Andrew Blackman

Just discovered the work of Wislawa Szymborska through a poem reprinted in an old edition of New Internationalist from last year. It was called Psalm and I thought it was a beautiful and humorous poem, perfectly illustrating the absurdity of man-made borders. Here are the first few lines to give an idea:

How leaky are the borders
we draw around our separate nations!
How many clouds cross those boundaries
daily, without even paying the toll!

She goes on to list all kinds of animals, stones, fog, etc., permeating the borders we’ve set up: my favourite was “the ant who, right between the guard’s left boot and his right, pays no attention to any questions of origin or destination.” Then the ending is poignant:

Funny, isn’t it, how only what’s human is truly alien? Everything else is just mixed vegetation, a few subversive moles, and the wind.

I’ve now discovered that loads of her poems are available online at Buffalo University’s site, and have been enjoying more of them.

Andrew Blackman Interesting snippets poetry

Good prose is like a windowpane.

– George Orwell, “Why I Write”

To find out what this is all about and how to participate, please see last week’s post.

Andrew Blackman Inspiration

Mr. Palomar sets out to examine every possible aspect of his life and the world around him, trying to name everything and categorise everything scientifically. Of course he fails, and it’s in the episodes of life squirming away from his rigid attempts at classification that the absurd humour comes.

The arrangement of the book corresponds to Palomar’s classification attempts, being broken up into sections, sub-sections and sub-sub-sections, with each section having three sub-sections and each sub-section having three sub-sub-sections dealing with three different categories of experience. There is no real plot to speak of.

The result, for me, was that although some of the details were beautiful and the descriptions insightful, it felt like notes for a book rather than a book itself. Each sub-section is just two or three pages, and the book itself is little over 100 pages, so no idea seems to get fully developed. You end up with a collection of fragments, each one often quite clever and even entertaining, but not seeming to add up to any kind of meaningful whole.

Andrew Blackman Book reviews calvino, italian fiction, review

I was experimenting with writing my next novel in the present tense. For a while it went well. The present tense felt more immediate, a little fresher, and was appropriate to the story I was trying to tell.

But gradually I began to feel constricted. The present tense seemed to work well for describing scenes as they were happening, but not for filling in the gaps between the scenes. My novel was becoming a slightly repetitive series of mini-stories with no clear link between them. I found it difficult to step back and give a broader sweep. The attempts to do so felt forced and clunky.

Another thing I noticed was that I was describing every little thing that happened in more detail than usual. When we’re talking about things in the past, we naturally skip over some things and spend more time on others. Time is stretched and distorted, and it feels natural because we are used to describing things that way. When I’m writing in the present tense, on the other hand, jumping ahead within a scene feels odd. Time in the present tense moves at a fairly steady, plodding pace, and unfortunately my present tense novel was moving at that same steady, plodding pace. I was describing every cup of tea, every step that every character took to and from the kitchen.

It was a very boring novel.

So I switched to past tense, and suddenly everything began to flow along nicely. I could easily jump around and tell the reader only what mattered. I could control the pace and tell the story in what felt to me to be a more natural way. I began to approach my writing each morning with eagerness rather than dread.

My experience with present-tense narrative, then, was quite short-lived. That’s not to say it’s a bad idea, of course, but I know that it didn’t work for this novel. I have used it successfully in short stories, and can see it being useful in small segments of a novel. But I won’t be trying to write a whole novel in present tense again any time soon.

And as I thought about it more, I couldn’t think of many good novels I’ve read that have used the present tense throughout. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey would be one, and the present tense definitely worked well there, but I’m stuck for any others. What about you? Have you read any good present-tense novels? Have you written one yourself? Let me know.

Andrew Blackman Other writing news narrative style, present tense, Writing

I often find myself reading something beautiful over the weekend, only to forget it as I get all caught up in the craziness of the week. So I thought I’d start posting some inspirational quotes here each Monday morning, in the hope that some of them stick with me through the week.

Feel free to play along with me if you’d like to. Link back here or post a comment so that I can see what gets other people motivated. Could be religious or secular, could be advice for your particular field or just general life wisdom – doesn’t really matter. If it helps you get through your day, then please share it with me.

OK, here’s mine, from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu:

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

Andrew Blackman Inspiration

I first found out about the Catholic Worker movement when I found myself standing next to Tom Cornell at an anti-war vigil held by September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows in Union Square in New York, back in 2002. I ended up writing about both Tom and the New York Catholic Worker movement as part of my journalism Master’s degree at Columbia, and spent quite a bit of time at Joseph House on the Lower East Side.

I’m not a Catholic, but I was attracted to their simple philosophy of performing the ‘works of mercy’ from the Gospels – feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and those in prison, and bury the dead. It’s simple stuff, but almost nobody actually does it. These people do, and I respect them for it.

Since moving to London I haven’t been so involved, but I do get the London Catholic Worker newsletter, and there’s always something worthwhile in it. In no. 25, for example, there’s a good description of Peter’s Community Cafe in east London, written by someone assigned to work there for her pastoral assistants course.

And there’s a great ‘Easy Essay’ by the movement’s co-founder Peter Maurin. He specialised in breaking complex topics down into simple, memorable poems and ditties. This one was written in 1933, but see if you can spot the contemporary relevance in the following extract….

Uncle Sam does not believe
In the unemployed dole,
But Uncle Sam does believe
in the money lenders dole.

Uncle Sam doles out
[billions] of dollars
To the money lenders.

And it is the money lenders dole
That put Uncle Sam
Into a hole.

Andrew Blackman Political comment catholic worker, peter maurin

This debut short-story collection by Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah is a wonderful read. The tone of each one is perfect: the language is consistently beautiful but also completely natural. You get to know the characters very quickly, through small details artfully described, and are left at just the right moment to move on to the next tale.

The title gives a clue to what’s in store. “Elegy” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “A song of lamentation, esp. a funeral song or lament for the dead”. This book feels like Petina Gappah’s lament for the Zimbabwe she grew up in, a Zimbabwe that has been scarred by political corruption, economic chaos and the scourge of AIDS. I can’t say whether she means to say that the Zimbabwe she knew is dead. Of course the country endures, the people endure, and that’s what these stories are about. Perhaps the lament is not so much for the country itself as for the people who have suffered so much. In any case, there’s a deep sadness underlying all these stories, and there’s a death or a funeral in most of the stories.

Yet the strange thing is that there’s also a lot of humour, and the humour often goes hand-in-hand with the sadness. There’s the old carpenter who is cheated out of his pension and wins a dancing contest, the diplomat who is new to email and loses thousands of euros to the old lottery scam, and the bizarre goings-on at the Hotel California. In many of the stories, the humour is very real and genuinely funny, and yet it feels like a thin veneer which Gappah deliberately lets slip every now and then, exposing the horror underneath.

My favourite story, though, has no real humour. It’s called ‘Something Nice from London’ and tells of a family waiting at the airport for the twice-weekly flight from London. The title refers to the hope that relatives in the UK will either return or send back money or gifts for their families. With the collapse of the economy, a few UK pounds is millions of Zimbabwe dollars, and can help a family to survive. But it gradually becomes clear that what this particular family is waiting for is the coffin of their son, Peter. And what follows is a tragic, drawn-out description of the anxious waiting for weeks and weeks, interspersed with explanations of what brought Peter and the family to this point, all the sacrifices and mistakes and disappointments. It’s important that the body returns because the whole extended family is staying at their house awaiting the funeral, and they literally can’t afford to feed them much longer.

It’s probably not a representative story to pick – the others, as I said, had more humour mixed in with the tragedy, and I think it’s that mixture that makes the book successful. But this particular story really got to me more than all the others. There’s just a real power to that image of the family waiting at the airport, surrounded by all the other people waiting for ‘Something nice from London’ while they are waiting for the coffin of their son.

Which brings me back to the tone. When describing suffering, and especially when interspersing it with humour, there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid: melodrama, tastelessness, didacticism and exploitation to name but a few. Gappah skips effortlessly through the minefield, achieving just the right tone in every story. It’s a tremendous achievement, and I look forward to reading more from her.

Andrew Blackman Book reviews book review, collection, short stories, zimbabwe

Do you ever have that experience where something you’ve known for a long time suddenly hits you as it’s never hit you before? That happened to me this weekend. Here’s what set it off.

Every few days another huge chunk of ice seems to break off from Antarctica. Last week, for example, the Wilkins Ice Shelf broke off on Monday. That’s a lump of ice the size of Jamaica. Then on Thursday came news that the Wordie Ice Shelf had disappeared.

Normally I read this stuff and feel generally concerned, but in a vague, unfocused way. This time, somehow, it was different. I just had this image of the Earth seen from afar, with time sped up so that you see the whole of Antarctica just breaking up and melting into the sea in a few seconds. And meanwhile I’m scurrying around writing my blog posts and plugging my book as if nothing bad is happening, and the whole world is focusing on what colour dress Michelle Obama is wearing. It just struck me that we are all absolutely insane.

Then the moment passed, and I went back to the normal ‘vague generic anxiety but nothing much I can do’ mode, and once again I felt able to participate in daily life. I have a sneaking feeling, though, that the brief feeling of utter insanity might be closer to reality.

Andrew Blackman Political comment Antarctic ice shelf, climate change, cognitive dissonance, global warming, momentary insanity

This is a novel about secrets. It begins with Cara as a young woman attempting suicide, and most of the novel takes place in Cara’s old age, as many of the secrets within her family begin to unravel.

From the first scene, the first big secret is born. Cara is attempting suicide because she’s discovered that her lover Frederick is a married man. She then quickly marries Billy, the man who saved her from drowning. But what she can never admit to anyone is her suspicion that their first child, Benjamin, is Frederick’s not Billy’s.

By the end of Cara’s life, the secrets have multiplied, but in a sense many of them can be traced logically back to that original secret. Benjamin always feels like an outsider in the family and is bullied at school for looking different from his two other siblings. He develops violence and ‘toughness’ as a defence, and soon gets into trouble. He later beats up his wife so badly that he almost kills her, and goes into hiding for years.  Later on his daughter, having grown up in an atmosphere of domestic violence and then missing her absent father, marries a man who is just like Benjamin and abuses her.There are many more secrets in the novel – almost every character has one, including Cara’s sister Gloria and the unexplained events around the death of Cara’s friend Beattie (perhaps this, actually, is the original secret from which the others come).

What I liked about the book was that, when it does finally become the “time to tell” all the secrets, the results are often unexpected. I was afraid that it might be a sort of morality tale where, once the secrets are revealed and the characters face up to the truth, everything is neatly resolved. But it happens more subtly than that, and so feels more true to life. Sometimes the characters are able to forgive, and at other times they are not. Their reactions feel real.

There are also some great evocations of place, particularly 1950s Huddlesea, where you can really feel the claustrophobia of living in a town where everybody knows everything about everyone else and judges them on any mistake.

Sometimes I felt that the characters’ motivations or feelings were spelled out, rather than being hinted at and left to the reader to discover. For example, when Cara is living with her granddaughter Penelope, it’s immediately made clear that her husband David is abusive, so the description of his violence afterwards feels a bit predictable. I would have preferred to be presented with the facade of a happy family and discover the truth gradually, through Cara’s growing suspicions.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters were believable, and the description of a family’s secrets and the way they build on each other was convincing and memorable.

Andrew Blackman Book reviews

Came across some good back-to-basics writing advice over on How Publishing Really Works. The bottom line:

Just write every day, and read more often than you write, and your writing will improve.

I am a keen reader, but sometimes when faced with the competing pressures of finishing a manuscript, paying the rent and occasionally having a social life, reading can slip down my list of priorities. I thoroughly agree with Jane, though – it’s absolutely indispensible for a writer to read widely. It’s good advice to keep in mind.

Andrew Blackman Interesting snippets Interesting snippets, Writing