Asked to write and read a piece of flash for the Five Lamps Festival, I said yes before I could think because if I’d thought I’d have said no – flash is hard. But it was a lovely event (at the Irish Writers’ Centre), and I was delighted to be involved. I enjoyed the four flash competition winners’ pieces, and those of Colm Keegan, Gavin Corbett and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, pictured, who read as Gaeilge.
Where Is American Literature? is a thought-provoking approach to the creation of canons, where one might find American literature, and even if such a category can be so easily defined. There’s lots of juicy stuff, about book clubs and high versus middlebrow art (who doesn’t love to remember the Oprah/Franzen tussle), and the history of reading in the US military, and much else. Levander challenges any preconceived idea we might have of what American literature is, and she looks for it instead in unlikely and liminal spaces.
I’d quibble with the use of footnotes and chapter endnotes. If I am reading an academic book, I have a straight-backed chair and mindset, and a pencil, and all notes are welcome, but in a book intended for a broad readership, these are an unnecessary distraction.
I finished this today, my nearest and dearest will be glad to hear, since I’ve been summarising it for them, section by section – because how could they not want to know? I have a few quibbles: Harari devotes very little time to art, surely one of sapiens’ greatest achievements; logicians have not, as he says, been completely relegated to philosophy departments – many have been absorbed into computer science research and contribute to the intelligent design he believes is shaping our future; and to state that ‘the Industrial Revolution brought about…the disintegration of patriarchy’ is glib, to say the least. But in a work of this breadth, which achieves such breath-taking perspective, glibness here and there can be forgiven.
I was sad to hear of the death of Umberto Eco, and though, at 84 years of age it should not have come as a surprise, it did. He was a giant of a novelist, and as such seemed immortal. (He was also an academic —semiotician and philosopher — but I did not know him in these capacities.) I was one of many who threw myself into the middle ages world of the Rosicrucians in In the Name of the Rose; I loved every second, then I loved it all over again when Sean Connery did the honours as Brother William in the 1986 movie. But it was Foucault’s Pendulum (1989) that sucked me in and swallowed me whole. I groped around in that tome for what felt like forever – in a good way. I didn’t want it to end, nor did it bother me unduly that half the time I didn’t know what was going on.
I’ve made a few trips to Bologna over the years. Somewhere in the mid-nineties I was there at the same time as the great man himself (he was Chair of Corso di Laurea in Scienze della Comunicazione, University of Bologna from 1993-1998). A conversation with a student who claimed to know him found me zooming through the medieval streets on the back of a strange boy’s Vespa and up into the surrounding hills where an open-air party was in full swing: music, beer, beautiful Italians, moonlight, etc. etc. — but it soon became apparent that my escort wanted one thing whereas I only wanted to meet Eco. He took me mutely back to the city and to the bar Eco was known to frequent, but alas, this was not one of his nights. He would be in the following evening, the barman said and my companion translated. But I was flying home the next day. I wildly considered trying to change my ticket, but reason prevailed, and I settled for reading his books. RIP, Umberto Eco.
Declan Kiberd interview: “The political elites are much less literate now.” ‘In a wide-ranging interview, the influential critic discusses the Gaelic Revival’s genius, culture as a site of struggle, the folly of compulsory Irish, today’s shy students and his subversively happy childhood’.
It was a privilege and a pleasure to interview Prof Kiberd, and it is no surprise that many of his former students have been in touch since reading to tell me how much they enjoyed his classes. Thanks to Martin Doyle in the Irish Times for publishing it.
As a Northside blow-in, I’m very pleased to boost my credentials by participating in this year’s Five Lamps Arts Festival. In association with the Irish Writers’ Centre, writers are invited to write 400 words from the prompt ‘I am Dublin’. Full details here, but hurry; closing date is the 15th of February.
No one wants to read this randomer’s tribute to David Bowie, so I’m not going to write one.
But I did begin a letter to Bowie himself. On Sunday, I decided to write to him in the form of a submission to The Letters Page. After all, the world needed to know that I obsessively sketched his image from album covers, and it definitely needed to hear highlights from my scrapbook. The deadline was only a week or so away, but I went to bed feeling quite pleased with my progress, and looking forward to working on it the next day.
I woke to the news of his death. Uncanny. But then, I wouldn’t have expected anything less.
The first piece to greet me in the What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now exhibition was A Couple with their Heads Full of Clouds. My first exposure to Dali was that poster in one of the classrooms in my convent boarding school and, frankly, it freaked me out and marked the beginning of a long wariness of Dali, so I approached this one with some apprehension. But I needn’t have. It is as full of hope and space and grace as Swans Reflecting Elephants is, to me, anyway, ominous.
Picasso was there too. And Duchamp. And Yoko Ono. Mirrors featured in at least two of the exhibits, there’s erotica – naturally, and blood, and books.
I was most struck by the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois, and Dorothy Cross, whose Lover Snakes elicited equal measures of fascination and repugnance.
The exhibition runs until the 7th of February, and it’s accompanied by a very covetable book/catalogue, What we call love.
I’m very pleased to be included on two more fine lists.
gorse journal has its own twist on end of year lists. Instead of a ‘best of’ it offers a comprehensive list of recommended reading 2015, complete with cover photos and links (also doubles as a wish list).
And, over at the Irish Independent, Irish writers pick their top reads of 2015. Thanks to John Boyne for including Generation in his picks.
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