Things to do: #2 See 'The Last Great Snail Chase'

The Last Great Snail Chase is a magic-realist, independently produced movie that was written and directed by my friend Ed Lynden-Bell. It's showing at the Academy Cinemas in Auckland right now (from the 12th to the 26th of March).

I've seen it twice, and I recommend it. It's very imaginative, very odd, and full of cool things. It's set in the present day, around a group of friends. The sky is cracking apart, turtles are swimming in the sky, and a colossal tidal wave threatens to destroy the planet. Despite that, everything is going on much as it always does. The tag line is: 'In a world where whales walk the streets, you still gotta go to work'.

Some reviews: http://www.flicks.co.nz/movie/the-last-great-snail-chase/.

Because it's showing in Auckland, this isn't something I'll be doing right now (though it's likely to show in Wellington later), but if you're in Auckland, you might just want to go along.

Stuff to do: #1 See Richard Langston at Poetry Society

From my reminder email:

Hi all. Our monthly meeting is coming up again. On Monday 16th March our Guest Poet is Richard Langston, Wellington poet and TV3 journo. I heard Richard read at the White Album Winter Readings at the City Gallery last year, and immediately decided he deserved a whole reading to himself.

The meeting will run to its usual format: starting at 7.30 with the open mic, a short break to enable you to support our sponsor, Thistle Inn, and then Richard will read for 20-30 minutes. There'll be a Q&A session at the end, and if we're lucky, Richard will bring along some of his poetry books to sign and sell.

Monday 16 March, 7.30pm

The Thistle Inn

3 Mulgrave St

Wellington.

Classic Kiwi TV commercials

Ok, so not related to literature, or art even, but I guess it is related to New Zealand culture more generally ... After watching a bunch of old commercials while editing a entry for work about the history of advertising in NZ, I was compelled to write this blog post: http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2009/03/10/classic-television-commercials/

Feel free to join the discussion, and add your two cents about your favourite ads.

JAAM 27 submission reminder

Just wanted to remind you all that submissions for JAAM 27 are due at the end of this month - 31 March 2009.

Call for submissions below. For more info, visit JAAM on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/jaammagazine (am in the process of creating a more-proper website for JAAM, but this has happened yet because I haven't found the time, but it's something to look forward too).

Call for submissions for JAAM 27

JAAM 27 (2009) will be edited by writer Ingrid Horrocks, who currently teaches creative writing at Massey University in Wellington.

The theme for this issue is 'wandering'. As well as work that features literal wanderers and travellers (a mainstay of New Zealand literature) we're also interested work that wanders - works that digress in creative ways from narrative, argument, or genre. Wandering fiction, poetry and, especially, creative nonfiction, should be sent to Ingrid by the end of March 2009 at jaammagazine@yahoo.co.nz or PO Box 25239, Panama Street, Wellington 6146.

As always, this issue of JAAM will also be open to general submissions, which should be sent in by the same date.

JAAM 27 will be published in the second half of 2009.

What else I learned at Woodstock, and my new adventures (?) on Twitter

Following up from my previous post, you can read more about what I learned at Webstock on my day-job blog. Basically, it's about how I realised how important emotion and connection is for me on the web.

And to update that previous post - despite being way more interested in geotagging poetry, I haven't done that at all yet, but have joined Twitter. This is after not being very interested in it, and saying, in front of witnesses at about 5.15 pm last Tuesday, that I would never join Twitter. By around 2 pm the next day, I had joined. Sigh. What ever happened to my principles.

The reason I joined was mainly because we've started twittering (tweeting?) at work, and I wanted to be able to follow it to see how it goes. You can learn all kinds of exciting things by following us: http://twitter.com/Te_Ara.

Just now I tweeted my first poem - or rather a bit of a poem - you can't do much with 140 characters. It is a small bit from Eavan Boland's 'The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me': 'The past is an empty cafe terrace. / An airless dusk before thunder. A man running.' It's a poem I read today, and liked. Let's see how often I actually tweet poetry...

Also, I've put my photo back to normal, because section 92a of the Copyright Act thingy has been delayed.

ODT reviews JAAM (and Landfall and others)

The Otago Daily Times has published a review by Gavin McLean of JAAM 26 on their website - it was originally published on 7 Feb. You can read it here (it's the second bit): http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/42595/recent-belles-lettres.

He seems to mostly like it, though would like wider inside margins (they're the same as most people's, but just for you, I'll make them wider next time - we listen to reader feedback).

Oh, also

I've changed my profile pic to a black rectangle because of this: http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html

Webstock and digital poetry stuff

I feel like if I had double the amount of time, I'd still always be busy. Sigh.

Last week, one of the things I was busy with was Webstock, which is an internet conference that runs in Wellington every year. It was my first year going, so that in itself was quite exciting for me.

The talks were varied, and some were useful in a work-related way, while others gave me some ideas and thoughts for non-work internet stuff. Still others were exciting in a philosophical sort of way.

Outside of this, I was given a couple of ideas about poetry things that I could do on the web, or that you could do on the web.

The first was suggested by a workmate - and possibly as a joke. He said I could geotag my poems. This is actually a cool idea. I don't really know how it works, but you can add things to googlemaps. People often tag photos to a particular place, but there is no reason you couldn't do a poetry layer, tagging poems to the geographic place they are about. I might actually do this one, because I have a poem about Frank Kitt's Park, that was in my first book, and a poem set in Orakei Korako, and possibly some others.

The other suggestion was from a friend, when I was muttering about how I don't really get Twitter. She suggested that I could twitter a bit of a poem every hour. I suggested every day, which seemed more reasonable. I can't see myself actually doing this one anytime soon, but if you want to, let me know. I might even sign up to Twitter to follow it.

Kate Camp is guest poet at Feb Poetry Society Meeting, Wellington

Totally ripped off from the email I got:

Happy New Year everyone. I hope you've all settled into 2009 and are looking forward to a great year of poetry.

We kick off this year with guest poet Kate Camp. Kate's first collection of poetry, Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars (VUP, 1998) won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry at the 1999 Montana book awards. Since then she has produced two more collections, as well as publishing widely in journals and online. She'll also be known to many of you for her monthly reviews on Radio New Zealand National.

Kate will be reading for us on Monday 16th February, at the Thistle Inn in Mulgrave St (near the Railway Station/bus terminus). The evening will open at 7.30 pm with an open mic; there'll be a refreshment break for you to support our sponsor, Thistle Inn, and then Kate will read for 20-30 minutes. There'll be an opportunity to ask Kate questions at the end of her reading. With luck, she'll bring along some books for sale and signing.

Entry is $2 at the door, which is upstairs.

The Kathleen Grattan Award for original collection of poems or a long poem

Just read in my New Zealand Society of Authors email newsletter about this interesting new(ish) award that may interest fellow poets:

Auckland poet Kathleen Grattan, a journalist and former editor of the New Zealand Woman's Weekly, died in 1990. A member of the Titirangi Poets, her work was published in Landfall and other volumes including Premier Poets, a collection from the World Poetry Society. Her daughter Jocelyn Grattan, who also worked for the New Zealand Woman's Weekly, shared her mother's love of literature. She has generously left Landfall a bequest with which to establish an award in memory of Kathleen Grattan.

About the Competition

The award is for an original collection of poems or a long poem by a New Zealand or Pacific resident or citizen. Entries will be accepted from 1 May each year. The closing date will be 31 July each year and the winner will be announced in the November issue of Landfall. The announcement will be made in the November issue of Landfall. The winner will receive $16,000 and a year's subscription to Landfall.

For full details visit http://www.otago.ac.nz/press/landfall/grattanaward.html

Murderess Minnie Dean's mystery gravestone

Minnie Dean is the only woman to have ever been hanged in New Zealand. She had been a baby farmer, who looked after unwanted or illegitimate children for money - though not much. Not really enough. She was convicted of murder after the bodies of children were found in her garden. She claimed the deaths were accidental. Maybe they were, but she hung for it anyway, and her body was buried in an unmarked grave in Winton cemetary.

Or at least it was unmarked until last week, when a plaque was laid over her grave. It says: ‘Minnie Dean is part of Winton’s history. Where she now lies is now no mystery.’ No one has admitted to putting the headstone there.

You can read more about it in my blog post on my day-job blog: http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2009/02/02/mystery-gravestone/. Or, for a less factual account of Minnie Dean, you can read my poem below.

I got interested in Minnie Dean after an acquaintance was writing a screenplay about her. I read some of the outline stuff and had a big chat with him about his plans. One inspiring moment was him sitting in our lounge, with a window at his back, saying how he sometimes felt a bit creeped out, like she was watching him, and then turning around to check what was behind him. On the whole, his screenplay was sympathetic-ish.

He in turn had been inspired by seeing a play that emphasised the myths the had grown up around her after her death - she became a bogeywoman, especially in Southland. Parents threatened children with her if they didn't behave, she poked children through their heads with her knitting needle fingers, and so forth.

So anyway, here's my poem about her, which appears in My Iron Spine:

Handicrafts with Minnie Dean

I have never before
been in the presence
of a murderess
The very word
ices my spine
a word
to be whispered, hissed
gossiped

She has knitting needles instead of fingers
the little girls sing

Her fingers click click click
They cast nightmare-shadows, but
she can knit five booties
at once, five baby vests
five bonnets
It’s just as well, I think
looking down at my own empty needles
and judging
by the noise from the nursery
there are a lot of feet to warm
heads to cover
‘I love babies,’ she says
‘little cherubs’

You’d better be good or you’ll be sent to Minnie Dean’s farm
and you’ll never be seen again

I have tangled my wool again
She patiently showed me how to cast on
and it is all coming back slowly
but I’m not sure if I’m knitting
or purling When I look up
she is wearing a hat
that she wasn’t before
It is black, with a white rose
curled around the crown
‘My travelling hat,’ she winks
pokes a jewelled pin
where her fontanel would be
if she had one, but no
it’s just a trick
of the light
and the blood
dripping from the hat box
in the corner
is just a shadow

She runs them through with hatpins
She throws them out of trains

The draught is whisping
lisping under the uneven floorboards, skittering
through the walls and
around my feet
I feel her eyes on me
but when I look she is busy
sewing the seams on the bonnets
‘Now the little darlings
won’t get cold’
The babies that no one else
loves are calling for her
would die without her

She is not a woman on whom
I would turn my back

Alain de Botton, Montaigne and clarity

I've just finished ready The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton. It's wonderful.

Sean had borrowed it from Scott (thanks Scott) and started reading bits of it out to me. Basically it's the friendliest possible introduction to six philosophers, their lives and thoughts: Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. All mixed in with a bit of humour, some personal reflections and some pics. I really enjoyed it and now feel more intelligent.

Possibly my fav bit of the whole thing is from his section on Montaigne. It relates to my day job (as an editor), and to my writing. It made me feel better about having trouble with those chaps like Foucault and co in my honours year. And this book was a demonstration of it (or the opposite of what he's talking about) in action:

Every difficult work presents us with a choice of whether to judge the author inept for not being clear, or ourselves stupid for not grasping what is going on. Montaigne encouraged us to blame the author. An incomprehensible prose style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness: what reads easily is rarely so written. Or else such prose masks an absence of content; being incomprehensible offers unparalled protection against nothing to say...

Jane Mander part 3: The poem

Readers of My Iron Spine (or of Takahe, where the poem first appeared) may recall my poem 'Jane Mander'.

Now it is time for me to confess that when I wrote it I knew pretty much nothing about Jane Mander, except that she'd written The Story of a New Zealand River (which I hadn't yet read). I just had this idea of the river - influenced obviously by the title of her novel - and the whole casting off Victorian repression thing, which was probably influenced by The Piano.

Once I wrote it, I did check up on the bare facts of Jane Mander's life, just to make sure it wasn't wildly contradictory, and decided that she did sound like someone who had worked to cast off Victorianism, though perhaps not in such a suggestive way.

Anyway, here's the poem:

Jane Mander

Time is a river
I am not the first to say this
I will not be the last

As I walk out the front door
down the stairs, over the grass
I am already unbuttoning

I leave my blouse
on the box edging
my petticoat floats on the pebble path

I kick my shoes into
the rushes, unclamp
my corset from myself

I crouch as the chill water
surrounds me, laps at me
I launch out, start to swim upstream

It is easier to dream downstream
but I am swimming back
into the past

Memories trickle over my skin
evaporating as the breeze
breathes over my shoulders

I push with my arms
bobbing against the current
finding my way back towards the source

Jane Mander part 2: Story of a New Zealand Writer

Once I'd finished The Story of a New Zealand River, it didn't take long to also polish off The Story of a New Zealand Writer – a biography of Jane Mander by Rae McGregor. I found it interesting and inspiring, but kind of in a cautionary-tale kind of way.

She's someone who was quite thwarted in her life. She was born in 1877 and grew up in the Far North, where her father cut down Kauri trees for timber. She was a teacher for a time, and later, when her father's political aspirations led him to buy The Northern Advocate newspaper, she became a journalist and worked for his paper. Probably not the first time, and certainly not the last, that she was to be useful to him.

She was already 35 when set off overseas to do a journalism degree in New York. She didn't finish the four-year course, but in the 20 years she spent overseas she wrote and published six novels, of which The Story of a New Zealand River was her first (and, according to her and others, her best).

During this time money was a constant struggle, and it was lack of money that finally drew her home at age 55. While she was away – and in fact, before and after – she is not known to have had any romantic entanglements with either men or women (some have assumed that because she returned to NZ with a short severe haircut, that she was a lesbian, but apparently there's no evidence for this).

Her family were keen for her to return, and said she would have peace and quiet to keep writing. Her father promised her enough money to live on. The reality turned out rather differently. Like many unmarried women of the time, she ended up as an unpaid housekeeper for her elderly and miserly father, and her mentally ill sister. To get a bit of money, she wrote a book review page for a newspaper and did occasional radio broadcasts. But she never published another novel.

As well as Mander's life, The Story of a New Zealand Writer also had a final chapter about the aforementioned controversy over The Piano's similarity to The Story of a New Zealand River. The plot thickens, because Jane Campion had at one point been asked to direct the adaptation of the book, which had been written by friends of hers. She decided against it, but not long after The Piano was underway. There was talk of legal action, but none eventuated. No one will or can talk about what actually went on, so we might never know.

To be honest, I don't think I would have tried to adapt The Story of a New Zealand River for film – or at least not with a lot of changes. As it stands, the hero in particular would have been too much of a lecturing git.

Save our national pride: does New Zealand have no good orators?

It's not exactly related to literature, but in my day-job blog I've written a post, Not as good as Obama: New Zealand political speeches about political oratory in New Zealand - obviously in response to all the goings on in the US. I've been asking people to leave comments about good New Zealand speeches or speech makers, or really even just about the topic. There's been some interesting responses so far, and feel free to join the discussion.

Jane Mander part 1: The Story of a New Zealand River

So fiction and avoidance of spoilers won out and I finished reading The Story of a New Zealand River by Jane Mander, before finishing The Story of a New Zealand Writer about Jane Mander.

Have any of you read it? It's an interesting book, first published in 1920. It's one of those books I'd heard and heard about as a classic New Zealand novel, but had just never gotten around to reading it before.

The first thing that struck me was that it begins with very old-fashioned attitudes - such as English=good, colonial=bad. But it actually ended with what seemed to be some fairly radical attitudes for a book of it's time - or at least a New Zealand book of it's time.

I'd heard that there was some connection of the story of The Piano - the film by Jane Campion - that there were similarities with The Story of a New Zealand River, and that there was some talk of legal action against her by the people who had the rights to the novel.

So I was reading it looking for similarities, and there certainly are some: a British woman (English in the book, Scottish in the film) with a name beginning with A (book=Alice, film=Ada) travels to an isolated part of the north of New Zealand with her piano and her spirited daughter (book=Asia, film=Flora - and in the book she also has infants Mabel and Betty) to live with her new-ish husband who she doesn't love. But she does grow to love another man of lower social status.

So far, so much sexual repression. But really that's about where the similarities end. The film takes place over a fairly short time, while the book is over more than a decade. The characters are fairly different, and in the book they're generally more likeable and more restrained.

There's also a lot more lecturing in the book - mainly of Alice (who isn't mute, unlike Ada) - and there's a lot about 'free thinking'. I was interested to read that Jane Mander has been very influenced by The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner (as reflected in the similar titles) which is also very concerned with radical free-thinking ideas and non-traditional morality. But The Story of a New Zealand River is written in a more standard narrative form than its predecessor, which is more modern, disjointed and, at times, downright mystical.

Review of JAAM 26 in Southern Ocean Review

There's a review of JAAM 26, edited by Tim Jones, in the latest issue of Southern Ocean Review.

Reviewer Trevor Reeves is very positive about the work selected: 'Tim Jones knows his stuff and chose well. Beginning middle and end, all well crafted and with surprises.' And he has nice things to say about JAAM in general: 'Definitely one of the more prestigious literary magazines around these days.' As co-managing editor (with Clare Needham), that's very gratifying.

Unfortunately latest issue, the fiftieth, is the last ever of Southern Ocean Review. It will be sad to see it go.

One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds: disappointment to delight

So after very specifically requesting this book for Christmas, I wasn't very surprised to find it turn up in my Santa sack (though that would more correctly be a 'Sean sack', as I certainly don't believed in Santa, and even if he does exist he doesn't give me any presents).

I've written about Sharon Olds before – I'm a big fan of her collection The Wellspring, which was – or at least appears to be, one doesn't want to be too presumptuous – very autobiographical, and very real. So I was particularly interested in One Secret Thing, because the back cover says it 'completes her cycle of family poems', and I assumed it would be in the same vein as The Wellspring.

I started reading it in snatches late last week. It began with a series of poems about war. Not particularly autobiographical, I thought, but oh well. There were some nice moving bits, and nice images. (For example, from 'The body' this description of a corpse: the lovely one is gone, the one who/rode it, rider on a mount, the one who had/a name and spoke.') But I was a bit unsure what to make of this section. Later, on reading the back cover more thoroughly, I learned that 'This vision of strife between nations is followed by indelible new poems of conflict within a family', and it did make a bit more sense in a thematic sort of way.

I confess, as I read on, I was feeling a bit disappointed. These poems about the narrator's (/author's) unsatisfactory childhood just weren't working for me, and the language often seemed clumsy and over-cooked.

Things picked up at the beginning of part three, when she started writing of herself as a mother (this is very much a book of mothers and daughters – the narrator playing both roles in her different relationships), and I thought I might recommend 'Umbilicus' and 'When Our Firstborn Slept In' to my friends who are mothers of babies:

—while she slept, it was as if
my pierced ankles loosed themselves
and I walked like a hunter in the horror-joy
of the unattached. Girl of a mother,
mother of a girl, I paced, listening

Unfortunately, my disappointment came back as I plodded through the rest of part three.

But then I reached part four, 'Cassiopeia', and everything changed.

We've already met the narrator's difficult strict mother and her dreadful second husband in previous sections, but 'Cassiopeia' is about her mother after his death. The first poem (or rather, section of a long poem) '1. He is Taken Away', caught my attention – it seemed clearer, sharper and tighter, like the poems I remember from The Wellspring.

But '2. The Music' was the clincher. In it the narrator talks to her mother on the phone: 'she has been sorting/her late darling's clothes', 'her voice through her tears like the low singing/of a watered plant long not watered'. And I'm going to quote a large bit here, because this what really got me:

Now my mother sounds like me,
the way I sound to myself—one
who doesn't know, who fails and hopes.
And I feel, now, that I had wanted to never stop blaming her,
like eating hard-shelled animals
at mid-molt. But now my mother
is like a tiny, shucked crier
in a tide pool beside my hand. I think
I had thought I would falter if I forgave my mother,
as if, then, I would lose her—and I do
feel lonely, now, to sense her beside me,
as if she is only a sister.

Wow! Perfect.

This section continues through her mother's mourning, through rebuilding their relationship during her mother's decline.

Part five, 'One Secret Thing', continues the story with her mother's death, and the narrator's mourning. It's totally heartbreaking, but also restrained and quiet.

The poems that really, really worked for me more than make up for the ones that didn't. Amazing and inspiring writing.

Review of My Iron Spine in Takahe

I was delighted to discover this morning, when I finally sorted through a bunch of mail for JAAM, which had been forwarded on by Mark Pirie (my publisher and former managing editor of JAAM - when we first started JAAM, we used his dad's place for the address, then we shifted to Mark's address, then we got a PO Box. Mark's dad has moved, but years later JAAM mail is still going to his old address), and I discovered a copy of Takahe 65, containing a review of My Iron Spine!

The review, by Patricia Prime, takes My Iron Spine along with Tributary by Rae Varcoe and The Museum of Lost Days by Raewyn Alexander, and looks at them as all transforming 'personal observations into universal truth'.

About the first (autobiographical) section of my book, she says '[t]his is not the indulgence of a self-obsessed woman ruminating on mundane moments heightened by its references to the cold war, God and art, to which we can all relate, rather it is the exultation in presenting these very movments in the tight metre which illuminatates both the language and the experience'.

And of all three books she gushes:

These are poems which will make you gasp - with wonder, delighted, laughter and amazement. Their power to do all this resides in more than their subject matter. Every word, line, verse and stanza in these three collections has been weighted against the highest measure of truth and lucidity. Their work is distinguised by its virtuosity, control of language and feeling. The poems are imbued with a combination of intelligence and compassion.

Can't complain about that!

Also in Takahe 65 are poems by such writers as Emma Neale, John O'Connor, Mark Pirie and Helen Lendorf, stories by Owen Marshall and others, and essays including one on the artwork of Seraphine Pick. I also discovered that my dear friend Vana came second in the Takahe Poetry Competition (judged by Michael Harlow), and that the lovely Siobhan Harvey is taking over from James Norcliffe as poetry editor for Takahe. I guess this means that editing JAAM 25 hasn't put Siobhan off editing literary journals, which will be to our literary benefit I'm sure!

In other news, it is my last day of proper holiday - though I do have the weekend to go. To confirm my holiday-ness, I'm still in my dressing gown. I have been up for ages though, reading.

It has continued to be much more of a reading holiday than a writing one, though I have gotten back to writing in my journal in the last few days. I have been (and still am) in a mood where I want to stuff other people's words into my brain.

Since my last post, I've finished the fabulous book of interviews with David Lynch, Lynch on Lynch. I find his way of working so inspiring. He's very intuitive and refuses to explain his movies, believing logical explanation ruins the magic.

I've started and finished a biography of French writer Colette - about whom I knew very little - she's always been a little confused in my head with George Sand, though I knew she was more recent. Katherine Mansfield mentions Colette in her letters or journals (or possibly both) - she had a dream about her one time. I had thought of Colette as a generation earlier, and though she was born a little before KM, they were both in Paris during the First World War, and had at least one 'friend' in common - Francis Carco, with whom KM had an affair. And Colette went on living long after KM, dying in 1954 at the age of 81.

I'd been meaning to read some of Michael Chabon's books for a while, after hearing that he's really good (though I suppose you'd expect a Pulitzer-winner to be good). So when we were looking for some more holiday reading (as if we need anymore books!) at Archway second-hand bookshop in Pukerua Bay, I picked up a nice looking copy of Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I was irritated to find, when I got home and popped it into the appropriate place of our overstuffed fiction shelves (yes, I alphabeticise my fiction by author - I used to be a pretend-librarian, and it helps me find things and I think it looks impressive) that I already had a copy. 'Time to actually read it', I thought. And, because it is a teeny book, it didn't take very long. This was Chabon's first book, written when he was 23. I admit to making jealous and bitter remarks about this while reading it, because it's very good.

I'm now reading at least three things: The Story of Film, which I started ages ago and have just got back into this morning, and The Story of a New Zealand River by Jane Mander and The Story of a New Zealand Writer about Jane Mander. I can't quite decide whether to read her most famous novel first, or read about her first, so I've been reading a little bit of each. I think I might carry on faster with the novel though - the biography probably has spoilers.

Happy New Year, and stuff

Hello hello! Happy New Year!

I've just come back from a short and lazy holiday up in Otaki, and have been inspired to write a new post by having two comments waiting for me.

Hope you all had nice Christmases and New Years. We've had a very good friend staying with us, and so headed up the coast to stay in Sean's parents' house for some slouching around and reading and getting sunburnt time. (The sunburn wasn't deliberate, but was hard to avoid). Am back much relaxed, but haven't written a jot. I seem to be in a reading-rather-than-writing time just at the minute, and I'm of a mind to just go with that.

Got several fabulous books for Christmas, but I'm not reading any of them. Things I got include Cosmopolis by Don Delillo (very much enjoyed his White Noise, which I've read several times, but had never gotten around to reading anything else by him. So Sean helped me out by buying the shortest one. I've read it already and really liked it, but not as much as White Noise - mainly because it isn't as funny.), One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds, Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones, the two dreamhunter books in one volume by Elizabeth Knox, and, all the way from Edinburgh, a rather nice edition of The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, signed by Margaret Atwood. I did my masters thesis on Margaret Atwood. My friend was going to tell MA that when she got her to sign it, but there wasn't time. I told her this was probably fortunate because she apparently thinks people who write their theses on her are a bit crazy. (My thesis was called I'm the Plot Babe: Fairy Tale Intertextuality in the Fiction of Margaret Atwood. I took too long to write it, but read lots of novels, fairy tales and feminist theory, and wrote most of the poems in Abstract Internal Furniture, so it wasn't a wasted two-and-a-half years at all.)

What I am actually reading at the moment is The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene (of whom I'm becoming a bit fan - not long ago read The End of the Affair - brilliant, and had previously read Brighton Rock - also brilliant), and a book of interviews with David Lynch. I'm a bit fan of David Lynch. I don't care that no-one else except me and Sean and two or three other people in the entire world liked Inland Empire, I think the man is a genius. I'm inspired by his work and how you have to read them emotionally for them to make sense.

A week or so ago I finished reading a biography of Stanley Kubrick, who is another director I really admire. It was really interesting, and was looking back over his whole long career - but I was mortified to discover when I came to the end that not only was it written before he had died, but it was written before Eyes Wide Shut was released! So nothing about the finished film, and nothing about AI. I think I might find another, more recent, Kubrick biography and read the very end, just for the satisfaction.