Spotted links

Reconstructing Mayakovsky
"Set in the future, Reconstructing Mayakovsky revisits the past to make sense of the chaotic present. Inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian Futurist poet who killed himself in 1930 at the age of thirty-six, the novel imagines a dystopia where uncertainty and tragedy have finally been eliminated through technology. Like the novel, the website uses “found“ objects (image, sound, text) and combines elements of historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, and the detective novel, to tell the story of Mayakovsky in a radically different way."

Dalkey Annual
The summer Review of Contemporary Fiction is "the second Dalkey Archive Annual ... featuring work from books forthcoming over the next four seasons". Online content includes reviews of Bolaño, Kertész and "Three Contemporary German-Language Fiction Writers".

Rock Crystal
A non-contemporary German-language fiction writer is Adalbert Stifter. A Different Stripe reports on NYRB Classics' reissue of Rock Crystal, Marianne Moore's co-translation of Stifter's beautiful novella Bergkristall.

Maurice Scève
A Journey Round My Skull looks at Richard Sieburth's Emblems of Desire, translations of 16th French poet Maurice Scève.

Abdelwahab Meddeb
Charlotte Mandell offers excerpts from Tomb of Ibn Arabi, a forthcoming book of translations of prose poems by Abdelwahab Meddeb, described elsewhere as "one of North Africa's most important contemporary thinkers".

"Blanchot l'extrême"
Philippe Sollers reviews Blanchot's Ecrits politiques 1953-1993. I've little idea what he says as it's in French. However, it does reveal that, in the wake of the fatwa, Blanchot offered his house as a meeting point for Salman Rushdie and Khomeini's successor; with himself as mediator!

What is happening?

Last month, there was a puzzling story summary in The Guardian: "Lisa Jewell wins top prize at awards set up to rebrand chick lit and bolster its literary credentials". How, I wonder, can a prize bolster a genre's literary credentials? No doubt the word is meant as a loose definition of serious fiction, and a prize surely affords that; yes, even the Melissa Nathan Award for comedy romance. "Serious" is also loosely-defined: serious subject matter, serious attention, serious sales. But shouldn't "literary" mean more than that? Or rather, don't those who use this troublesome word imply that it means more? Perhaps not. Yet, when ever I read such articles, I smell anguish; a hunger for elusive gravity. It is never far from the surface. "You feel undervalued when you write the kind of fiction I write," Lisa Jewell said after receiving the award. "So it's great to have this genre given its own night of appreciation and recognition. To win is just wonderful." One has to ask what else a comedy romance award is supposed to recognise? And what kind of value does she imagine writers of no genre feel? It's an odd situation all round as Jewell reckons her book is "neither particularly funny, nor particularly romantic." So isn't the prize instead bolstering its generic credentials; a rebranding that burns deeper into a shedding skin?

So many questions. This post isn't supposed to be another thimbleful of boiling oil against the barbarian hordes, so I'll come to the main question: what is going on? The Guardian presents perhaps the foremost literary coverage of any newspaper in the UK, and it has a formidable online presence. So perhaps this prominence contributes to the apparently disproportionate number of book news articles, blogs and reviews it publishes that smell of literary anguish. Every week you can read of writer's frustration at being excluded from literary society ("Chick lit is almost a derogatory term") or a pitiful reader dreaming of the golden age of Dickens when literary fiction was mainstream (though never as mainstream as the penny dreadfuls they themselves would never dream of reading let alone calling literary). US literary coverage does not seem to exhibit such concern let alone pain. Something, it seems, is happening. It's more than the externalisation of literary snobbery (i.e. the example-free accusations that Chick lit is "a term of abuse for some, a back-handed compliment for others") and other than playing up to a readership wishing to feel good about itself for sucking on pap: it's an increasingly fraught, self-blinding search for gravity.

While Guy Dammann's report above finds ballast in metal and moneybags, a previous winner finds it in a surprising location: "a novel doesn't have to be unremittingly gloomy to be true to life" says Marian Keyes. Perhaps explaining why she no longer reads Anita Brookner novels, she adds: "I was sick of reading about women in huge shoulder pads striding to the boardroom and having sex on the table. [...] This is not my life." So then: a work is literary to the degree that it is true to life? This would be a turn-up: the work itself must be literary! Keyes' life comes as a surprise:

"I'm a recovering alcoholic and suffer from depression," she said. "I wake up every morning frightened. Fear is a primary emotion for human beings. I haven't drunk for 14 years, but some days getting out of bed and washing my hair is as much as I can manage. I feel incredibly afraid of being alive."

Anita Sethi's blog reports that Keyes "draws on the dark periods of her own life" for her fiction. She has "also challenged the stigma of mental illness in our society: To have a mental illness is a taboo, which doesn't do us any favours. It is far better to embrace it than deny it." This is promising not because it suggests her novels "tackle" dark subjects but that they inhabit not just the sentences but the form. She seems to striving for more than fantasy wish-fulfilment: "[the genre] is about the 'dissonance between the self we present to the outside world and what is inside - the hopes, memories and longings that are rarely exposed.'" Would then fictional truth to life be this dissonant music? No wonder, as Lisa Jewells claims, "these are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them." Real life might now be recognised as real only to the degree that it is like one of these books. However, we're told there's a boundary Keyes never crosses in her fiction.

Whatever horror, trauma and pain there is in her work, it is always balanced with lightheartedness, even in a novel that tackles domestic violence. [...] Keyes' sunnier view of life is just as realistic as the unrelenting misery of much contemporary literary fiction.

Now who's using derogatory caricatures? Where are these unrelentingly miserable novels? I know that many of them make me miserable but not because of their subject matter. It's because they lack dissonant music; a lack caused, I think, by that conscious act of balancing. The writer's eye is on the reader rather than the truth or the logic of the novel. This has led to the calcification of genre and the so-called literary novel; not in respect of their immanent qualities but as art; their kinetic energy; their gravity.

Evidence: Last week, The Guardian reported that Stef Penny won the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year Award despite her novel's status as a mainstream literary novel. One of the judges explained that "the distinction between crime and literary fiction is becoming increasingly blurred and irrelevant". And that must be right, yet only because the literary fiction as she understands it - and how it is generally understood - isn't literary at all. Remember, Robinson Crusoe, often recognised - as it is here - as the first English novel, is not a novel by Daniel Defoe but an account told by Crusoe himself. Nowhere on the original title page does it say "novel". It doesn't even give Defoe's name. Among other things, this tells us the novel emerged from the rejection of genre - or, perhaps more accurately, the invention of a new genre. It explains VS Naipaul's recent expression of weariness with contemporary novels and his belief that the great writers who before might have written novels have now moved on to other, non-fictional forms. While this has been interpreted as the death of the novel, it might better be read as a herald of its rebirth.

Beckett speaks

(via The Truth About Lies)

Abant Gölünde Su Perileri

Nilüfer çiçekleri, Nymphaea, adlarını güzel su perileri Nimf'lerin adlarından almışlar... Biz Abant Gölü'ne vardığımızda güneş ufka yaklaşmış, ışık perileri su perileri Nimf'lerle dans ediyorlardı... Bakalım onları görebilecek misiniz...

Bir Osmanlı Kasabası'nın Sokaklarında...

Havadaki leyleğimiz bu sefer Mudurnu'ya, şirin mi şirin Osmanlı evleri, sokakları, yapıları, hamamı, Kanuni Sultan Süleyman ve Yıldırım Bayezid camileriyle farklı bir dünyaya, geçmişe götürüyor bizi... Bu arada Mudurnu'nun ekmeği ve yoğurdu bir harika... Yemeği beklerken mis gibi dumanı tüten Mudurnu ekmeğinin üzerine sürdüğüm tereyağ gibi yoğurda biraz da tuz ve karabiber ekince tadına doyamadım... Ama leyleğimiz uçuyor... Eee leylek bu... Göçmen kuş... Buradan dağları tepeleri aşalım, Erenler Doruğu ve Sütlük Doruğu tepelerinin arasından geçit bulalım, Abant Gölünde gün batımında alev alev yanan nilüfer çiçeklerini ve güzel su perilerini, nimfleri görmeye gidelim mi birlikte? Tutunun leyleğin kanadına...

Yaz, namı diğer samır

Samır diyerek ingilizce de biliyorum çok geliştirdim kendimi düşüncesini sizin beyninize sokmaya çalıştım. Beyin yıkama gibi birşey işte (bireynvoşing)

Yaklaşık 3 yıl gibi gelen sınav dönemini atlattıktan sonra napım napım diye düşündüm ve hemen dnr a kendimi 30milyona bir dvd aldım. ondan sonra sevgilim evime geldi ve bana italyan usülü bir makarna yaptıktan sonra popcorn eşliğinde filmi izledik. ne güzeldi valla...

bırcıcıcıbıırbıcbt başa aldım

neyse gerçeklere dönelim, sınavdan çıktım ve ulen bi film alıımda izleyeyim bari kafamı dağıtmış olurum düşüncesiyle ilk gördüğüm dvdcilerden birine girdim ne kadar dedim filmler 2milyon dedi oo dedim çokmuş 200bin olurmu dedim olur abi dedi ne demek

bırcıcıtbıcııtıtı biraz geri alalım
ne kadar dedim filmler 2 milyon deyince oo ucuzmuş deyip ıkı tane film aldım. bilgisayarım olucak tenkolojik alet bir taş kadar duragan ve taknolojiden uzak olduğundan dolayı kendisinin direk dvd açmak gibi bir fasilitesi yok (fasiliti) ilk önce hrddiske kopyalamak gerekiyor neyse deyip kopyaladım ve kız arkadasımı cagırdım..

bırcıcıırıtıcıırıtı

neyse deyip kopyaladım ve sap arkadaşlardan birni çağırdım hemen geldi tabi kendisi abi dedi porno varmı porno bak bi film var bıdı bıdı bıdı bıdı kendisini camdan attım ardından


bircctcttctc geri aldım

dvd yi koyduktan sonra yalnız yalnız filmi izledim. Güzel bir filmdi aslında dan in real life diye bir film aile komedisi hafif dram iç gıcıklayıcı... sonra film bitti ve yattım.

horluyorum bide ben feci o geldi bak aklıma.

Gizemli Bir Masal Ülkesine Yolculuk

Quo Vadis? Göçmen leyleğimiz bizi bu sefer gizemli bir masal ülkesine götürüyor... Göynük adını belki duymuşsunuzdur. Belki Göynük evlerini ve Göynük kulesini biliyorsunuzdur. Belki Göynük'ü görmüşsünüzdür. Belki suyundan içmiş, ekmeğinden yemişsinizdir... Ama eminim Göynük yakınlarında Çubuk Gölü adlı bir göl olduğunu bilmiyorsunuzdur. Çubuk Gölü kıyısındaki gizemli yeldeğirmenlerini ve sanki "Şirinler" biraz önce buradaymış gibi duran masal ülkesini bilmiyorsunuzdur... Terkedilmiş bir havası var... Bizi "GİRMEK YASAK!", "ÖZEL MÜLK", "DİKKAT TEHLİKE" uyarıları karşılıyor... Ama merakımız ve fotoğraf çekme arzumuz galip geliyor... Bir köpek var ama göl çevresinde hep bizimle yürüdü... O da zaten yeldeğirmenlerinin brandaları rüzgarda PATIR PATIR ses çıkarınca tabanları öyle bir yağlıyor ki tutabilene aşk olsun...

Sonradan öğreniyorum, burası 2005 yılında Kanal D için çekilen Rüzgarlı Bahçe adlı TV dizisi için yapılmış...

Selçuk Yöntem, Zeynep Beşerler, Yiğit Özşener, Cengiz Coşkun, Miraç Eronat, Nazan Kırılmış, Meriç Başaran, Fatih Al, Didem Balçın, Elif Burgaz, Uğur Tekin, Hüseyin Soyaslan oynamışlar... Gamze Özer yazmış, Metin Günay yönetmiş...

Rüzgar ve eski bir doktor olan babası Çınar, Rüzgarlı Bahçe'nin en eski ve en güzel değirmeninde yalnız yaşarlar. Çınar'ın eski eşi Gülfem, Çınar'dan geçmişte komşuları olan Hikmet'e olan aşkı uğruna boşanmış, zengin Hikmet'le evlenip ...

Derken dizi bir kaç bölümden sonra yayından kaldırılmış... Dizi dünyası işte... N'oldum dememeli, n'olacağım demeli... Ama gizemli yeldeğirmenleri fotoğrafçılara modellik yapmaya, uyarı levhaları ziyaretçileri korkutmaya devam ediyor... Bizim de gezimize heyecan kattı doğrusu...

Göçmen leyleğimiz ise uçmaya devam ediyor... Yemyeşil ağaçlı dar bir yoldan kayar gibi gidiyoruz... Buradan dağları aşalım Mudurnu'ya ve Abant Gölünde gün batımında alev alev yanan nilüfer çiçeklerini görmeye gidelim mi birlikte? Tutunun leyleğin kanadına, önümüzdeki günlerde fotogezi.blogspot.com'da...