Tuesday, September 27, 2011

"Sleepy", by Anton Chekhov (1888)

I wonder if Robert Coover was in some way paying homage to this story in his weird, and (I think) delightful PoMo tale we read last month: The Babysitter. There are echoes of Dr Chekhov in Coover's fragmented half-dream-half-real presentation, or maybe not.

Whatever Coover was trying to do with that story (and we were in somewhat deep disagreement in our discussion last month about exactly what he was trying to achieve), Chekhov, as in most cases, got there first. Wherever that "there" is.

You might not want to listen to this late at night though. It's a very creepy story.






[Download story]

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

To Kindle, or to Nook: THAT is the eQuestion

The Better-Than-Kindle Nook? But only one (dodgy) online retailer selling it in the UK.

I have a love-hate relationship with books as physical objects. 

Or to be more precise: a love-sadness relationship. Having had to "let go" of thousands of books at certain times in my somewhat peripatetic life, I am keenly aware that whilst books do furnish a room, they can also become (en-masse) a Sisyphean boulder requiring constant pushing up ramps into removal vans, and paying of monthly storage fees to house them.

When I'm considering buying a book, my first thought (after "I want you-oo", crooned Elvis-Costello-like in the direction of the tome) is how many kilos it's going to add to a suitcase or a cardboard box marked "BOOKS" being hoiked up a ladder into someone's loft. A good part of my motivation to gift a first edition of Infinite Jest to a friend for his birthday recently, was carrying that 3.25 kg mass in a shoulder bag on my daily commute, noticing the musculo-skeletal wear and tear of this devotion after a month or so.

Thus, perhaps more than anyone I know, I am socially, economically, demographically, and most importantly psychologically primed to have/be an eReader. Yes, I love the feel and look of books, but the sheer unburdened freedom of being able to carry a whopper (or hundreds of whoppers) around with me on an object that weighs less than a couple of Mars bars, is an almost incontrovertible selling point.

So why haven't I bought one yet?

Well, I am worried about giving Amazon lock, key and sole proprietorship of all the texts I choose to purchase from them hereon in. You've probably heard Amazon Agnostics already espousing on the subject in a similar anti-monopolistic vein. Why should Amazon become, as they are threatening to become, the main purveyors of the entirety of our lexical culture?

But mainly I'm worried about Amazon's Kindle and its AZW format in which all its books are encoded. I am worried that Kindle may truly become "the only show in town", as one publisher recently described the lightweight Über Object to me. Once upon a time VHS was the only show in town, but where is it now? 

Maybe I'm just not getting it, but I simply can't understand why readers would choose to lock themselves into an Amazon eStockade, when one day they might like to read all their books off something other than a Kindle: maybe the palm of their hands, or on a piece of toast. 

If you buy Amazon, you are enslaved to Amazon. If you buy your books as generic ePubs (which can be read on any other eReader, apart from Kindle), you are "free". Free to convert the files to whatever format you need for whatever reader you have, free to share files with friends, the way you might share books with friends, not in anyway enslaved to a huge multinational corporation which is fast becoming, Walmart-like, a one stop shop for everything and anything and sod anyone else who might like a slice of the pie.

So why aren't more people/retailers expressing interest in the just-as-good-if-not-better-than-Kindle Nook or Kobo eReaders (I've had a nightmare buying a Nook off the awful Purely Gadgets, the only UK distributor of the device so far)? And why are most of the small publishers I approach spinning the Kindle-Is-The-Only-Show-In-Town yarn, when it clearly isn't, or shouldn't be?

Could this have anything to do with Amazon's loss-leading push of their reading devices, their gargantuan advertising budgets promoting their eReader as the only eReader you'll ever need, the way the God Marines sold Christianity to the "natives" in the 16th century?

I am genuinely surprised that the zeitgeist (especially from publishers I've talked to) seems to be one of completely swallowing the hype and signing on to become a Lifelong Vassal of Amazon Inc.

Borges' Infinite Book is almost within our grasp, and it is probably in the shape of an eReader. But do we want our sole access to it to be dependent on one man with a slightly unsettling laugh

Not me.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Short Story Book Clubs = Better Conversations?

Listening this morning to Olivia O'Leary's lovely programme on one of my all-time heroes (Theodore Zeldin) and his New (Better?) Conversation initiative made me realize that our Short Story Book Club is not intrinsically about great short stories (although of course we are conscientiously and pleasurably focused on the little blighters) but more about facilitating great conversation.


Zeldin-ish conversation, that is: inclusive, honest, genuinely interested in another persons take on a shared topic/story, and supportive.
In a sense, I see the Club's raison d'être as quite different to a lit-crit gathering. I'm sure we've all been-there, done-that, got the withering ("Oh-I-wish-you'd-shut-up") looks from snooty dons and People Who Know Better (Or More) Than Us.  I'm pretty sure though that Zeldin wouldn't see this competitive one-upmanship as a Conversation Killer rather than as a facilitator.


So I wonder if it might be an idea, following the format of his conversation dinners, to explicitly structure the evening a tad. Just so that we don't automatically fall into the groove of convo-stranger-dynamics where a modicum of unease clogs the conversational channels.  With this in mind, we've agreed to have a kind of short-list of stories that we'll mainly be focusing on. 




All these stories be great conversation-starters in themselves.But we might also brainstorm before we meet a few (simple, but honest) conversation-starting questions. Just to get the ball rolling:

  • Blackberry Winter: Why doesn't the boy tell his father about potentially dangerous hobo who's just rocked up at the farmhouse?
  • O City of Broken Dreams: Is this not a very early (1948) prediction of the PoMo surface-no-content culture we're living in NOW?
  • The Magic Barrel: Is the final match a double-bluff on the father's part to get the two of them together?
  • Good Country People: Who's more cruel in this story, the bible salesman or the writer?
  • Upon the Sweeping Flood: Why, in God's name, does he do it?
  • The Babysitter: Is the ending a cop-out?
If you fancy adding some questions to our conversation menu, for all the stories, or just some, please do stick those in the comments box either on meet-up, or the blog. Also, t'would be great if you (and friends/family etc.) could head on over and "LIKE" our FB page, as it seems we need 20 followers or more to get a dedicated Page Name, and put ourselves in the running for winning a goldfish.

"O City of Broken Dreams" - John Cheever (1948)

Have you heard about a sub-precept of Sod's Law called Reading-Aloud Sod's Law (R.A.L.S)?

Simply stated: this is the likelihood that at the very moment you position your iPhone on the edge of the sofa, and sit yourself down on a meditation cushion, legs crossed Burmese-style to record a classic Cheever short story, someone in the vicinity who is not shush-able, will begin to hammer or drill or cackle uncontrollably.

Hopefully the unadulterated Cheeverness of this short story will survive the initial background noises and subsequent moving of reader and iPhone to another room halfway through in order to finish perched on the edge of the bed, iPhone balanced precariously on the side of a bookcase. If not, I am happy to supply you with neighbour's address for reparation requests.

[Download a reading of the story]

Monday, September 5, 2011

"In The Zoo", by Jean Stafford (1953)

The beautiful Jean Stafford.

That is, before the "uncouth, neurotic, psycopathic murder-poet" (AKA Robert Lowell) drove the two of them into a wall, conferring upon Jean defacement and hospital traumas that she would go on to sublimate in one of the most gruesome short stories I've ever winced through (The Interior Castle).

Keywords from the Literature, Art, and Medicine Database on that story say it all: Anesthesia, Doctor-Patient Relationship, Hospitalization, Medical Advances, Medical Testing, Obsession, Pain, Patient Experience, Physical Examination, Rebellion, Surgery, Trauma.

David Cronenberg (or Almodovar, if you're a September, 2011 Zeitgeister) eat your heart out.

This one is pretty visceral too. But more in a way that twangs at the heart strings like a raw, ol' blues song. Lots of parallels between this story and Edward Albee's similarly named one-act play - though I'm still not quite sure who got there first, chicken-and-egg-wise. I think it was Stafford.

PS For a reading of The Interior Castle, please make your way over to the preternaturally tasteful Miette's Bedtime Stories podcast.