. His characters react to life in terms of basic needs, the most basic of which is how to relieve boredom or dispel loneliness. The need for conversation, the need to verbalize, is of course attached to one's desire to avoid tedium; and Green's characters frequently talk not for the sake of communicating particular ideas but rather to occupy themselves…”*


This I felt held the key to understanding this book, that these “bright young things” had no aims beyond a need to stave off anything that could hinder sensation, no matter how vague, that they were running between anything that left them alone, with only their selves for company and now finding themselves trapped by a dense fog, could do no more than bleet their helplessness to an otherwise occupied & indifferent individual.
I read this book because of Stu from Winstonsdad, as part of his Henry Green week, I would not have come across it had he not held this writer up above the crowd of names we see every time a new or new to us writer surfaces. So thanks Stu for introducing me to this writer whose book I enjoyed, if not the bright young things within it.

*Frederick R. Karl, "Normality Defined: The Novels of Henry Green," in his A Reader's Guide to the Contemporary English Novel

Henry Green(Wiki)

Henry Green Interviewed by Terry Southern

Challenges

Do you love a book so much you want everyone to read it? #WBN2012

 

 

Welcome to World Book Night UK & Eire

World Book Night is a celebration designed to spread a love of reading and books. Celebrated on April 23, 2012 it will see tens of thousands of people gift books within their communities to spread the joy and love of reading. In 2012 World Book Night will be celebrated in the UK, Ireland and USA.

 

Do you love a book so much you want everyone to read it?

World Book Night launched in 2011 and saw 20,000 passionate readers across the UK give 1 million books to light or non readers thereby spreading the joy and love of reading. Reading changes lives and at the heart of World Book Night lies the simplest of ideas and acts - that of putting a book into another person’s hand and saying ‘this one’s amazing, you have to read it’.
World Book Night 2012 will be held on April 23 and we are once more looking for 20,000 volunteer givers. This year our givers will be distributing 24 copies each (480,000 books) with the further books distributed directly to prisons and libraries through our charitable partners.
Last year my daughter and I took part in the first World Book Night and as well as giving away our allotted 48 books, 48 people left with a smile on their face and a joy they weren’t expecting, make that 50, as my daughter and I both left with a smile, with a joy born of the fact that we were the givers of a small world, that because of that act someone may explore more.

So please sign up, as well as helping spread the word, the love of books, you’ll benefit yourself from a warm glow, knowing that someone may read a book they would have never considered reading & although this hopefully will be The Parrish Lantern’s 2nd year of involvement, I’m just as excited (as is my daughter) and hoping we can participate in many more years & with many more nations coming on board.

Thanks,

Parrish.

Click here to sign up to be a giver
Click here to see the 25 World Book Night titles
Click here to learn more about World Book Night
@WorldBookNight
@WBNAmerica
USA VISITOR?
 
Click here - World Book Night USA

German  Visitor?

Welttag des Buches 




In order to be a Giver you must be:
Aged 16 or over and resident in the UK and Ireland
Able to collect 24 copies of your book from your local bookshop or library
Committed to giving your books away on or around World Book Night to non or light readers
Givers will be chosen based on
Where, to whom & why you want to give books away
For more information about the specially chosen World Book Night books click here
For further tips about where to give your books away click here
To read the terms and conditions of being a World Book Night giver click here

Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s - In Praise of Shadows (A Contemplation)

In Praise of Shadows is an essay on aesthetics by one of my favourite Japanese writers, it was originally published in 1933, with the English translation coming out in 1977. This is a tiny book of less than fifty pages, containing a foreword  and an afterword, making the essay itself only  forty-two pages long, which means it can be read in one sitting, although that would be defeating the point of it, this should be savoured, this book should be read and re-read, should be immersed in. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki discusses traditional Japanese  aesthetics in contrast to the changes occurring in his country, or to be more accurate the westernisation of it. Through this essay he compares light & dark, stating that the West with it’s fundamental quest for progress, can be represented as a continuous search for greater light and clarity, whilst in contrast the Japanese path is through shade, that to appreciate Japanese art and literature, you need to understand it’s shadows and the subtle nuances perceived within them. By this method he goes on to explain how this can reach into every part of our lives from what we eat out of, to what our toilets should look like and how they should be perceived. In the afterword it says that one of the oldest and most deeply ingrained of Japanese attitudes to literary style, is that anything with to obvious a structure is contrivance, that to orderly an exposition falsifies the ruminations of the heart,  that the truest representation of the searching mind is just to “Follow the Brush” this gives “In Praise of Shadows” a conversational tone, and doesn’t come across as an essay, it is more haphazard, as though you were following the thought process of a gifted writer.

*

“There are good reasons why lacquer soup bowls are still used, qualities which ceramic bowls do not posses. Remove the lid from a ceramic bowl, and there lies the soup, every nuance of its substance and colour revealed. With lacquer ware there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one glances at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its colour hardly differing from that of the bowl itself. What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gentle movement of the liquid, vapour rises from within forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapour brings a delicate anticipation. What a world of difference there is between this moment and the moment when soup is served western style, in a pale shallow bowl. A moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance.”
*


Although this eloquent strange book is primarily an essay on the Japanese sense of beauty, it  is also an act of meditation and an elegy to a culture he perceived to be receiving it’s last rites, making it part clarion call, part last post. This  little book discusses architecture, drama, food, beauty and various other aspects of Japanese culture and how the rush for progress, with the adoption of western values, has created an uneasy, unbalanced clash of cultures, with the more forceful Western  culture, with it’s bright garish modern technology, challenging his own softer, quieter aesthetic tradition.

*

“ Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light…. The “mysterious Orient” of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depths of an alcove to which the sunlight had never penetrated. Where lies the key to this mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows.”

*

Tanizaki shares with us his obvious delight in the ordinary everyday world and contrasts this with his perception of the disposable plastic ideals of western technology and his nations attempts to grasp all, adding his voice to the questions raised on what it means to be Japanese, what the “essence of Japaneseness” might be when confronted by the rush for all things modern and western. I discussed this slightly in my post on OUP, Very Short Introductions – Modern Japan and this book calls for  the rediscovery of a particular appreciation of a fragile shadowy beauty that characterised Japanese aesthetics. I’ve read this little book three times now and will probably read it again at some point, it contains a quiet forceful nature it pokes at your thought processes at odd moments, passages come back to contrast the world I find myself in, with it’s meditation on how the beauty and the quality of an  experience lived is as important as all other aspects, given it as much relevance today, as when it was written.
*

“To snatch away from us even the darkness beneath trees that stand deep in the forest is the most heartless of crimes. At this rate every place of any beauty … , as the price of being turned over to the masses, will be denuded of trees.”

There’s a slight proviso to this, Tanizaki has a section on race and skin colour, that mirrors the perverse and yet  prevalent attitude of the time it was written, in these more hopefully enlightened times, this section may cause offence. My point in raising this issue, is with this enlightenment we can realise the faults of the past and yet not let it mar the the rest of this wonderful little book.

Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (Wiki)
Leete’s Island Books Publishers
 Translators.
Edward G. Seidensticker  was a noted scholar and translator of Japanese literature. He was particularly known for his English version of The Tale of Genji (1976), which is counted among the preferred modern translations. He is also well known for his landmark translations of Yasunari Kawabata, which led to Kawabata's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968.
Thomas J. Harper was Senior Lecturer in Japanese Literature, apart from translation he also wrote the afterword in this essay. Harper was Senior Lecturer in Japanese Literature at the Australian National University in Canberra.
The Foreword was written by architect, writer and educator Charles Moore , Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991.

Challenges page.

The Ghost of Neil Diamond

David Milnes
We meet Neil Atherton, the hero of this book, in the toilet of a  Karaoke bar in Hong Kong and it’s Neil Diamond Nite. Egged on by people who appear to be friends of his wife, he performs a wonderful rendition of “Reason to Believe” a beautiful song written by Tim Hardin and covered by Neil Diamond, as he is performing this song he silences the room, who hang on his every word, every line he releases into the room has the ability to create listeners, believers out of a disparate crowd of cynics, drunks and the generally apathetic – it turns out Neil can sing & beautifully. After his turn is over, he is accosted by Elbert Chan, a Chinese man of about forty wearing a wild Hawaiian Shirt and claiming to be a music agent, with big plans for a singer of Neil's quality.
Neil Atherton is a middle-aged British Folk Singer/Guitarist who has touched the hem of the Goddess of success, yet climbed no higher, at one time he was on speaking terms with those who had the hits during the Folk boom of the late 60s – early 70s. He even worked as a backing musician with the likes of Richard Thompson, Dave Swarbrick, Fairport convention and their ilk, when they moved on, he toured  those folk clubs that still survived in the back room of Pubs, clubs & church halls. Eventually garnering less & less work,  he follows his wife when she’s offered a new job in Hong Kong and what at first seems like a new start, finds him completely lost with nothing to do - washed up in Hong Kong, he is no longer the free-spirited musician, just a kept man, accepting  hand-outs from his wife who has made a success of this move. She has accepted and is thoroughly enjoying her new life, which is the antithesis of her past life and  her husband, who still believes in the folk ideals of the sixties, she takes this opportunity to divest herself of all the old baggage…. Neil is kicked out and quickly replaced.
This leaves him almost homeless, living in  a school room at night & spending his days in places like McDonalds, becoming more and more reliant on Elbert Chan and his offers of work as a Neil Diamond impersonator…..
We follow Neil through a series of increasingly bizarre scenarios, which includes a conflict with a leading stateside Diamond impersonator, I won’t say anymore on this as it would ruin what is a really funny & fantastic part of this tale. This book shows the underbelly, that dark seam, that hides beneath the glitz and glamour in all metropolis, shows how an innocent, naive individual gets enmeshed in a world so different from his own, that he doesn’t realise how it slowly is corrupting him. This is the tale of the fool, the king for a day marching blindly in borrowed glad rags  to their own destruction. 
This book is a dark comedy, even in the moments where there are signs that optimism may raise it’s head, a bloody great sword would come swooping down, just to let you know that such idealism was unwarranted here, and yet this book constantly made me smile, the characters here are fantastic, the strangely seedy, dishonest & yet otherworldly nature of Elbert Chan, the snooty humour of the office girls, the sheer desperation sweating from every pore (along with the booze) of Iannis and the self blinding naivety & pity of the hero(anti?) himself, just brought a smile to my face and a chortle from my lips.

I was sent this book by the author, with a couple of other books by the same publisher Whattraditionbooks after I left a comment on a fellow blogger’s post. Of the ones sent, I read this first as it had the most appeal at face value and I’m glad I did. Thanks to the writer David Milnes for sending me the book and for his patience whilst waiting for me to finally read it.

David Milnes (Bookmunch Interview)

The Best British Poetry 2011

 
This book is based on the The Best American Poetry series of anthologies founded in the late 1980’s, and has been compiled  from various British sources. The selection was chosen from UK- based Poetry magazines, Literary journals and online publications  issued between spring 2010 and spring 2011, by the Scottish poet Roddy Lumsden, who also wrote the introduction. His aim in compiling this collection was that the material gathered should represent the rich variety of current UK poetry, including lyric, formal and experimental writing, that it should also represent the diversity of the poetry scene from established poets such as  Patrick McGuinness, George Szirtes and Nii Ayikwei Parkes through to  a newcomer Emma Page who is represented by her first published poem. The poets included are either from the UK or are based here, there are poets originally from the US, Ghana, Ireland, South Africa, Iran, Hungary, Australia, Zambia & show the multiplicity of poetry whether mainstream or experimental within the United Kingdom.
**
Each poem within this stunning jewel of a book is accompanied by a note from the poet, giving a little detail of their lives and an explanation of why they wrote this particular poem, providing us, the reader, with added insight into the writing of each piece. This adds a wonderful dialogue to the collection wherein  your own interpretation of a poem can be compared with the original writers ideas. In the introduction Roddy Lumsden states that “ the end result is,  I hope,  a snapshot of what is happening at present in non-book publication of poetry in the UK” and if this is the case it chimes with what another poet (Nuala Ní Chonchúir) recently said to me, that being “ poetry is in a healthy state in the sense that it is being written and published, and there are a lot of readings taking place. The small presses keep poetry alive”, to which we owe a hearty thanks.

                       Three Wishes
                              * * *

What is it then? A gold-yoked goose egg. A wild bean-stalk.
      The flatness of adulation. Being always young. The King, the Castle.
Wheat stalks spindled to flash and twine.
*
Or a cozening, a camera snap that keeps you, fleece-wrapped and obdurate
as a retouched grave, a quiet pearl.
*
A thick sleep saved from thistling worry. A cleaned thick-brick, gated place --
chrome and cream: control.
Wired yammering to drown the sullen, rising sea.
*
Remember now, how the girl requested a tattooed point of light, a refined star--
      woke to the blinding, ink-scrawled sail of space,
               unbounded clusters, galaxies, cankering in her skin.
                                                                                          Kate Potts.

*

Kate Potts was born in 1978 and grew up in London. She worked in music publishing before studying at Goldsmiths’ College, London, and has taught English and Creative Writing at colleges in London for several years. Her pamphlet Whichever Music (tall-lighthouse) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and was shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her work was featured in the Bloodaxe new poets anthology Voice Recognition in 2009. Pure Hustle (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) is her first book-length collection.
 
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Featuring Kate Potts


Kate Potts (The Michael Marks Award)
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Books by Kate Potts: Pure Hustle:
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Editor Roddy Lumsden (born 1966) is a Scottish poet, who was born in St Andrews. He has published five collections of poetry, a number of chapbooks and a collection of trivia, as well as editing a generational anthology of British and Irish poets of the 1990s and 2000s, Identity Parade. He lives in London where he teaches for The Poetry School.
***********
Best British Poetry
Salt Publishing
Roddy Lumsden(Wiki)

The Poetry Kit Interviews Roddy Lumsden

The Challenges 2012 Page.

2011 Top Posts (as voted by who?) Best Wishes To All

Although this is my first post of 2012, I thought that I would use the opportunity to find out what my 2011 top posts were. Now I personally know what my favourite was, but that would be to easy. What I wanted to know, was what post had the most visits for each month of 2011 and what were the top three posts of the year. The aim was to see if this has any correlation with my perception of The Parrish Lantern and how I see it’s direction for the coming year etc. So starting with January 2011, here are the most visited posts, or as per the title The Top Posts ( as Voted by who – you?)

January’s top post was  a celebration post of one of the greatest philosophers in the world, one of the  first who saw the links between eastern philosophy and the ideas behind the likes of Jasper, Heidegger & Sartre, in fact I’m sure I imagined somewhere that Albert Camus expressly didn’t state that this individuals work had a major influence on his own, also writers such as Samuel Beckett continue a dialogue started by this individual through the statement “The more Pooh looked, the more Piglet wasn’t there”, January’s top post - Winnie the pooh day

February“THERE’S NO EITHER – OR – DIVISION with poems. What’s made up and what’s not made up? What’s the varnished truth, what’s  the unvarnished truth? We don’t care. With prose you first want to know: Is it fiction, is it nonfiction? Everything follows from that. The books  go in different places in the bookstore. But we don’t do that with poems, or with song lyrics. Books of poems go straight to the poetry section. There’s no nonfictional and fictional poetry. The categories don’t exist.” The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

March This post was my reaction to the news arriving from Japan (11 March 2011 at 14:46) and was me reaching out, in the only way I know how - with words. Ume Blossoms are seen as an example of resilience and perseverance, they are also Spring Symbols (Kigo) and function as a protective against evil

April The top post for April was in response to a question posed by the Ladies Of The Blue Bookcase - Discuss your thoughts on sentimentality in literature. When is emotion in literature effective and when is it superfluous? This was an example of me sneaking more poetry onto The Parrish lantern, with a couple of fantastic Poems by Pablo Neruda & Brian Patten.

May The candidate for May’s top post, probably had other things on his mind, as the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, for his collection “ White Egrets”.   Derek Walcott treats his characteristic subjects – the Caribbean’s complex colonial legacy, the Western artistic tradition, the blessings and withholdings of old Europe (Andalucía, the Mezzogiorno, Amsterdam), the unaccommodating sublime of the new world, times cunning passages, the poets place in all of this – with a passionate intensity and drive that rivals his greatest work” .

June In this month a first occurred on The Parrish Lantern, the first Giveaway and hopefully what will become a fairly regular tradition -  THE NATTY HAT COMPETITION.  I was amazed by the success of this, I had around fifty poems entered into my comments box ….And The Winner was ………….Kinna from Kinna Reads,

JULY This is about my top book of 2011 and my post I look upon most favourably. In fact this book is also a flagitious  garrulous  stunt: a 280 odd folio fiction that on no occasion  puts to work a  particular symbol that falls twixt D and F.  Adair's translation, is also mind-bogglingly astounding  and full of dark art, it also constricts it’s wording choosing to follow its original  authors lipogrammatic constraint and in doing so fashions a book that has no ilk, July’s top post is A Void by Georges Perec

August This has me confused a bit as a top post as it’s nothing more than me waffling about updating  and introducing - pomes ALL SIZES page & twitter page on The Parrish Lantern

September’s Post choice also featured in my “The Traditional End Of Year Round Up Post” as runner up in my favourite short story collection and was my second book from the fabulous people at Peirene press, Maybe This Time by  Alois Hotschnig I described this  being a rabbit hole and Alice is so far outside her comfort zone - it hurts.

October Is another of my personal favourites and deals with a subject that has long fascinated me, that being Japanese literature and the dichotomy apparent within it, this little book provides a great insight into this country, it’s history and it’s literature. OUP, Very Short Introductions – Modern Japan.

November In this month I had my first encounter with the fabulous writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir’ via her short story collection Nude. Which to be honest I initially had trouble describing, I said that  in this collection of twenty tales, there are some that will make you smile, even laugh, some will leave you with questions concerning your attitude to the naked form, whether as living flesh or as works of art and others will just break your heart. But that was only half the power of this great collection.

December This month’s top post was a very close call between two totally different writers, in fact there was only a difference of five visits The books were The Face of Another By Kobo Abe and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. In The final count up The Book Thief just  topped  Kobo Abe’s total, but then, that may be down to the guest writers persuasive talents.

 

The only question (well the only one I’m allowing) is what were the top three posts visited in 2011, in traditional reverse order are

OUP, Very Short Introductions – Modern Japan.

A Void by Georges Perec

With the winner being - Winnie the pooh day

Yeah who’d have thought it?  Philosophy being a major point of interest on The Parrish Lantern! and a to now unappreciated often overlooked follower of that subject, has topped the pole on 2011 Blog posts, with that in mind here’s a few of his statements.

 

"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

“Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.”

“Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other was the left, but he never could remember how to begin”

“Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find youFor last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~T.S. Eliot,

                                

Best Wishes for 2011 to all those who follow & comment on The Parrish Lantern.