October 2, 2020

Crime as Art

In my perusal of the interwebs I came across this from an interview with J.G. Ballard, summer 1997.

KEVIN JACKSON: Certain parts of the book (Cocaine Nights) advance rather unorthodox ideas about crime: that crime cements a community and that, in more concrete terms, it can be seen as a kind of performance art.

JG BALLARD: Well, the main character has stumbled on a way of waking people up. Life for them becomes keener, sharper, and so these people become more prepared to explore their own imaginations. They’re no longer passive. I’m not suggesting we should all leave our doors unlocked; or that we should burgle our neighbours, who, enriched by the experience, will then bring the violin down from the attic and entertain us with a string quartet… Rather, I think we need to look at the world we inhabit and see how these social aggressions are manufactured. It may be that a civilised life comes at a price.

This monoculture that is emerging, a world of noisy, intruding horror: you just want to get on with what you’re doing, which is nothing. These security-suburbs are a way of shutting out the world, like static on a TV set. The British, especially, have retreated into their own homes. We’re obsessed with a material space where we can define all the elements that make up our lives.

23 years later and I think Ballard was on to something. 

I highly recommend looking into Ballard's life and works.

Miracles of Life An Autobiography by J.G. Ballard

October 1, 2020

Top 4 books on disease

Top 4 books dealing with disease to read while on social isolation from shop-books.ca/blog


I've been taking a 3 pronged approach to the current Covid situation or as I like to call it, the time of weirdness.


Firstly, I've been trying to see positive outcomes that may arise from social isolation or global awakening, if not now then later, in my social posts on Facebook for example.

Secondly, I've been trying to put a humorous or lighter spin on the situation; mostly in person with friends and family.

Thirdly, I've been freaking out.

This list hopefully utilizes the second approach (with a dash of the third).

In no particular order (and note that these are books I've actually read so that's why there are 4):

1: The Plag`ue by Albert Camus

Is this book about disease or a country suffering under occupation or the human race rebelling against an absurd universe? How about all three at the same time. Camus' spare style might have understated the situation but actually makes the novel thicken with tension as the plague spreads and poor Dr. Rieux gets little help.

Albert Camus The Plague



2: The Stand by Stephen King

Humanity has been nearly wiped out by a pandemic and the few survivors now have to also face real demons...what's next murder hornets...oh wait...




3: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The title might be a pun as the word cholera in Spanish can be used to mean rage so against a backdrop of strife and disease, do the main characters come to believe that it is love or death that conquers all. My money is on the latter.




4: Blindness by Jose Saramago

A plague of blindness is unleashed in a city and social disorder follows as several characters try to survive the public's panic and the government's repressive and inept measures. Minus the widespread panic, does this sound familiar?




Further contenders that I have not read:

The Children of Men by P.D. James
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Station Eleven by Emily St. John
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

September 29, 2020

The top 8 Libraries in the world

It is troubling that during this lockdown, many of us are denied access to libraries, but it is understandable of course. Because even though libraries may seem like they cater to solitary endeavours they play a far greater role with communities than given credit for. 

They are a place to gather for children for story-time or creative programs; folk can gather in a book reading club; anyone can go to a library to ask questions and find answers that lead to more questions and hopefully other answers. You don’t have to have financial wealth to visit, study, and learn.

Nothing beats your local library (so please support them) but here are the totally subjective top 8 interesting libraries in the world; not just for their books, but their beauty, architecture, size, and ability to gather people:

In no particular order: 

George Peabody Library, Baltimore, Maryland, USA



Part of Johns Hopkins University, this library is open to the public in Baltimore.



The New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA



The main branch on Fifth Avenue boasts a lovely marble façade and lion statues that guard the base of the steps.



The Central Library of Vancouver, BC, Canada



Modeled after the Colosseum in Rome, it has nine floors with over 9 million items and a rooftop garden.



Bodleian Library, Oxford, England



In use since the 14th century with 12 million volumes to peruse thought handling the first Gutenberg Bible or Shakespeare’s First folio may be frowned upon.



Trinity College Old Library, Dublin, Ireland



Beautiful dark wood arches contain over 7 million volumes and home to such ancient texts as The Book of Kells.



Admont Abbey Library, Admont, Austria



Attached to a monastery, this library opened in 1776, and contains the largest number of monastic items in the world. It is a stunning interior to study in.



Library of Alexandria, Egypt




Wait, it still exists you say?!? Well, no, the original was burnt down by Caesar’s armies but this attractive building is covered in carvings from local artists and is surrounded by a reflecting pool.



Royal Portuguese Reading Room, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil



Its interior has a decorative design that certainly impresses book lovers but don’t be too awed, you can still study here.



One more:



Beitou Public Library, Taiwan

Just because it looks so incredibly beautiful and has balconies along the buildings side where you can curl up with a favourite novel in a rocking chair.

June 16, 2020

Surrealism, various interviews

Type in Surrealism in a major search engine and, as of this writing, you get over 55 million hits.

Which is in itself surreal as Andre Breton is his Surrealist Manifesto writes that Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations.

So a search engine by its very nature concretizes or makes real, associations.

Breton and the surrealists would be proud!

I have compiled a small list of interviews or articles about surrealism or with surrealists below:

Surrealism: The Big Ideas presented by the Dali Museum
Salvador Dali interview with Mike Wallace 1958
Dali on the Dick Cavett show
Interviews with Paul Eluard (mostly French)
Interviews with Andre Breton (mostly French)
Interview with Louis Aragon (French)
Europe of Cultures interview with Tristan Tzara
Tzara on film (French)
Essays by what some consider the person who coined the term Surrealism: Apollinaire
Audio documentary on Robert Desnos (French)
Luis Bunuel interview (French)
Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry has many examples of French surrealism

April 22, 2020

Horror story...


...a story in which the focus is on creating a feeling of fear...


One defining trait of the horror genre is that it provokes an emotional, psychological, or physical response within readers that causes them to react with fear. One of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous quotes about the genre is that: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." the first sentence from his seminal essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature". Science fiction historian Darrell Schweitzer has stated "In the simplest sense, a horror story is one that scares us" and "the true horror story requires a sense of evil, not in necessarily in a theological sense; but the menaces must be truly menacing, life-destroying, and antithetical to happiness."


The horror genre has ancient origins with roots in folklore and religious traditions, and has gone through various re-awakenings from Gothic horror in the 18th century to the "religious" horror of the 1960's through to modern day masters such as Stephen King.


Now, post-millennial horror has expanded to include elements outside the genre. Everything from zombies and werewolves and Cthulhu to intense psychological and grotesque features. A fascinating genre to explore.

April 20, 2020

Updating posts once again

After a long hiatus, I will be updating this blog again, probably once a week.

I have started an online bookstore to see if I can make a go of it during this time of weirdness!

shop-books.ca

Please support if you can.

October 28, 2007

Kerouac - 50th Anniversary of On The Road

In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the publication of On the Road, here's an excerpt from a 1968 interview with Jack Kerouac first published in the Paris Review. Conducted by Ted Berrigan.

The Kerouacs have no telephone. Berrigan had contacted Kerouac some months earlier and had persuaded him to do the interview. When he felt the time had come for their meeting to take place, he simply showed up at the Kerouacs' house. Two friends, poets Aram Saroyan and Duncan McNaughton, accompanied him. Kerouac answered his ring; Berrigan quickly told him his name and the visit's purpose. Kerouac welcomed the poets, but before he could show them in, his wife, a very determined woman, seized him from behind and told the group to leave at once.

“Jack and I began talking simultaneously, saying 'Paris Review!' 'Interview!' etc.,” Berrigan recalls, “while Duncan and Aram began to slink back toward the car. All seemed lost, but I kept talking in what I hoped was a civilized, reasonable, calming, and friendly tone of voice, and soon Mrs. Kerouac agreed to let us in for 20 minutes, on the condition that there be no drinking.

Once inside, as it became evident that we actually were in pursuit of a serious purpose, Mrs. Kerouac became more friendly, and we were able to commence the interview. It seems that people still show up constantly at the Kerouacs's looking for the author of On the Road, and stay for days, drinking all the liquor and diverting Jack from his serious occupations.

As the evening progressed the atmosphere changed considerably, and Mrs. Kerouac, Stella, proved a gracious and charming hostess. The most amazing thing about Jack Kerouac is his magic voice, which sounds exactly like his works. It is capable of the most astounding and disconcerting changes in no time flat. It dictates everything, including this interview.

INTERVIEWER
“What encouraged you to use the “spontaneous” style of On the Road?”

KEROUAC
“I got the idea for the spontaneous style of On the Road from seeing how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed, with real names in his case, however (being letters). I remembered also Goethe's admonition, well Goethe's prophecy that the future literature of the West would be confessional in nature; also Dostoyevsky prophesied as much and might have started in on that if he'd lived long enough to do his projected masterwork, The Life of a Great Sinner. Cassady also began his early youthful writing with attempts at slow, painstaking, and all-that-crap craft business, but got sick of it like I did, seeing it wasn't getting out his guts and heart the way it felt coming out. But I got the flash from his style. It's a cruel lie for those West Coast punks to say that I got the idea of On the Road from him. All his letters to me were about his younger days before I met him, a child with his father, et cetera, and about his later teenage experiences. The letter he sent me is erroneously reported to be a 13,000-word letter . . . no, the 13,000-word piece was his novel The First Third, which he kept in his possession. The letter, the main letter I mean, was 40,000 words long, mind you, a whole short novel. It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves. Allen Ginsberg asked me to lend him this vast letter so he could read it. He read it, then loaned it to a guy called Gerd Stern who lived on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, in 1955, and this fellow lost the letter: overboard I presume. Neal and I called it, for convenience, the Joan Anderson Letter . . . all about a Christmas weekend in the pool halls, hotel rooms and jails of Denver, with hilarious events throughout and tragic too, even a drawing of a window, with measurements to make the reader understand, all that. Now listen: this letter would have been printed under Neal's copyright, if we could find it, but as you know, it was my property as a letter to me, so Allen shouldn't have been so careless with it, nor the guy on the houseboat. If we can unearth this entire forty-thousand-word letter Neal shall be justified. We also did so much fast talking between the two of us, on tape recorders, way back in 1952, and listened to them so much, we both got the secret of LINGO in telling a tale and figured that was the only way to express the speed and tension and ecstatic tomfoolery of the age . . . Is that enough?

INTERVIEWER
How do you think this style has changed since On the Road?

KEROUAC
What style? Oh, the style of On the Road. Well as I say, (editor Malcolm) Cowley riddled the original style of the manuscript there, without my power to complain, and since then my books are all published as written, as I say, and the style has varied from the highly experimental speed-writing of Railroad Earth to the ingrown toenail packed mystical style of Tristessa, the Notes from Underground (by Dostoyevsky) confessional madness of The Subterraneans, the perfection of the three as one in Big Sur, I'd say, which tells a plain tale in a smooth buttery literate run, to Satori in Paris, which is really the first book I wrote with drink at my side (cognac and malt liquor) . . . and not to overlook Book of Dreams, the style of a person half-awake from sleep and ripping it out in pencil by the bed . . . yes, pencil . . . what a job! Bleary eyes, insaned mind bemused and mystified by sleep, details that pop out even as you write them you don't know what they mean, till you wake up, have coffee, look at it, and see the logic of dreams in dream language itself, see? . . . And finally I decided in my tired middle age to slow down and did Vanity of Duluoz in a more moderate style so that, having been so esoteric all these years, some earlier readers would come back and see what ten years had done to my life and thinking . . . which is after all the only thing I've got to offer, the true story of what I saw and how I saw it.