Just An Update

President Obama

So, you know, America has a new President who was ushered into the White House with celebration, anticipation and fervent hope. Around 1.8m people attended his inauguration, a record, I understand, and tens of millions more watched around the globe. I missed most of it, with regret, but am more keen to know what he is going to do about Palestine and Iraq. His ordering the closure of Guantanamo as well as his call to halt brutal interrogation techniques (but not all of them – just the “most severe” ones) is welcome but he has also green lighted missile strikes on tribal areas in Pakistan. Will Islam still be equated with terrorism under President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in a village in predominantly Muslim Indonesia?

This list of his first 100 hours gives me some hope still that the new President will inject compassion, objectivity and humanity into the US’s foreign policy, although his silence over the deaths of Palestinians (many more over a thousand) has been deeply disappointing.

The Year of the Ox

Over on our shores, it’s holiday season again as we welcome the Chinese New Year. It’s the Year of the Ox this time around, the animal being quite a fitting icon for the stoicism and perseverance necessary to weather the tough economic climate. I’m realising that more of my Chinese friends have less reverence for this time of year, with a few even working through the holidays instead of returning for the traditional family feast. Wherever you choose to greet the New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai, to all who celebrate. Here’s a very short tale where an ox “saved” the Austrian town of Salzburg from invaders, not by heroics but simply by being present:

To say that the humble “ox” played a pivotal role in European history might to some appear rather strange, but to the people of Salzberg, this beast is a symbol of courage in the face of adversity.

In the 1500s, an enemy army took over the city of Salzburg, Austria depriving the inhabitants of food and drink. Their cupboards bare with nary a bit of food left, the people were practically ready to surrender until they found a lone ox roaming the streets. They paraded the beast in front of the invaders to prove that they were not hungry. Then, during the night, they painted it black to show that they had more than enough livestock for the people to survive. Completely befuddled, the army retreated, leaving the people of Salzberg in peace.
(from Squidoo)

 

And click here for another story, this time from the Arabian Nights, of The Ox and The Donkey.

My Reading

At the individual level, I’ve done quite a bit of reading over the past month, and am glad for it though I wish the writing will catch up. I’ve completed Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (a creative delight!), Stephen King’s Just After Sunset (too mild), Clare Wigfall’s The Loudest Sound and Nothing (beautifully written), David Sedaris’s  When You Are Engulfed in Flames (hilarious), Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (second reading – it resonates more this time around), Jonathan Kellerman’s Gone (you know, I believe my reading tastes have changed; the story wasn’t as engrossing as I had expected it to be) and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well (I recommend this highly).

Right now, in my book “basket” are: Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father (so far, he is proving to be as eloquent in writing as he is in speech), Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer (I could not resist this beautifully matt paperback and what it promises for the reader and writer), Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (for its anticipated irreverence and humour), Robert Schlessinger’s White House Ghosts (am honestly stuck on “W”, however hard I try to move on), and John Pilger’s Freedom Next Time (it gets too depressing in one continuous dose but it provides the necessary reminder that we world citizens need of the injustices wrought by governments). I have also stuffed an old book (I realise that I have a whole shelf of writing books, actually, populated since my teens), The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, which – ahem – is supposed to get me to write better short stories. But I’ve to sit down and complete my tales first. Particularly before the 31st March closing date for the MPH-Alliance Bank Short Story Writing Contest, which I, uh, intend to, sort of, I think, perhaps, enter.

And ps, one of my goals this year is to read the late Roberto Bolano’s mammoth “2666“ though goodness knows if I’ll get to finish it before 2010 rolls around. Here’s a link to the The New Yorker’s 2666 Reading Challenge.

Filed under: Books, Personal Note, Reads, World, Writing , barack, Books, library, reading, US, Writing, year of the Ox

King of Horror, on Writing

We’ve moved, after almost a year of waiting.

The bookshelf that housed my books in our former home now lines up a new wall, its wood once more the solid ground on which my hardbacks and paperbacks, yellowed, dog-eared and dusty, or clean, white and compact, rest. I gave very few of my books away – I am stingy when it comes to these “friends” of mine, I have to admit – and there are still the Enid Blytons, Alfred Hitchcocks (and The Three Investigators), as well as Kathryn Kenny’s Trixie Belden (first published in 1948!), which I hope my kids will one day pick up, read, and love.

In the course of arranging and re-arranging my books (an exercise more complicated than figuring out seating arrangements for VIPs!), I discovered a long-forgotten borrowed copy of Stephen King’s On Writing. I have honestly forgotten where the book came from (if the Good Samaritan is reading this, please contact me), but I’m immensely grateful for the copy.

I was an avid Stephen King fan in my late teens, preferring his tales of darkness to Harlequin romances and Virginia Andrews’s incestuous epic (at that time, such a hit among my peers). It’s hard to put my finger on what appealed to me, exactly, as King’s tales always took place in Maine (Derry, Bangor) where the people tended to talk funny (ayuh, being one of the terms I picked up) and the towns tended to be small. It was not his monsters either that were so enticing – Laurell K Hamilton’s werewolves and zombies, and Anne Rice’s seductive, angst-filled vampires are often richer and bloodier than King’s lurking-in-the-dark-evil.

But.

King’s unknown monsters were often mirrored in the darkness of his characters as well, and the battle against the unknown, the outside unknown, became also a battle against the demons within. In Pet Sematary, for example, the resurrection of the dead happens only because the living are unable to accept the deaths of their loved ones and move on (the movie version was crappy, by the way, so read the book if you want the real horror). In The Shining, the protagonist’s losing battle with his ego and alcoholism serve to accentuate the evil residing within The Overlook Hotel. And in Salem’s Lot – my favourite Stephen King tale – the residents of a small town surrender one by one to a master vampire, either because they were seduced by the promise of power or because they surrendered to fear and decided it was easier not to fight the darkness that came after them. I read Salem’s Lot twice and would not hesitate to rate it as the best vampire tale – horrifying, gruesome (but not to the cruel extent of the late Richard Laymon), and – most frightening of all – entirely plausible.

I have to add, of course, that apart from the psudeo-intellectual reasons above, Stephen King just knew how to spin a bloody good yarn (pun not intended) to keep his readers hooked through hundreds of pages of narrative. And so it is that his book On Writing – which is half a writer’s memoir and half a how-to novelist guide – emphasises the heart of his writing – storytelling.

Book-buyers aren’t attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel; book-buyers want a good story to take with them on the airplane, something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages.

In the first half, the memoir, King tells us how his interest in writing grew (through a lot of reading, horror movies and early encouragement by his Mom and friends who bought his self-printed stories). I never knew, actually, that one of my favourite authors had a Dad who did a permanent walkout of family life and who was brought up by his Mom (and a succession of baby sitters) from the age of two onwards. King’s background is strictly working class – his Mom worked in laundrettes and diners to make ends meet – which explains his characters and a lot of his novels’ settings.

He does mention the number of years it took him to get over the guilt of writing “trash”, as opposed to writing “good stuff” (this is something a lot of popfic writers have to work out within themselves, I would imagine). What comes through very strongly is his love for writing and his no-nonsense approach to it. The second half of the book deals with the writer’s “toolbox”, where King discusses grammar (important so get a copy of Strunk and White now, will you?), plot (the engine of every story but he doesn’t machinate his plots in advance – situations first, then characters, then see what happens), dialogue (use your ears) and description (just include a few important details and let your readers imagine the rest). He also adds in an example of an unedited and edited work (1408, which I watched but didn’t read) and even explains the best way to approach an agent and become published. It gets surprisingly technical and detailed in the second half but the tips are welcome, coming as they are from a seasoned “bestselling” novelist like King.

His 1999 accident, when he was hit by a van and was almost paralysed – was a life-changing event for King and it’s thoughtful that he included a chapter on the accident as well as the recovery period where writing played a role in helping him heal.

I enjoyed On Writing – more for what he went through as a writer than as a how-to guide – and appreciate King’s take on writing, that it is about “enriching the lives of those who read your work, and enriching your own life as well.”

On Writing belongs on the shelf with the also-excellent Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

Filed under: Personal Note , authors, Books, library, stephen king, Writing