The delight that The Observer is… on some Sundays

The Observer ran a series two weekends back, where writers chose their favourite short stories and explained why... you can find the article here and The Guardian's done a brilliant job of putting up the podcasts on their books page here.

Anne Enright on Fat by Raymond Carver.

‘A story is something told, it is something that really needs to be said. But though we feel its force and resonance, it is often hard to say what a story means. The most we can say, perhaps, is that a short story is about a moment in life; and after this moment, we realize something has changed’

Philip Pullman on The Beauties by Chekhov

'Chekhov's genius lies in the way he manages to convey with such apparent effortlessness a profound sense of the mystery of beauty, and of the sadness of those who observe and think'

Helen Simpson on The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter

‘The narrators mother, a perfectionist Yorkshire cook in the kitchens of a great country house, is impregnated by an unknown admirer as she bends to place a souffle in the oven (she doesn't turn for fear of spoiling the dish)’

Ali Smith on Conversations With My Father by Grace Paley

‘What happens -funny, sad, infuriating- is that the story won't be corralled any more than life itself will’

Colman Toibin on Music at Annahullion by Eugene McCabe

‘McCabe's genius is to make the piano stand for itself and then to have an extraordinary resonance as it comes to stand for all her hope, and all our hopes’

Jeannette Winterson on The Night Driver by Italo Calvino

‘The tension in the story depends on the unknowing. Soon Calvino imagines a perpetual time, the time out of time of long car journeys where it becomes unnecessary to arrive. You have a lover. You're racing towards him/her. Your lover is racing towards you. You will never meet but meeting is no longer the purpose of the journey.’

In a different section on the same day, Lillian Ross of The New Yorker shared her memories of Salinger... and also, JD Salinger's impression about meeting her month old son, Erik:

" Notes on your son: 1. Is an incomparably fine and lovely person 2. Has beautiful eyes 3. Sleeps in a very good position 4. Has courtly manners 5. Is a very very sweet little boy"

On her writing...

"You're yourself whether you're writing fiction or fact. It's very moving. I mean more than that, but that's my first thought"

Hemingway to a young and unknown JD Salinger commenting on Salinger's unpublished stories: 'First you have a marvellous ear and you write tenderly and lovingly without getting wet... how happy it makes me to read your stories and what a god damned fine writer I think you are'

And Laurie Hutton recalled the origins of Malcolm McLaren's stories:

‘ She (his grandmother Rose) dressed him up as a girl, didn't allow him to go to school until he was 10. He had Shirley Temple sausage curls down to his shoulders held Toby tortoise-shell combs... Ever night he had to sit in the corner if the sitting room on a chamber pot while her sisters read to him from the novels of the Brontes and Dickens... Rose didn't allow him to swim in the sea because fish pee in the sea... He was the best storyteller I ever met, and I've met some in my time. He learned it in that room on the chamber pot’

This is what a good Sunday paper should do, make you read and re-read it through the week, increasing your unreasonable hopes that the weekend is just around the next corner and of course, next Sunday's will be better, with its extracts from Tolstoi and Basho and Homer; will be much better as you slowly read it distracted by the falling snow, milky masala tea, short-bread and crackers... London, my London.

Notes to women...

... who travel with men in France.

• Yes, it is true… especially in France, waiters are snobbish. We have noted this with great respect and countless nods, your detection of this secret... très très diabolique, these Frenchies, eh. Now, could we get over it... please? French waiters really don't get kicks out of serving you slices of warm wholegrain bread, with flavoured olive oil and 8 varieties of artisan cheese like all your friends said they would. The waiters in the cheap, touristy restaurants that we usually visit get kicks out of 'phhhrrooofing' and saying "Je comprends pas" to English speaking women with fake Louis Vuitton bags.
  

• In France, the people speak French. If you don't speak French and they don't speak English, they don't have a problem. You have a problem. Recall previous point about getting used to it, over it, under it, whatever.
  

• If you are visiting a town next to the Alps with a chateau on a hill, and also plan to visit the village of Èze located 2000 feet above sea level, it might be a good idea to bring along shoes for walking. Not heels. Not as the only pair you're bringing along because you "pack light and that's soooo cool". Not for a place that has for its main attraction, Le Promenade Des Anglais.
  

• If you like the charming, rustic marketplace, you should also like the rustic fruits sold by the charming French farmers. And no, even though us men might know ticket-buy-worthy French, we don't ask "Can you wash this fruit for us, please?". Not to French farmers. Nope. Nada. Non. Especially not after you gave us that "eeeek"sy look when we bit into the ripest, juiciest, tastiest unwashed figs of our lives.
  

• Caramelized almonds in a supermarket aisle won't be as fresh as the hot ones we bought for you from a roadside stall run by an unusually, happy Italian grandpa on a cold, windy day. Which you happily ate up after turning up your nose at, to start off with. Declaring this discovery of yours, that they aren't as fresh, doesn't exponentially increase our estimate of your reasoning powers.
  

• We find it puzzling when after we've explained what options are there to explore in Town A (which, incidentally, happens to be the town we're in), you suddenly look up after breakfast and go "Let's do Town Z, yaaaaaar"... what exactly does this mean? That you don't like Town A? That you want to visit Town Z? Wander around it? Eat in it? Gamble in it? Dance or sing on its roads? Or is there some deeper Freudian thingy that we've missed here? This puzzling feeling does get exacerbated when we ask you "Uhm... Er...ok, so what's in town Z?" And you say "I don't know" as if that explains everything. However, we are willing to ignore/forgive/move on through such events as we consider the eternal human desire to explore the unknown. Us men get cheap thrills out of such uncalled for forgiving stints.
  

• If you like something in a shop window, it might be a good idea to check the price before you ask the shop-keeper for it. And not after she has packed it up for you. And no, at this point, we don't translate "I don't want the thing you packed for me, the one I asked for, because I think it's too expensive, now that you've printed the bill"
  

• If you don't like art, it's perfectly OK to say "I am not really interested" when we consider the idea of visiting museums in a region that Van Gogh, Matisse and Chagall breathed, painted and lived. Rather than wondering thrice in 5 minutes about how far the museum is, commenting on the inferior quality of hot chocolate at the museum cafe and finally, at the museum admission, turning away from the lady who says "7 euros, please" to tell us "I think I will go for a haircut rather than do this". As Chagall spins desperately in his grave, we too, are tempted to, right there in front of that very lady.
  PS: At this point, it isn't mightily endearing to raise your eyebrows and say "How long are you going to take at 'this' place?"
  PPS: Maybe it would be a better idea not to declare intentions of getting a "classy French haircut" rather than admitting later that the French charge atrocious rates for haircuts and that discovery kept you away from the salon which you headed to when you found the museum too expensive.
  PPPS: DO NOT ask us why we sob when, after all of the above, you declare that you "just want to leave it all and start an art gallery" in a medieval village in France. It's a man thing, we sob, we suffer... all for art.
  

• If you insist on having a conversation on media freedom, the role of regulation in the private sector and the drivers of economic growth in developing countries on a warm sunlit evening in a plaza flanked by a 18th century church as we sip a particularly, pleasant cuvée of the Côtes Du Provence... well, what can we say, let's. But it just might be worth your while to consider briefly before we start, the knowledge you possess on these topics, the sources you gained it from and your ability to remember those sources. Depending on "My uncle said so", "I just know it" and "I don't remember" doesn't count as meaningful evidence. Much as we would like to admit to many meaningless things in the cause of chivalry, this time... no, we can't.
  

• Despite being regular fountainheads of stunning wisdom, we really do not know...

- Why French beaches don't have sand

- Whether you should get fake-looking lavender soaps or garish souvenirs with "Produce De Provence" stamped on them for your friends

- Why French roads change names at junctions (Refer to previous point about the deliberately diabolique French)

- Why people don't get electrocuted when they step on tram lines

- Why restaurants don't serve artisanal (that infernal word!) cheese the way Jamie Oliver promised that they always did in the South of France

- Why the pianist who works magic on a rented piano at Place Massena as he floats, crawls, creeps his fingers around the keys, hasn't become famous across the world (but you get brownie points for deep thoughts)

- Why vendors insist that you MUST pick something after you spend 25 minutes quizzing them about prices and tasting free samples.

- Why the modern, anarchic artist has splashed his blood on the canvas and packaged his shit in a jar (but we might be able to give it a decent shot if you let us listen to the audio guide rather than asking us to come with you to the museum shop)

• Reading 33 pages of a 350 page novel may not quite place you in an optimal position to declare with critical airs that "it's a kind of a slow book". Why spoil a nice sunset on the French Riviera? Let’s not.
  PS: But since it looks like we MUST, please consider the fact that a book that involves 3 grieving Jewish men at the sunset of their lives and has a blurb describing itself as a "funny, furious and unflinching look at friendship, loss and growing older" is unlikely to be fast... It will not accelerate like an Aston Martin, probably doesn't have heaving hearts à la Mills & Boon and may not twist & turn like Jeffrey Archer used to in his pre-prison days. Even if the heavens parted and it did any of that, maybe not in the first 33 pages? Ah, but you beg to differ, don't you... Your point being that it should.
  PPS: Doubtless the idea greatly excites you, but suggesting a "cozy, classy restaurant" that you spot along the Côte D’Azur as a possible venue for our next book reading session doesn't help obliviate our memories of the time that you showed up without reading the book. Oh, sorry, make that "without buying the book".
  

Now, which part of this is confusing?

NB - Obviously, this is an entirely fictional take on an imaginary trip with impossibly indelicate women. We all know how reasonable ladies usually are in real life. So there.

Finding Stuff.

Was surprised to find this in an old copy of "The Burden And The Glory" from home.
The devout romantic that a sailor of 6 years was at age 23, in 1970.
A warm find on a cold, rainy London morning.

RIP... Reader, Sailor, Captain, Dad.

A.E. Housman on the Central Line

For The War Dead

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

-A.E.Housman (1859-1936)

Spotted on The Central Line at 0945, 10-Nov-2010; part of the Poems on The Underground series

Catfish by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman

Film #8 at The BFI London Film Festival

To try to explain "Catfish" is to give away a surprising story... watch the movie and walk away with the disturbing knowledge of how our virtual worlds can trick but yet hold us in thrall with shards of online humanity.

It was TS Eliot who said about his poetry "against these fragments, I shore my ruins". Catfish reveals how against the fragments of Facebook, a human can shore the regularly rough edges of reality.

Image from BFI site here

Life, Above All by Oliver Schmitz

Film #7 at The BFI London Film Festival 2010

Somewhere in Africa, a ‘bug’ gnaws away, pulling mothers away from children, fathers from families and friends from each other. Even as the adults waver between choosing Christianity, black magic or isolation to deal with this menace, the children try their best to pick up the pieces and move on.

One of these children is Chanda in Oliver Schmitz’s ‘Life, Above All’. Adapted from Alan Stratton's "Chanda's Secrets", this is the story of a teenage girl in Africa who deals with the blight of AIDS in her own ineffable way. Growing up in a family where her father has died and her mother has taken up with another man (Jonah), Chanda lives life on her own terms and indeed she needs to… she takes care of her step-siblings, helps arrange the funeral of a baby sister, snatches money from a drunk step-father, does homework and tries her best to be a good friend to Esther (whose parents have died of AIDS, leaving her homeless/hopeless in a shack at the edge of the town).

The casting was mostly amazing… flinty Esther, precocious Chanda, the drama queen neighbours… all of these do complete justice to their complex roles (although just sometimes, it becomes a bit unreal as the milk of human kindness overfloweth– good-hearted shopkeepers and ambulance drivers seem to abound in Africa; in real life, in a developing country, I would imagine that ambulance drivers demand extra moolah for home delivery and shop-keepers being quite ruthless with margins). The music and the melodrama mix well with each other especially in the last scene where just the music/song could define the “desperate-for-salvation” mood that the movie plunged us, watchers into.

All through the movie, the spectre of AIDS is unyielding and omnipresent, casting a dark shadow over the sunny land... with Jonah catching the ‘bug’ and dying and her mother seeming to have contracted it as well, Chanda has to manage a complex maze of relationships and obligations that could easily overwhelm a regular 16 year old. But then again, this is no regular girl… this is Chanda, the girl who stands up against shrews, who brings back an abandoned mother from the edges of hell… this is Chanda who can and does anything.

I enjoyed best the scenes where the girls negotiate the hazy netherworld of adulthood… Esther’s miniskirted attempts to be cool and Chanda’s coy conversation with a boy after a dance are special and very deserving of the attention that the script and the camera pays to them. But fuzzy scenes do not a movie make; the harsh reality of an African generation blighted by AIDS re-emerges very soon and stuns you into silence – when the lights came on, I found a couple, almost looking stranded, in shock with tears in full flow.

But girls like Chanda redeem us all and lead... lead kindly, light, amid th’encircling doom.

Boxing Gym by Frederick Wiseman

Film #6 at the BFI London Film Festival 2010


Every art, every sport, every repeated ritual has a rhythm of its own making... this is almost a secret that practitioners effortlessly tap into, while for many outsiders this rhythm seems almost hypnotic in its pace, sound and sometimes, fury.

Boxing Gym, a documentary by Frederick Wiseman, captures the rhythm of the sport of boxing in all its glorious variations. Filmed in Lord's Gym at Austin-Texas, the film looks at the fascinating variety of people who jab and dance around on the gym's rings... men hiss/sputter their way into punches as babies watch, a mother bring her epileptic son to see if there's a chance for him to start, grandpa's almost do a slow waltz in the ring, all the while timing themselves to the omnipresent clang of the timer.

As the blurb on the BFI site says, 'this is a story about the human condition as much as it is about boxing'... the 'human condition' in its relentless pursuit of perfection and triumph and the ebbing impotence that awaits us all around the corner. If you're not the type that is taken aback by the wonder of all this, then the sheerly physical intensity of Richard Lord and his fighting women (and the occassional man!) will keep you alive through the 91 minutes of the film.

There is an utterly beautiful scene in the film where two of Lord's best boxers, a young woman and a slightly older well muscled man, practice in the same ring... they don't fight each other but shadow-box in the same enclosed space. The woman slips around the ring, breathing softly and scarily, in sleek sinous movements... yet you instinctively sense the immense, trapped power that lies within her, especially when you get a glimpse of her eerily focused, fierce eyes . The man on the other hand is much more direct and blunt about the retribution that he will exact... like a well oiled machine going though its paces, he chops the space of the ring into neat pieces, with angular shifts, sharp turns and the constant hiss that flies with his punches. Wiseman does a brilliant job mapping this interplay between the sexes... the footwork of the boxers, their glances, the movement of their muscles and in doing so, captures the spell-binding contrast between a man and a woman in a fighting space. Not very unlike two dangerous and completely alive animals in an arena, testing their territorial limits, marking their borders, the air crackling with the barely contained danger of it all.

PS: To be seen after reading Gordon Marino's take on the philosophy behind boxing in the NYT here.

Image from the mubi site here

To The Measures Fall - Richard Powers in The NY'r

A passage from Richard Power's new short story in the New Yorker "To The Measures Fall".

A story that starts with a bike ride through the Cotswolds and the discovery of a book and the changing meaning of the story and the book, a thread that follows the owner all through her life.

More about it here and an abstract of the original here (The NYr's put it behind a pay wall, sorry :-( )

I Wish I Knew by Jia Zhangke

Film #5 at the BFI London Film Festival 2010 – I Wish I Knew by Jia Zhangke

I Wish I Knew by Jia Zhangke is a collection of memories and experiences about Shanghai… over 18 interviewees recount the role that Shanghai has played in either their own or their family’s lives. From sons of soldiers executed by the Kuomintang, to port labourers to gangsters to award-winning textile workers to actresses to bloggers, Shanghai and this film has it all. With the raw emotional intensity that real people bring to a documentary, the film cuts across the borders of mainland China to Taiwan and even Hong Kong and in doing so paints a telling picture of the politics and history of China. It easily took me back to Class 10 history books in India that almost painted Sun Yat Sen and the KMT as exiled heroes and Chairman Mao as the villain.

At the same time, the documentary does not flow easily and that is a primary failing, I think… each anecdote, each character brings a thread of history and emotion which is beautiful by itself (imagine a textile worker who gets to meet Chairman Mao and getting a chance to visit Vienna, where she recalls streets filled applauding Austrians) but at the same time, deserve a better job of being woven to form something larger. Combining many vignettes about a dynamic city is no doubt a daunting challenge, but is much needed in a 2+ hour film… and when not executed properly, the disjointed pieces detract from the formidable theme and almost become tiresome.

But the stories themselves, from the little boy who wants to beat up the world to Han Han, the blogger who didn’t buy a Jeep because it was too cheap, are truly memorable and evoke memories of a city and era gone by, but preserved in film by Jia Zhangke.

Image from www.filmofilia.com here