Pam Johnson - novelist, poet and fiction tutor on the MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths -
offers author interviews, reviews, literary news, plus images and quotes to keep the words flowing
Back in August I heard there was a
new Paul Auster memoir out and rushed to order my copy. However, the same day I
read a review in The Guardian that stopped me. It was so negative. The reviewer, J Robert Lennon, wondered
why the publishers, Faber, hadn’t saved Auster from himself by declining it.
Hearing extracts broadcast on BBC
Radio 4 made me curious. Could this be the same book the reviewer had referred
to?
Well, reader, I bought the book and thoroughly enjoyed it.
In Winter Journal, Auster in his
mid-sixties, looks back over his life, the life of his body. This is not a
continuous narrative, but fragments that move in and out of past and present.
We get a vividly dramatized scene of the three-year-old Paul sliding across the
flood and finding his face skewered on a jutting nail. We get a tour of all the
20+ apartments he’s lived in and along the way his development as a writer.
More recently there’s a near-death car crash that made him give up
driving. There are glimpses of his
two marriages, in particular his last thirty years with the writer, Siri
Hustvedt. It’s all written in the
second person, as if Auster is addressing his body.
Earlier this month I heard Auster
speak about Winter Journal at the Shaw Theatre, London. He explained that ‘Winter Journal is an
example of one human life, focussed on the body because I wanted to reflect
upon what it is to be a body in space and time.’
The second person felt right, he
said because ‘ “You” allows a dialogue with the self as intimate stranger.’ The essays of Montaigne had inspired
him. He admired the way in which Montaigne had been brave enough to talk about
everything to do with himself.
Of the unkind review he said he
couldn’t understand the charge of narcissism, ‘I’m generally talking about my
failings not broadcasting my own greatness.’ Which is true.
Writing, for Auster, is everything
to do with the body. ‘Writing is a physical act. I write longhand then type it
up on typewriter. I’m physically drained by a day’s writing.’
Asked about aging and whether a
writer’s best work is done in youth, he replied: ‘No rules, no rules.’ He was nearly 40
when he published New York Trilogy.
I wonder if Lennon, barely 40, may
have a phobia of aging? I can’t think how else to account for his attack on
what is a searching and engaging book. If you’re interested in Auster’s
fiction, I think you’ll find these fragments well worth reading.
He’s already finished a companion
work to Winter Journal - reflections on the intellectual and spiritual
life. Can’t wait.
Show don’t tell. How many times is that command repeated in writing
workshops? It’s not without its truth, but I’m wondering if it’s become an
easily repeated shorthand for something that needs to be teased out.
Show don’t tell suggests that all telling equals bad writing and all
showing equals good. Tell that to Paul Auster, master storyteller, whose substantial body of work explores the power
of story itself.
October is turning out to be Paul
Auster month for me. I’ve seen him speak twice about his work – at the BFI
after a screening of his 1995 film Smoke,
and at The Shaw Theatre, talking about his new memoir, Winter Journal. I’ve read Winter Journal and re-read The Red Notebook - Auster's thoughts on writing. All of
which set me thinking about that familiar workshop mantra.
Smoke
Smoke is a film that every aspiring fiction writer needs to see. It grew from Auster’s short story,
‘Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story.’ Auster wrote the screenplay and collaborated
with director, Wayne Wang on making the film.
Why is it so important that you see
it? It’s a film that shows how to tell
stories and shows why we need to tell stories. It’s a masterpiece. If I had my way, it would be on the
syllabus of every fiction-writing course.
Smoke is a story about stories; how they intersect and
overlap; how chance encounter and co-incidence precipitate change. At the start of the film a young man,
Rashid, intervenes in the life of Paul Benjamin [played by William Hurt – the
film is worth seeing for Hurt’s performance alone], a grieving writer unable to
finish his novel. From then on their two lives become entwined in unexpected
ways. A web of connections begins to spin, circling around the hub of a
corner-store smoke shop, The Brooklyn Cigar Company, manned by Auggie [played
by Harvey Keitel, another amazing performance].
This video clip, from the
opening minutes, announces the film’s story theme with the telling of how to weigh smoke.
On stage after the screening of Smoke [BFI, 6 October], Auster explained how Wang had read
the Auggie Wren story in The New York Times and knew it would make a film. Auster gave Wang his
blessing but wasn’t at first involved in the project. Eventually he did get drawn into writing the screenplay.
Auster was generous in acknowledging the contributions made by his wife, the
writer Siri Hustvedt, who helped him brainstorm a first draft, and friend, the
director Robert Altman, who cast his eyes on the final draft. He recalled how
he’d showed Altman what he, Auster, believed to be the finished goods. Altman
suggested it needed another character which Auster duly added, though he wouldn’t
say which one. ‘I’m too embarrassed,’ he claimed but insisted Altman’s
contribution was crucial.
The debt to his collaborators
aside, what is striking about the film is how much Auster’s narrative voice and
preoccupation with storytelling have transferred from page to screen. Watching Smoke is an experience that is not unlike reading, say, Brooklyn
Follies.
The film manages to stay true to
Auster’s founding influence, as discussed in The Red Notebook, ‘… the
greatest influence on my work has been fairy tales, the oral tradition of
story-telling.’ Auster’s work
privileges the speaking teller of
the tale. Of Ghosts from The
New York Trilogy, Auster says, ‘The
storyteller is part of the story, even though he never uses the word I.’
Smoke is a love-song to oral story telling. It’s an urban folk tale, a point
emphasised in the penultimate scene when Auggie recounts a story to Paul
Benjamin. In film terms the scene is static – two men sit talking – but the
camera plays on Auggie’s face picking up the nuances of his expressions, his
pauses. As Auggie’s story reaches its conclusion the camera moves in to a
close-up of just his – telling – mouth.
We guess there’s a grain of truth
in Auggie’s story but suspect some of it is fabricated. When Auggie has
finished his tale, Paul Benjamin leans back, takes a long drag on his small
cigar, exhales, smiles and says:
‘Bullshit takes
real talent, Auggie … To make up a good story you have to know how to push all
the right buttons. I’d say you were up there with the masters.’
‘Wadd’ya mean?’
asks Auggie.
‘It’s a good story.’ Benjamin replies and the two agree life
wouldn’t be worth living if friends didn’t share stories.
So why has the show don’t tell mantra taken such a hold? I think it’s because in early drafts – the stuff of most
workshops – the weakest writing is a kind of outline telling, not fully voiced.
It’s as if at such moments the writer is still telling herself the story. I
tend to mark up these passages as notes-to-self. It’s not a matter of simply
deleting such passages but working out what it is you are trying to tell
yourself. At such moments it’s too
easy to say show don’t tell.
A more nuanced feedback might
include a few probing questions: what is it you are telling yourself? Do you
need a dramatised moment here? Do
you need to tell? If so, who is the teller? Is the teller fully part of the
story, strongly voiced, engaging? Might the teller have a miss-hit a few
buttons here?
Auster’s work is a reminder that
not all telling is bad, but that to achieve the oral-tradition- effect-on-the-page for a contemporary reader you do have to know how to push the buttons. It a matter of voice and pace that can’t afford to slip.
Auster makes telling an art. He
gets the voice – tone and pace – pitch-perfect, drawing the reader in as would a storyteller round a
campfire.
On the way home from the BFI event
I had a Paul Austerish encounter. I was sitting on the bus reading my new copy of
Winter Journal when a young woman leaned over:
‘Is
that any good? I’m taking my boyfriend to see him next Tuesday...It’s his
birthday.’
‘I’ve
only read ten pages,’ I replied but I talked eagerly about Smoke and Auster’s
insight into the making of it. She
hadn’t heard of the film – being under 25 I guess she must have been at primary
school when it was first released. She was excited to be able to get the DVD
for her boyfriend’s birthday; equally, I was delighted to discover Auster would
be talking about the writing of Winter Journal at a separate event. As soon as
I got home I booked a ticket online.
More of that book/event in another
post. It’s looking as if Winter Journal will turn out to be my Book of The
Month.
Today, the Poetry Book Society announced the T S Eliot Prize shortlist. If you want to read a cross-section of contemporary poetry these ten books are a great place to start.
Unlike the Booker or Costa Prizes, the T S Eliot Prize is always judged by fellow practioners.
Chair, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy said that she and fellow judges, David Morley and Michael Longley were, "delighted with a shortlist which sparkles with energy, passion and
freshness and which demonstrates the range and variety of poetry being
published in the UK."
Simon Armitage The Death of King Arthur
Sean Borodale Bee Journal
Gillian Clarke Ice
Julia Copus The World's Two Smallest Humans
Paul Farley The Dark Film
Jorie Graham P L A C E
Kathleen Jamie The Overhaul
Sharon Olds Stag's Leap
Jacob Polley The Havocs
Deryn Rees-Jones Burying the Wren
All ten shortlisted poets will read on Sunday 13 January 2013 at the Royal Festival Hall,
London. The winner will be presented with a cheque for £15,000 by T S
Eliot's widow, Valerie Eliot, at a ceremony on Monday 14 January.
To the South Bank this evening to see Richard Ford reading
from his new novel Canada, and in Q and A with James Runcie.
Interesting to hear that this big book grew from 20 pages
Ford had written in 1989, about a boy escaping to live in Canada. When he came
across the pages again he wondered what the boy was doing in Canada, ‘Where
were his parents?’ Ah, he thought, they’d robbed a bank. Okay. And off he went.
The book opens with the
narrator declaring: ‘First, I’ll tell about the
robbery our parents committed.’ The narrator's parents, however, are not natural bank robbers, but having made that the start Ford
told himself ‘This is gonna have to work.’ And so the novel grew as he explored
‘how to make that plausible.’ What had driven these ordinary people to rob a bank?
Why Canada? Ford loves the word, the sound of it, ‘It’s a
dactyl,’ and the way it looks on the page.
Several times Ford referred to his dyslexia which means that
his process is slow, carefully considered - writing as an act of ‘super
patience.’ Once a draft is complete the editing begins with him reading the
work aloud to his wife Katrina, until it sounds right. Writing, for him, an
aural process. Hence all those rhythmic, flowing sentences.
Apparently he keeps his
work-in-progress in the freezer because once, while at lunch, a
reading lamp fell on his manuscript and set it alight. ‘I still have the burn
mark on my desk.’
He reckons that the wide
recognition that came with The Sportswriter was due to the fact that he’d
decided on a 'draconian method' of working. Why? Because he felt his earlier novels weren’t complete, he hadn’t expressed all that he had wished to.
Since The Sportswriter he has followed this method, which consists of typing up
everything from his notebook and filing it in a loose-leaf folder – character
notes, themes/ideas, places. Everything he thinks is relevant to the book must
be caught in this way until he has several hundred pages. 'I read it once
a week, until it is in me.’ Then
he can write the book. It's tough, a kind of ‘clerical hell’ but it works for him.
I'm only up to chapter 10 but it certainly seems to be working with Canada.
All acts of writing involve a certain amount of courage. The PEN/Pinter Prize reminds us just how courageous some writers must be in order not to be silenced.
The Prize, established in 2009 in memory of the playwright
Harold Pinter, is awarded annually to a British writer of outstanding literary
merit who casts ‘an unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a
‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and
our societies’ – The quotes are from Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
On 8 October I went to the PEN/Pinter Prize evening at the
British Library to see Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy collect her award.
Duffy accepted the award with modest good grace, saying she
didn’t feel worthy of it. However, she did proudly note that both she and Harold
Pinter had benefited from a state education. How many potential young writers
might we be losing as Michael Gove turns back the clock on state schools, she
wondered. A scandal!
She read a selection of her work – with musical
accompaniment from John Sampson - amply
demonstrating that she met Pinter’s criteria. There was a long poem about the First World War and its
futility alongside a wry, pin-sharp
riposte to the teacher who had a Duffy poem banned from the school syllabus, ‘Mrs
Schofield’s GCSE.’ You can read it, here
But that wasn’t the end of the evening. The award comes in
two parts. It then fell to Duffy to announce the second part of the
prize which is offered to an international writer of courage. Duffy had
nominated the Syrian journalist and novelist, Samar Yazbek. Forced out of Syria
because of her views and her writing Yazbek now lives in exile in Europe. You can read
about her life in exile, here.
Clearly very moved by this recognition of her writing, Samar Yazbek read her acceptance speech
in Arabic. Her non-fiction, A Woman in the
Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, as already attacted much attention.
Interestingly Yazbek has a novel due to be published here, Cinnamon,translated
by Emily Danby. It's due out on 5 November. Not long to wait.
It’s
always worth turning up for a Poetry London launch. They offer readings
by some of the best contemporary poets as well as a glass of wine. All
for free. I’m more than happy to buy the magazine! I was glad I made
the effort a couple of Fridays ago, despite a wet and windy evening.
The readers who stood out for me at this launch of the autumn issue, No
73, were Frances Leviston and Michael Symmons Roberts.
Leviston spoke of her work-in-progress, her second collection that
explores ideas of disinformation. She read the title piece,
‘Disinformation.’ An unsettling poem, it interweaves sharply-observed
details of the preparations for a children’s party with more disquieting
images that emerge from the voice of radio news. Leviston is a cool,
assured reader of her work. I’m looking forward to the new book for
which, as yet, no publication date, but, I gather, ‘Disinformation’ will
appear in the TLS sometime soon. Do look out for it.
Compelling in a different way was Michael Symmons Roberts. A former Head
of Development for BBC Religion & Ethics, not surprisingly, many of
his poems seem to be asking – what might be an ethical way to live?
Novelist Jeanette Winterson has said of Symmons Roberts: 'He is a
religious poet in a secular age. His work is about the connection
between the things of the spirit and the things of the world… his work
is about transcendence.'
Ideas around ethics and transcendence certainly lie in the larger
resonances of the work but, initially, Symmons Roberts draws the
listener in with his warm, almost matter-of-fact reading style and the
startling, exact details of the ‘things of the world’ in the
here-and-now; the world we’re all trying to comprehend, as with these
lines from ‘Offset’: "Bad guards play poker in the vaults/where my subprime lies in a velvet bag/and nonperforming assests float in jars."
Symmons Roberts explained that ‘Offset’ - along with the other poems he
read - is from his next book-length project: 150 poems each of 15 lines.
Why? These are loosely based on the Psalms, of which there are 150. The
Psalms reflect upon man’s relationship to God and cover the full range
of human emotions. Symmons Roberts’s project seems to be to reflect on
man’s relationship to the world – to his fellow man and to the natural
world. His gaze is wide; although he looks the current financial crisis
squarely in the eye, in ‘On Grace,’ he seems to suggest reasons for
optimism:
October ripens under leaf-mould,
ancient limewashed walls grow warm
in late, slant sun. A deer halts in a field alone.
And we are not lost yet.
To write 150 poems of 15 lines each is a tight constraint for a writer
to impose on himself but, on the evidence of the five he read, it
becomes clear that the restriction allows him both to range wide but
also to focus on the precise moment/insight. On the page the five poems
each look quite different – interesting how many different forms 15
lines might take.
Though reading at this autumn launch, these psalm-based poems appeared
in the spring issue of Poetry London – worth getting the back issue.
I’m looking forward to the full collection in spring 2013.
Other poets featured in the autumn issue include Canadian Karen Solie, pictured on the cover [above], Michael Longley, Gillian Allnutt, Daljit Nagra, Rosie Shepperd and the prize winners of the 2012 Poetry London competition. First prize went to Liz Berry. If you want to know what makes a winning poem, read judge Neil Astley's [Mr Bloodaxe] report which features along with an interview with Annie Freud and much more.
Thoroughly enjoyed myself down at the South Bank yesterday for National Poetry Day Live. Five hours of live readings and all for free from a wide range of poets. Among those I saw:
Christopher Reid, Roger McGough, Mario Petruccio, Liane Strauss,
Simon Barraclough, Danny Abse, Karen McCarthy Woolf, and the legendary John Cooper Clarke who rounded off the day with his crazy
'Beazley Street' and its refurbished sequal 'Beazley Boulevard'.
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