Ever pleased by neologisms, this gem from Ben Macintyre’s column in The Times:
The conversation turned to the US election, and Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy, and the old rancher observed: 'Well, ya know, Palin is a post-turtle.' The bemused doctor asked what a post-turtle was, and the old man replied: 'When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post-turtle.' The rancher continued: 'You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with.'
15 October 2008
10 October 2008
West Coast
Last night I finished West Coast by Kate Muir. I enjoy Muir's column in the Times magazine, and read Left Bank last year, so again skipped happily through this.
Muir's attention to detail was impressive, and she was intent on capturing the speech patterns of the Scottish fishing town where much of the action is set, even going as far as to include a glossary. At times, though, the speech was a little overwhelming and instead of giving a flavour of the place it sent me leafing back to the glossary several times a page.
A small beef, though, and the story of Fergus Macfarlane's ascent from Burnoch to international fame as a photographer was pacey and well drawn, even in its perhaps inevitable denouement, with Fergus finding his end in his beginning.
It reminded me of the Belle and Sebastian song 'Dirty Dream Number Two', which would perhaps play over the closing credits of the film:
A choice is facing you, a healthy dose of pain
A choice is facing you as you stare through the rain
A choice is facing you but I choose to refrain for today
Tomorrow we'll be back in trouble again
[...]
In a town so small there's no escaping you
In a town so small there's no escape from view
In a town so small there's nothing left to do
[...]
Could you put a name to someone elses sigh?
Could you put a face to someone elses eyes?
Is it someone that you'd maybe recognise?
But it all fades into morning when you open your eyes
Kate Muir, West Coast (Headline Review); Belle and Sebastian, 'Dirty Dream Number Two' from The Boy with the Arab Strap (Jeepster)
Muir's attention to detail was impressive, and she was intent on capturing the speech patterns of the Scottish fishing town where much of the action is set, even going as far as to include a glossary. At times, though, the speech was a little overwhelming and instead of giving a flavour of the place it sent me leafing back to the glossary several times a page.
A small beef, though, and the story of Fergus Macfarlane's ascent from Burnoch to international fame as a photographer was pacey and well drawn, even in its perhaps inevitable denouement, with Fergus finding his end in his beginning.
It reminded me of the Belle and Sebastian song 'Dirty Dream Number Two', which would perhaps play over the closing credits of the film:
A choice is facing you, a healthy dose of pain
A choice is facing you as you stare through the rain
A choice is facing you but I choose to refrain for today
Tomorrow we'll be back in trouble again
[...]
In a town so small there's no escaping you
In a town so small there's no escape from view
In a town so small there's nothing left to do
[...]
Could you put a name to someone elses sigh?
Could you put a face to someone elses eyes?
Is it someone that you'd maybe recognise?
But it all fades into morning when you open your eyes
Kate Muir, West Coast (Headline Review); Belle and Sebastian, 'Dirty Dream Number Two' from The Boy with the Arab Strap (Jeepster)
9 October 2008
National Poetry Day
A poem for National Poetry Day. What to choose? Roethke's 'The Waking', Lowell's 'For the Union Dead'? Something of Plath, her 'black,cut-paper people' and ' the silence of astounded souls'? Or Hughes, to counter her? So much choice, so many thoughts, but I have settled on Larkin.
Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
From Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 2003)
Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
From Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 2003)
Desired volumes
Bibliomania is such that, even as I wait for a parcel from amazon, I am wanting more. Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, Jan Morris's South African Winter, which I just discovered in the Faber Finds list, and Anne Landsman's The Devil's Chimney. From reading Landsman's The Rowing Lesson, I have Samantha Weinberg's A Fish Caught in Time, about the coelacanth, waiting on my chest of drawers. A recent addition was Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey (found through the Harvard Crimson) and, on the same spree, A Farewell to Arms. I also yearn for a copy of Moon Country by Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell. My original edition, purchased in Blackwells on my nineteenth birthday, is packed in a box somewhere, perhaps one of those that is threatening to bring down the ceiling of my mother's bathroom.
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