Cultural consumption

Since the last post I've been round the world in a week (a crazy thing to do) mainly spent in the dark and snow of the northern hemisphere. Then my partner has been here and on successive weekends been horse riding in the South Island and motorbiking around the Coromandel. On Christmas day she discovered wedges in Kopu... Plus I've been working all over Christmas and New Year which unlike previous years has been busy - nine new patients just on Christmas Eve. So lots of time for cultural consumption which has included:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon - took me about a quarter of the book to get into this novel but after that enjoyed it. Clearly well researched book on escape and the need for superheroes.

Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane - the detective novel gets more literary with Boston as an extra character in the continuation of his series with Patrick Kenzie (main protagonist) and Angela Gennaro ("impact" character) as the main characters. Great aircraft reading

Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane - great "backwards" plot where the reason for the crime/events of the novel are not revealed until the end.

Darkness, Take my hand by Dennis Lehane - I think his best book and I found it genuinely scary with complex but just about believable plot and villains.

Red Gold: A novel by Alan Furst - good description of the shabbiness of espionage in France during world war II but like his other books feels like a collection of separate scenes loosely (and sometimes confusingly) linked together.

Also reading the latest Granta which contains work by the best writers in Spanish (as defined by Granta). Granta went through a bit of a dull patch a few years ago but I think this current collection is fabulous. One notable feature is that nearly all use the first person point of view when writing their short stories.

And now a plug for Kindles - just a caveat here I got a Kindle not knowing if I'd like it but thinking it may be useful for travelling. So a bit of an experiment. Now I'm completely sold - it saves me from having to carry a barrow load of books with me when I'm travelling; I can download books anywhere there's a 3G wireless connection (so far it has worked in Europe, North America and Australasia); books are cheaper than the paper versions (including thousands of free books many of them classics); and most surprising of all I find it much easier to read a Kindle with much less tiredness. The only two downsides is the inability to share books with friends (although there is a way of doing this if you trust them - see here for example) and that some books are not available.

Lastly a list of lists Ten rules for writing fiction - a collection of handy hints (no really) which starts with Elmore Leonard and includes Margaret Atwood plus Jonathan Franzen amongst others.

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Pennies dropping for me last week on the course about the value of not over writing - my problem is that I do a lot of reflecting on the feelings of characters. I've really noticed how successful writers do the "show don't tell" stuff really well.


My writing exercise from Monday night follows:

The small room is overheated in the way that hospital rooms always seem to be in winter. She sits on a hard chair, coloured red, opposite the small door leading to the outside world. She is sitting still, not crying. Her eyes are fixed on the table in front of her only occasionally looking up at the man asking her questions. She is dressed in black without make-up her long dark hair pulled back from her face. When she speaks it is to dismiss the questions with one word answers. Her hands twitch together as she places one on top of the other and then decides to change them over. Her feet are planted firmly on the floor. All her muscles are tightly clenched.
She snarls "How would you know what it's like". Spit begins to form at the edges of her mouth. Her eyes glare at the man, her hands grip the table. She screams like a torturers victim "I am nothing. Nothing can help. They're dead"

This is based on an interview I did with the angriest person I have ever seen who was a woman who had attempted suicide after losing her two children in a house fire. Not sure why I was thinking of this on a Monday night 20 years after the event and on the other side of the planet. However what I was trying to convey to the reader was the sense of a volcano or explosion about to go off - not sure how successful that was.

October 19th 2010

Beginnings...in italics are the opening paragraphs of two recently read books.

Alan Furst - The Polish Officer

In Poland on the night of 11 September 1939, Wehrmacht scout and commando units - elements of Kuechler's Third Army Corps - moved silently around the defences of Novy Dvor, crossed the Vistula over the partly demolished Jablonka Bridge, and attempted to capture the Warsaw Telephone Exchane at the northern edge of the city. Meeting unexpected and stubborn, resistance, they retreated along Sowacki Street....

This is then followed by an introduction to the main character, action etc..

Kiren Desai - The inheritance of loss

A clever novel describing the effects of colonisation but in my opinion none of the characters are adults - although this may be deliberate. None of the characters seem to emotionally behave as adults with most stuck as children- having simple feelings which they have to act on. Also interestingly there is no central protagonist but an array of interacting characters. For me there was some synchronicity with the novel being set in Kalimpong where I have been trying to arrange electives for medical students from Auckland.

KanchenjungaAll day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and dreams. Briefly visible above the vapour, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whitled out of ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow brown high by the winds at its summit.

This starts the book with loss - loss of the day but with something large in the background.

October 12th 2010

Plot, plot, plot - need to write out plot for my novel. The original idea was "Could you use the changes in the calendar for 1752 to commit a crime?". The plot would be an "overcoming the monster" revenge novel where the monster is The East India Company. Does the hero get revenge on the East India Company by somehow damaging the company? How about the inciting event being the loss of a child - possibly an Anglo-Indian child killed or damagEast India House in Leadenhall Street, Londoned in some way by Clive of the East India Company? The hero then travels to England from India steals from the East India Company, a journalist (although of course there weren't journalists as we understand them which is one of the interesting things about the 1750's) publicises the theft; the hero is caught by a policeman (although ditto no police in 1750's but plenty of concern about crime); and the share price drops (which is did in real life) thus seriously damaging the comoany. The title of the book could be "Calendar Crimes".

Cover of THE POLISH OFFICERSeptember 20th 2010

Completed Alan Furst's "The Polish Officer" today. Good read, enjoyable. A collection of scenes joined together by character and good descriptive detail of the time. Shows the value of using contemporary sources such as newspapers.

Cover of Spies of the Balkans: A NovelSeptember 14th 2010

Met John Cranna today as I've decided to seriously do a creative writing course part of which is keeping this journal. So, currently reading (on my Kindle) "Spies of the Balkans: A novel" by Alan Furst. World War II spy thriller set in Salonika with the main character a policeman. The plot is set around helping people escape Germany and consists of several set pieces (short stories really) all linked to central character but half way through the book don't seem linked in other ways. Alan Furst in many ways seems like Graham Greene in style. Apparently Alan Furst is a US writer who specialises in writing about conflicting intelligence communities and difficult moral territory - personal sacrifice vs greater good etc.

Other recent reading whilst away:
Truth - Peter Temple
The Broken Shore - Peter Temple
Both set in Melbourne, crime stories with (typical) burnt out damaged cop as hero.

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