Finding Myself in My Books,

About Finding Myself In My Books.

The following poem, Finding Myself in My Books , was inspired by the task of organising all of my books as part of the creation of an Archive of all my work

including my notebooks, my novels, and my other published works.

This mammoth task is being spearheaded by the truly Doctor Donna Maynard, a  literary authority on the works of George Elliot, Lewis Carroll and  Charles Kinglsey.  And me now, perhaps.

My contribution to this task has been to survey and organise all the books on all of my shelves. In its turn this exercise has inspired the following short line poem, Finding Myself In My Books. You might be interested to know that this was first drafted while I was waiting in hospital for an eye injection

Finding Myself In My Books will be included in my newest collection of stories, called Kaleidoscope –A View from the Frontier. The short stories in this collection have emerged  from shaking my own life-kaleidoscope and being surprised by the special patterns which have emerged from the virtually random elements locked up in my life-storehouse. This has liberated unique stories to spring out of elements in different times in different places, finally fused  together through the art of fiction - viewed from what  the inimitable Diana Athill called the Frontier of Older Age. 

Here goes 

Finding Myself In My Books.

I am here at the frontier, reorganising

and encouraging my reading self

to revisit all of my books – a lifetime’s

books borrowed, bought and stolen if.

Some, acquired for research, have

driven me to dive into time and power

in order to colonise people, language and places.

Some contain  esoteric matter –

magic, ritual, ghosts, exotic plants

the mysterious powers

of the natural world.

Some explore ways of growing children –

their language and their secret inner selves.

The books remind me of myself, pondering

on society with its inexplicable shifts,

its organic twists and bizarre beliefs, which

out-play solid facts and  iron-clad ideas,

rendering them fluid –identity,

class, perversions, norms –

making imperative the changes

fundamental to our new millennium.

Then there are the stories, written in a lighter fashion

now dusty and dated - yesterday’s dramas.

Alongside these work of great poets and writers

resists the depredations of time;

refreshing me with every reading.

Weighing heavy on the shelves are books laden with

the phenomenally detailed minutiae of war –

gruesome images and experiences laid bare

to enable us to learn anew all about

the horrors perpetuated on our behalf

in the name of nationality at the behest of greed.

And there in the corner stand two cases filled with

my own writing. The books still looking bright and new

despite their long existence. They wait  patiently for me

to open the pages and rediscover some new things

about myself –  things I thought, things I felt, things I thought

I knew and really didn’t know.

The words inside these covers

Differentiate between who I am now

and who I was then.

November 2019

The Importance of Books: My List

I’ve just made a list of books I've read in the last year.  

Stephen King, in his seminal book On Writing declares how important it is for anyone who aspires to write that they should read. A lot.

We should read all kinds of stuff – deep, shallow, funny, serious,

tragic comedic. Stephen King lists the great number of books he had read in a year. Interestingly he includes in the list the many books he has read in audio form. For some people – not me- this might be seen as kind of cheating, an  easy way.

But I have this friend who consumes books on audio every single day while he is working at more manual tasks. He points out that with an audio book you listen to every word. You don’t skip. Every word counts. As it should.

I once gave a talk to a reading group for people of all ages who were sight-impaired. The discussion was vigorous and interesting . These readers had an unsurpassed grasp on the detail, the characterisation and the narrative of the novels we were discussing – all read on Audio Books.

And, like audio books, reading on Kindle, Tablets and Phones is sadly sniffed at in some quarters. And yet, my inside source tells me the 46% of books are read in this form. Thank God they do. Some of those are my books and perhaps yours.

It’s been my lifetime delight to curl up with a good book, seduced by the smell and feel of new paper and the sight of great prose. But now as well as this I also love listening to stories on my iPod, and racing through novels and research sources on Kindle and on the internet. So the modern way works brilliantly for this reader and writer.

So this is why this morning I made a list of the books I’ve read in the last year. I’ve read them all with appreciation and enjoyment. It’s not been intentional but probably my list signifies my preoccupations as a writer as well as a reader. Perhaps your book is there! On my list there is – as there should be – lots of fiction there as well as sources of information and research for my new and my  earlier book. The books  range from the serious to the light hearted, the trivial to the serious, from the poetic to the informative.

Do you have your own list? Let me have it with a 50 word bio. and I’ll post it here on Life Twice Tasted.

So anyway – here’s my list:

1. Sometimes a River Song  Avril Joy
2. Phantom Notes Brian  Turner
3. Partners  John Grisham
4. Bonjour Darling  Heather Francis
5. The Last American Martyr  Tom Winton
6. Wake  Anna Hope
7. The Ballroom  Anna Hope
8. The Dark is Rising  Susan Cooper
9. A Murder of No Account  Julia Underwood
10. Twin Piques  Tracie Bannister
11. The Story Sisters Alice Hoffman
12. Solem  Clive Johnson
13. Hadrians Wall Path Walking into History: Jane V Blanchard 
14. Decide Where to Go  Eileen Elgey
15. Lazy France in Marseillan Laurence Phillips.
16. Noonday  Pat Barker
17. One of Ours  Willa Cather
18. Parades End  Ford Maddox Ford
19. Five Children on the Western Front  Kate Saunders
20. Plainsong  Kent Haruf
21. The Last Ballad  Helen Cannam
22. Ill Met by Moonlight  W Stanley Moss
23. Night Soldiers  Alan Furst
24. The White Venus  Rupert Colley
25. The Last Englishman  H.L.Carr  Byron Rogers
26. The Lost Guide to Life and Love Sharon Griffiths
27. Mushrooms .Collins Gem
28. Dip  Andrew Fusek Peters
29. Zone of interest  Martin Amis
30. The Diary od Adam and Eve Mark Twain  
31. The Risk of Reading:  How literature helps us understand ourselves and the world.  Robert Waxler
32. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase  Joan Aiken
33. New Grub Street  George Gissing
34. Wild Swim  Kate Rew
35. Swimming Home  Debora Levy
36. A Month in the Country  H.L. Carr.
37. Waterlog   Roger Deakin
38. 12 Years a Slave  Soloman Northup
39. A King in Yellow  H.P.Lovecraft
40. The City and the City   China Miéville
41. The Judas Goat  Robert P Parkerf
42. The Last Iceberg Anne Ousby
43. Jamaica Inn  Daphne du Maurier
44. The Centauress  Kathleen Jones
45. Death at the Castello   Erica Yeoman
46. Ring of Clay  Margaret Kaine
47. The Book Thief  Markus Zusak
48. The Blackbird House Alice Hoffman
49. Robert Graves: Life on the Edge   Miranda Seymout
50. On Writing: a member of the craft   Stephen King
51. The Secret Life of Bees   Sue Monk Kidd
52. The Birds and Other Stories  Daphne du Maurier
53. Dear Life ( Short stories) Alice Munro
54. How Fiction Works   James Wood
55. It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again Julia Cameron 
56. The Avenue A Newcastle Backstreet Boyhood        Samuel W Herbert

  

  

It took  a hundred books to

research The Pathfinder

Working and Playing in the Languedoc with no WiFi.

You may have noticed my two week absence on these pages. So sorry about that.
 

I went back to the Langudoc with A and D, my two favourite writers, for a work-play September break. The weather was stunningly hot. The woman in the stationary shop mentioned the ‘unseasonally hot weather’; the woman on the oyster stall said the same, adding ‘You should go to the beach!’ 

Cafe Writing

The hot weather ‘broke’ in the last few days and it was ‘only’ very warm in the morning and hot in the afternoon. On our last day, dragging our cases across the bridge over the River Hérault which, instead of its usual gleaming silver-green was now a churning brown, spitting trees and logs as it hurled itself towards the sea.

The River Hérault, still  in a silver state.

The big performance-pontoon had sheered away from the quayside and was bobbing about mid-river. The  Hérault  had burst its banks further upstream - a serious affair:  lives had been lost.

We all had plans for our stay.  A and D had their own reading, writing and planning  projects, My tasks were to mop up some last pieces of research for the final edit of my novel, Writing at the Maison Bleu; to read some more short fiction - Truman Capote, Edith Wharton, Henry James – in preparation for our October 25th Room To WriteWorkshop on The Novella; to write exploratory pieces towards my own new short fiction.

I also had a  plan to send  to you some ‘Postcards from Agde’ - to follow on from the ‘Postcards from Marseillan’ (scroll back) that I wrote for you in June.

This was not to be. We had quite elaborate plans to have WiFi Internet Access in our slice of a medieval house. For various reasons this didn’t materialise. We had to make do with WiFi facilities at the Melrose Café on the Quayside which was only intermittently available. In other years here we depended for the Internet on the WiFi facilities in  the library (The delightfully named Maison de Savoir). But to our chagrin this year it was closed for refurbishment.But to our chagrin this year the library was closed for refurbishment.

                                                                              

So –  our work/play break consisted if two weeks in the sun in dusty, atmospheric old Agde -  virtually without the Internet.

All I can say is that it was great. It was remarkably peaceful and fruitful – living and working in a kind of seclusion: no checking out, no Tweeting, for Facebooking, no emailing. There was a lot of writing, planning, talking and

thinking. And a lot of sitting in cafés, over café crème or Pastis, watching the comings and going in this busy little self-absorbed town.

A little bit of writer’s paradise, 

to  be truthful. 

On the plus side I did find two new fantastic book sources for my new novel -

Writing at the Maison Bleu.

Reading and Writing

On the minus side I really did miss writing my Postcards from Agde  just  for you. I would have written about :.

Autimn Fruits

Cooking and Writing 

A Reading Corner 

Windows in Strange Places

Wish you'd been there. Wx

Postcard from Agde: The Courtyard

Balsalt Paving

Escaping the cluttered house and the cluttered life and the writing of an intense (though not cluttered … ) novel, I am now at the Maison D’Estella a medieval house lodged tightly in the centre of the  2,700 year old small Languedocean  port town of Agde - my favourite place in Europe apart, perhaps, from Bishop Auckland.

Originally built by Greek traders and occupied by the Romans, who both left their marks on the town it ‘s now an intricate,un-touristy coastal town in the Languedoc tidying itself up for next year’s election.

New door in old doorway
Around us are doors and windows
 from several eras
of this mediaeval building.

We have our breakfast in the high walled courtyard which is paved with blocks of volcanic basalt,

Windows are set in older doorways. Doorways are set in older doorways. There is a medieval staircase which leads nowwhere.

Breakfast is fresh bread and croissants, made this morning, with fresh butter and marmalade made at home and brought here by Licked Spoon.

And a little posting.

Heaven or what?

The biggest problem here is to decide just what I want to read. More about this later.

First Reader for The Romancer

I was touched to hear from Anne Ousby, who brought a real smile to my face this morning. She’s just reading The Romancer.

‘I've started The Romancer and am finding it gripping. Obviously it's autobiographical but also written as a story - much like your other novels and it seems to me that there's enough distance between the you and 'the girl' to almost forget it's about you. I love the way you've introduced true stories that inspired your novels and woven them into the narrative…’ 

Anne is a playwright, short story writer and now a novelist. A member of our Room To Write conference, she has just brought out her intriguing novel Patterson’s Curse. Anne Ousby  RtW loved her novel and encouraged her in getting it out there, where it’s now selling well.

It’s so heartening for me to get a perceptive reader’s comment on my much loved  hybrid literary creation.

I hope other people out there are reading and enjoying it and would love to hear from them.

Settling into The Maison D’Estella

The town is unchanged. But then it’s only a year since we were here and the town has been here for two and a half thousand years, give or take.

The Maison d’Estella still has its star picked out in stones on one wall and - like the town of Agde - still shows its own layers of time,  here so carefully uncovered by its owner Allan, who restored the house and brought up his  family here.

We managed one blue sky’d fine day when we went along the estuary to the sea at Grau d’Agde where we walked along the wonderfully kitsch promenade,  ate  highly specialised ice creams and watched men who looked like pirates disentangling their fine nets from the detritus from the last trip. They could have the right bloodline. Real pirates were a feature of life here in the seventeenth century.

But the wind whistles round the courtyard and we keep protesting to our friend Pat, who is with us this year,  that the weather has not been itself. The skies have been grey and lowering, T here has even been a patter of (warm…) rain. We have been looking out our wraps and  jackets. We keep telling Pat how usually in June it is fine and bright. Honestly.

My friend Avril arrives on Wednesday to complete the party and tell us that it is raining cats and dogs in England.

But despite the lack of blue sky it’s all still wonderful here. Yesterday was the big market day. I sat on the corner and watched again the kaleidoscope of faces and types. Lots of children. I smile at a  glorious cherub and he pulls his tongue out at me. I go with Debora and Sean to the food-market  and am dazzled again by the colour and variety and freshness of the food laid out there with artistic precision and artisan pride..

A very handsome young man with dark curly hair selects large tomatoes one by one for Debora, who tells him she’s making stuffed tomatoes for our dinner. She buys courgette flowers which, she says, she will stuff with cheese and deep fry for starters.

There’s talk in the house of football and some concern that the referee for one of the England matches who has a questionable reputation. There is the problem of where to watch the matches significant to us –  on the small French TV in the house or out at the Sports Bar down the street, among the French fans.

(I might have an eye to the football but really I’ll be reading Wolf Hall, a reward for ploughing through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with mounting disbelief.)

Things are looking up. Last night before dinner we walked along ancient basalt pavement of  the quayside through the heavy scent of a  fantastically blossoming jasmine. We went  to the cafe on the Place de La Marine for a pastis. whose owner  recognised us from last year and gave us a hug, pleased that we had returned.

Later we had the courgette flowers (stuffed with cheese, covered in light frothy batter) and the stuffed tomatoes. There was applause.

Exquisite.

Next – another walk to la Ganguette..

Text , Sound and Cultural Taboos.

Putting your head above the parapet is often proscribed by powerful cultural taboos.  This is particularly so in the regions of the English working class from where I emerge. The old childhood maxim of not ‘making a show’ of yourself or drawing attention to yourself can bite deep into quite mature  personalities.

As a child and young woman I was achingly shy, didn’t like encountering strangers or being at a crowded gathering. In those early days, not ‘making a show’ of myself suited me fine. But it seems to me now that underneath the surface self of this watchful, tongue-tied girl, a raging exhibitionist was hiding.

It was hidden well. When I first went to college I lost my voice for a week before things normalised, But the inhibitions stayed. When I first started teaching I lost my voice for two weeks. I had this very boisterous class of twelve year olds in my first school. So I had to write QUIET!! in very large letters on the board quite a few times in those two weeks. They were great kids, though.

All that time,  though,  the exhibitionist was at work - writing articles, stories, mapping novels. It was a secret  nobody knew about. Writing was a perfect medium for this shy tongue-tied girl. She could say, imagine, invent what she liked without drawing attention to herself.

But the fact is that in teaching it only works if you do draw attention to yourself. Teaching children taught me not to hide behind my shyness, to let the exhibitionist inside have her airing.  She could be funny, daring, expressive. She could be herself. The children loved her, They didn’t know you shouldn’t put your head above the parapet or make a show of yourself so it was OK. That was a comfort.l

After that  working with adults in large groups was a very big leap for this shy girl, But she’d learned in school that there was something in her that could really teach people, really do this thing,  as long as she became her other, more exhibitionist self.

Then, when the books and stories began to be published it seemed that I was not just looking over the parapet , I’d leapt onto it. But now  I had the book to protect me. Or the books. It was not really me, it was them. They were the things  ‘making the show’. The shy, embarrassed  person that is still me was only holding them.

And now we have the crazy situation of the community radio programme. This voice that repeatedly let me down in the early days is put to work, up there to be judged.  I hear my voice on the tapes and think how strange it is, how thin and nervous I sound. But I’m pleased now that I’ve learned the basics of sound editing. Editing sound means that I can nip and tuck the excesses of the reluctant voice.  Just as I nip and tuck the texts of my novels and the stories, making them their best selves, I can begin to nip and tuck my voice so its becomes its best self for the programme. Which best self it expresses, the shy girl or the exhibitionist, I’m not quite sure.

I’m loving the creativity of putting The Writing Game together, and talking to and listening to these great writers and readers. Still though, the shy girl and the exhibitionist live on in me side by side and I have to deal with them.

The learning curve continues.

wx

Hélène Cixous on Writing and Reading

Loving all things - well, most things - French, my eye was caught by Hélène Cixous’s book Rootprints, Memory and Lifewriting, a perceptive treatise on her ideas, her fiction and her essays. The book is in translation (Mireille Calle-Gruber) with whom there is a (very) long interview. As well as this the ideas are grounded in philosophical thought, so it is a hard read. But buried in there are some great gems – food for thought for writers and readers alike.

(NB The quaint syntax is possibly down to the translation, possibly not…)

Hélène Cixous on

The position of writing

The initial position is a leaving oneself go, leaving oneself sink to the bottom of the now. This presupposes a conscious belief in something, a force and materiality that will come, manifest itself, an ocean, a current that is always there, that will rise and carry me. It is very physical.

Where I begin to write, that’s what it is, it is physical…

As for reading: reading feels to me like a making love, the string element in reading is the ‘leaving oneself (be) read’, to be read by the text…

I was tempted to transliterate it into my kind of English but its very strangeness is arresting, makes one concentrate on untangling what she really means.

Just a thought

wx