The blog has been put on the back burner until I have handed my thesis on fanfic in.
Be back in the middle of April.
Love J. (read it how you like it)
A mind and a memory
Did I already read this passage? He used that same sentence before didn’t he? What? Is there a code in this text?
I’ve been reading Bjørn Rasmussen’s ‘Huden er det elastiske hylster der omgiver hele kroppen’ (‘The skin is the elastic holster that enshrouds the entire body’ – although in effect, due to the massive connotation linked to every word, the translation is open-ended) and in its best postmodern fashion it resists me and my desire to immerse myself in its story. Not to say it is a closed off piece of literature, on the contrary, it lays it all out there in rich condensed prose. However, it does what it can to resist me by saying “hey! I’m a text! I’m a text and I’m a person! I am a narrator and a text and a person! Only, there is no I, I is just a figment in a circular motion towards memory!”
And so it goes on, until I let go of my desire to establish a communication with it and just let it tell me its story. ‘Cause we really like that, and especially when we lose it; we like to communicate with texts and talk back, in essence often just to test out our own identity, mirror our own desires and fears. But this work, and others like it, just wants to tell its story, constantly trying to counteract what you think you already know about it, how it’s going to play out, what it wants. How? By saying it, and by borrowing others’ I’s and texts, and by negating your knowledge because it is not a You and even you don’t know You. The text, the I, can only present itself to a you and that’s that. What you do is either constantly trying to figure the It out, or just leave. No harm, no foul.
Tro intet af, hvad jeg fortæller om følelser. Jeg har kun tilnærmelsesvis ansatser mod at føle noget ægte. Så snart dette ægte indtræder, vil det nødvendigvis opløses, fortæl mig om implosion, om atomer. Når man jagter en frø i timevis, når man endelig lukker hænderne omkring den, dør den af chok. Og hvis jeg virkelig får dig en dag. Så vil jeg ikke have dig længere. Så vil jeg have noget andet. Hvad. Fortæl mig om forskellen på want og need, jeg tror ikke på, at der er nogen. Hvad er der så, kapitalismen, fortæl mig om kapitalismen, nej, den menneskelige natur, åh, hør her: Oppe i mit røvhul er der sort som kul, oppe i mit røvhul, ca. 6 cm. oppe, findes et punkt, en erogen zone, der svarer til klitorissen eller pikhovedet. Det er fakta. Når dette punkt berøres, forplanter vibrationerne sig til rygraden, hammeren, stigbøjlen og hør her: Røvhullet er dialektisk, røvhullet er en død mands blomst, død kvindes blomst, røvhullet er en fuga, et tema med variationer; følelser derimod; frøer, mødre, ridelærere og følelser, de er den samme gamle historie, sut mit plot.
(Roughly translated)
Don’t believe anything I say about feelings. Far from it, I only have beginnings of feeling something real. As soon as this real comes around it inevitably dissolves, talk to me about implosion, about atoms. When you chase a frog for hours, when you finally wrap your hands around it, it will die of shock. And if I really get you one day. Then I don’t want you anymore. Then I’ll want something else. What. Talk to me about the difference between want and need, it don’t think there is any. What’s next, capitalism, talk to me about capitalism, human nature, ah listen: It is pitch-black up my asshole, up my asshole, about 6 cm. up, there is a point, an erogenous zone, comparable to the clitoris or the penis head. That’s a fact. When this point is touched the vibrations transmit to the spine, the malleus, the stirrups and listen: The asshole is dialectical, the asshole is a dead man’s flower, a dead woman’s flower, the asshole is a fugue, a theme with variations; feelings on the other hand; frogs, mothers, riding instructors and feelings, they are the same old story, suck my plot.
A body
‘Huden…’ presents this figure named Bjørn, this persona who experiences in reality an array of confusing ‘realities’, that of a sexual being, a victim (of himself), an offender, an identity(?), where the language and the narration join in in a mix of stream-of-consciousness, repetitions, fragmented sentences and scattered punctuation to convey a sense of loss and confusion, shifting the mood and POV’s every which way. There is ample reference to the corporeity of existence, the anatomy, bodily functions, and how emotions and sensations affect the body. The body has long held a strange position; it is both the most real and physical we can think of, and at the same time because/in spite of its obvious and common everyday functions it is constantly embellished, observed and scrutinized from a distance or functioning as a satirical/comical input to check our masked appearance. But in a lot of more recent works, the body is incorporated at a very hands-on level – the shit, pee and puke, reactions to external and internal factors that set off a chain effect that, although it is a very felt thing, we take for granted and with it the emotions, the mind that belongs to it. When you eat, you shit, and sometimes it hurts (depending on how much chili you had the day before). When you cry nonstop for 45 minutes, you get dehydrated and a headache to boot. And the works I am referring to – ‘Huden…’ being an example – don’t necessarily incorporate the body because of fascination of the grotesque or comical input, but because it IS, and when it is, what and how do you do with it? In stead of spending time distancing ourselves from our skin, our blood and teeth, these works spend time incorporate it in the gorges of fiction. A very complex process because both the body and mind seem to constantly resist the being, moving forward and regressing all at the same time.
Of course, I could choose to focus on the massive amount of sexuality, sex (actions and thoughts) and what that means to societal evolution. I could also focus on the character and his relation/resemblance to the Author, is the author dead or very much alive? I could even focus on the symbolic effect of putting pictures, and at that in the dead center of the book, possibly as a form of legitimizing the linkage to reality or precisely to fuck with the whole notion that a photo would legitimize anything as real. All those aspects are fascinating for its own chain of thought. But when it comes down to it I keep coming back to the circular motion of mind and body towards memory and reality.
Others said:
If you forgot your book, your mp3-player, your smartphone, your laptop, your magazine, in conclusion yourself, on the Copenhagen Metro there is always an alternative solution to staring at the punch-date on your ticket coupon ’til you go blind. As proponents of happy, smiley customers (adding a bit of branding techniques inspired by the bastard of humanities ideology) the Metro company is kind enough to include literature as one of their services starting in the dark and wet hours of November (who even likes November, it’s the middle child of blah and irk) – I do apologize for the now apparent, even to me, snarly tone. I don’t know where it came from, I promised myself to be positive. Anyways, the Metro Company, in cooperation with Subway Letteratura, has put up a cardboard box (called Literary Jukeboxes) filled with 13 young authored, contest-won stories at the metro stations, under the spiffy name Metro Literature. The goal, as is written on Metro Literature’s webpage, is to “promote the creation and reading of high quality literature by circulating the Jukeboxes and other means and events.” What those other means and events are, is unclear to me at this point, but they also state that response has been overwhelming, and this project will give both young authors a forum for presenting works, and readers the insight in the “latest trends of prose and poetry.” I don’t find it surprising that there is a heavy response to a contest; people love contests, authors need outlets, and it is an exciting way for young people to live out their fantasies in the search of their own identity. And yay for that, and yay for fantasy and identity searches.
However, I chose to remain skeptical for a little while of the project itself, because I have a problem with the believability of the sender and applicability of intention. Granted, for the contest itself there has been a jury set up of authors, a translator, a graphic designer, a literary agent and a publisher. But communication-wise the sender is after all still a transportation service, not even close, in my mind, to a cultural intermediary, and there are just so many easy ways to shoot this “we-wanna-be-part-of-the-trendsetters-with-our-innovative-approaches-to-culture”-ideology down. I love public transportation, it’s a good service in itself, and I am all for the notion of interactive spaces, where urban life shows itself as a living organism. I just think there are fine examples of circumventing the traditional route in public spaces for texts and authors, whose innovative playfulness shows plentiful these days without playing into the hands of metro companies and McDonald’s joints. It causes unnecessary muddling of communication lines and in some cases reception-fatigue. It will come to no surprise that I don’t think it should be in the hands of these companies – not to say they should be excluded, it just doesn’t seem to be a cooperation of the creative and economic forces, more like the latter acting as patron, 14th century style, to the former which gives me the shingles. I will say about the participants in the Metro Literature project that the writing in itself is not bad as such in the pamphlets I’ve read – I just think it is a shame that their stories are placed in a transitory setting with a dubious co-sender, where their contribution becomes more of a read, throwaway and non-contemplatory contribution in urbanity’s many visual and textual offers. And the texts don’t question their place or role in this setting or themselves as texts, so in reality they are merely reproducing the chain of recyclable written material which is lost in and to the crowd immediately after publication. Maybe that also explains my fault in the matter – I can’t transcend the setting/sender.
In contrast to this project there is a project called Ordskælv! It is inspired by and draws information from author Dave Eggers‘ non-profit project in San Francisco, 826 Valencia, and has been initiated by local organization Hygge Factory, organized by the local library and school with support from different other institutions, including The Ministry of Culture. Ordskælv! encouraged young people from 2200 Nørrebro (Copenhagen) to write and illustrate their own stories in 2200 words – performing in essence a collective conceptual work – and in 2010 they published their writings in a book called ’2200 N – orakler, shawarmaer og bristede fordomme’ (2200 N – oracles, shawarma’s and burst prejudice’). The book is a chance for youths in Nørrebro to use their creative talent in telling their story and show others the plethora of lifestyles and -choices that Nørrebro has to offer when, for the most part, Nørrebro is branded as a troubled part of Copenhagen. Hygge Factory has continued this work in Ordskælv! 2012, where youths write essays about losing a loved one and will be publishing their works in cooperation with artists who will illustrate each writer’s essay in March. As it is a project originating in, and funded by, institutions such as libraries and schools, we must not forget that there is a matter of learning curve to be included in the success criteria. But I would nonetheless deem this to be a far favorable milieu for creative exercise and supportive community than the usual notion of writers in their ivory towers.
The participants make all decisions on layout and content with the help of volunteers who offer a wide field of competences to the youths, from creative writing, to publishing. As such they are actively involved in the collective process, which appeals to me greatly, and they get a sense of ownership that transcends any isolated participation as I would imagine the Metro competition has been.
So up to this last month of 2011 I managed to read quite a lot of books – more than usual I would say. To be quite frank, I upped up my reading because I noticed that my “Goodreads reading challenge 2011″ in the latter half of this year was not progressing so well, and I was constantly being reminded I was behind (30 % behind, 5 books behind, come on, you can do it). And since I can’t really count in all the fan fiction I’ve been reading lately (no ISBN or official stamp, so it doesn’t exist), I can’t let it appear as if I’ve been dillydallying since september, can I? Grrrrrr, so being of the ancestry that I am I wasn’t going to lose to a html-code, no sir!!!
So it turns out I managed to squeeze in a couple of non-fan fiction literature in including Danish new releases and some golden oldies.
’MuhameDANEREN’ by Tarek Omar. The collection of stories in the book all revolve around immigrants in Denmark, and I would dare say the idea is to show a wide range of ways newcomers and children of newcomers assimilate, integrate, and disseminate into Danish society + the problems that might arise when children and their parents are caught between two worlds they don’t know how to fuse together. It was an interesting read, but a little too light for my taste. Although, maybe because I found some sections too digestible, a couple of the inner-perspective descriptions actually touched me deeply. For instance, there is a story about a boy who is really bothered or embarrassed by his mother to the point of annoyance when he is out in public with her, because she doesn’t act like the other moms and doesn’t know the specific Danish customs. The relationship between mother and son, the latter almost torturing the former at one point, has a very interesting and captivating narrative. I would like to read more of this story (maybe I’ll write it myself, *wink*wink*)
’Ukulele-Jam’ by Alen Mešković. Mešković’s debut novel about a Bosnian boy (Miki) and his parents who are forced to flee their hometown from the Serbs and setting up in a run-down resort hotel where they live alongside other refugees – both Croatians and Bosnians – and in the midst of the coming-and-goings of tourists. The last Miki has heard of his older brother and hero, Neno, is that he is in a Serbian work camp, but to his and his parents’ distress they don’t know anything for sure. And they wait and wait, for news of Neno’s safety, for the war to end, to be able to go on with life, which, as Mešković does a great job of narrating, is at a stand-still. The general rules don’t apply here and the phrase beggars can’t be choosers is a tragic slap in the face, when Miki can’t get into the education due to administrative and funding issues. So he is forced to seek alternatives, both in order to make something out of himself so he can provide, but also because he is restless, he doesn’t want to follow his dad’s strategy sitting by the radio listening to the course of conflict and not being able to do anything about it. The language imitates the situation; a mix of serious, frustrating, to the point and in your face. It touches upon something you rarely come across when talking about the ‘ordinary’ people caught in conflict: everything that happens after they’ve been ripped away from home, with an onwards-upwards attitude.
’Huden er det elastiske hylster der omgiver hele legemet’ by Bjørn Rasmussen. I can say without hesitation that this is my read of the year, hands down! It’s raw, passionate, gut-wrenching prose, an overdose of language and imagery. I can’t do it justice in this type of list-post, so it might sneak itself in on a singles post later on when I have better time to present it in full. But I saw, and it was good, leave it at that.
‘The snows of Kilimanjaro’ by Ernest Hemingway. Regrettably, I did not not do Hemingway justice at first. I had read ‘A Farewell to Arms’ previously and was neither amused or impressed by it. Chalk it up to the cynically low levels of tolerance for human idiocy in war on my part, but it did not catch my imagination and its cliché characters made my skin crawl the way I could imagine the thought of reading ‘Jane Eyre’ would send some anti-19th century gothic horror readers flying right of the hinge. “Rah-rah I’m a man, rah-rah war is hard, you die so what. Rah-rah, come nurse, whom I love because you have taken care of me and because in time’s of war the sexes really connect on other levels, let’s go to a different country and escape this retched century.” Ok, ok, no need to butcher it anymore, suffice to say – not impressed. The writings in ‘… Kilimanjaro’ was better for me and it was more of a ‘Great American land exploration’ novel, and there was more emphasis on descriptive settings and panoramic views set with close dialogue. Small windows into America of the past – of course with the main story being set on a safari trip by the foot of Kilimanjaro.
‘Den døde mand’ by Hans Scherfig. This little number was actually quite an amusing read. The Danish satirist Scherfig (1905-1979) is known for many works, one of my favorite being ‘Det forsømte forår’ (Stolen Spring), and Frydenholm and Den forsvundne fuldmægtig (The missing head clerk). ‘The dead man’ is a short story about the flaky, avant-garde and ever-drunk artiste Hakon Brand who all of a sudden does a 180 and becomes an abstainer and town portrait painter shortly after a personally shocking incident involving his former landlady and the fellow renter, and finally ending up dead in Italy on his honeymoon. The story is told by a narrator who moves in the artist circles in Copenhagen and presents himself, in lieu of his claim to tell the real truth of Hakon Brand’s fate in the introductory pages, to be quite the reliable, trustworthy source. He is also the only person Brand trusts with a recount of the events that have shocked him to the core. Hakon Brand on the other hand is quite a mouthful and not a liked mouthful by the circle around him in his drunken haze. But when he goes through a transition and ends up becoming a paid artist for the rich upper class – painting, as the narrator so fittingly judges, the worst he’s ever painted – he gains popularity and a wife. But the events he tries to flee keep on haunting him. The story is packed with a mystery of gothic horror proportions, plenty of satirical wit and all the socio-critical punch that Scherfig is famous for. Fast, but compact, read that leaves a mark on your consciousness if you let it.
‘Brahmadellarnir’ by Jóanes Nielsen. Ok, this one ties with the read of the year by B. Rasmussen – I loved it, and it gets a singles post too when I have the time! As witnesses can testify to, I could not put this novel down for the life of me. Once I started to read I was so caught up in the story, the narration, the mood and setting that I simply could not focus on other life sustainable things such as sustenance and a routine toilet check or two. It is a ‘Great Generation-Historical’-novel set on the Faroe Islands beginning with the contemporary grave-pissing character Eigil Tvibur and skipping back to the 18th century to tell the story of the Brahmadells, in particular Tóvó, a young boy who experiences the tragic loss of his father to an epidemic of measles and his mother going insane. Again, I want to delve much further into the story and the language in another post, so I will close this one with a: HELL YEAH!
I went to a seminar called “Bogbranchens udfordringer” (Challenges in the publishing industry) in October. The seminar was arranged by BogMarkedet and held at Gyldendal. As well as representatives of book sellers and publishers, BogMarkedet had invited scholars John B. Thompson and Lisbeth Worsøe-Schmidt to speak at the seminar. The title of this post refers to a statement by John B. Thompson, author of recently published “Merchants of Culture – The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century”. Thompson has done extensive research in order to map out the general interest publishing industry as it stands in the US and UK from agents to publishers including the different challenges the whole industry faces in the digital age. The following is a recount of the presentations by Thompson, Worsøe-Schmidt and a quick run-over of the panel debate.
The logic of the field – Thompson’s presentation
Using Bourdieu’s notion of capital and interviewing over 280 people in the business Thompson has looked at the publishing field as a structured space of power with linguistic and spatial boundaries to find the certain “logic of the field”.
General interest publishing in the US/UK has undergone three major changes since the 1960′s up until today:
1) there has been a massive growth in retail chains from the 60′s to 80′s – mall stores to super bookstores. This has led to a decline in independent book sellers, and shifts in ways books are stocked and sold.
2) the rise of the specific literary agents – the super agent who comes from the outside and doesn’t follow the standard protocol or ethics held by previous arrangements.
3) the emergence of publishing corporations. In the US and UK there are 4-5 major ones, and the top 4 in the US stand for 40 % of all sales while in the UK they stand for 50 % of all sales.
SHAPE OF FIELD TRADE PUBLISHING
The development has led to a polarization of the field, making it very hard to be in the middle. Indie press is a world in its own, as they help each other out, and freelance rates differ when it comes to large and indie presses. Medium presses are worse off because it is harder to get financial gain and keep successful writers. They don’t get favors, such as discounted rates by freelancers, and don’t have much to fall back on if they strike out with an investment. At the same time the market is more and more preoccupied with handling big books – which according to Thompson leads to stagnation in the market. Fewer books are published and big books replace mid-list books. Now, big books are not the same as bestsellers, they are the hoped-for bestsellers publishers are looking for – Thompson says these books exist in the ‘space of the possible’ which is a buzz-creator. Furthermore half of them lose money, and only one in 10 make a difference in revenue.
There is a difference in how the logic of the field plays out in the US and the UK. In the US publishers have to offer same discount to the alike fields of retailers, a deal set out by the Robinson Patman Act, while UK retailers can sell books at any rate they like, and give discounts as they deem necessary. This means that publishers are in the middle between agents and retailers.
John B. Thompson
Key challenges
Thompson closed his presentation by pointing out three challenges affecting the field of publishing:
1) short-termism. Great effort and time goes into finding the closing-gap book. Older authors are marooned by a business that previously embraced them. They move to small presses or more radically, change their names. The industry is not good at cultivating long-term relationships.
2) Diversity. Thompson doesn’t think it is a simple question of yes or no. Growth and multiple titles could indicate diversity. But the distinction is important: there are two types of diversity; diversity in outputs vs. diversity in marketplace. It is a winner-takes-more-market.
3) Digital revolution. E-book sales are 10 % of trade book revenues in 2010. While many had envisaged that academic books would reign in the field of digital publishing it turned out to be romance and crime fiction that are the popular genres in the e-book market. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are key players, and publishers are worried about the power of Amazon. The e-book market is a struggle over price deflation and Amazon is losing money because they want to drive sales their way and monopolize the market with their own devices. When John Sargent at MacMillan pushed the agency model and opposed the discount model Amazon replied by turning of the buy-buttons on all MacMillan books, and MacMillan and Amazon went into a standoff. Amazon later backed down and reversed the “embargo” on MacMillan books at Amazon.
___________________________________
After the presentation by Thompson scholar Lisbeth Worsøe-Schmidt from the IVA (Royal School of Library and Information Science) presented her take on the Danish market.
Lisbeth Worsøe-Schmidt
The book trade at the postmodern wall
LWS led off by stating that the Danish business sector is very closed, making it very hard for researchers to analyze and help the publishing field. And according to Lisbeth Worsøe-Schmidt the field needs help, and it requires a community. The Danish publishing industry is a small one with great challenges and is first and foremost limited by language (as world languages go, Danish is in the minorities). Internal rules of publishing have gone untouched until the start of 2001 and in the small period of 10 years the business is converting into a new type of marked. Neither the industry or society in general were prepared for it. Development has shown that the Danish market can’t handle the process on its own, so in order for it to be successful change needs to be a culture-political project.
According to LWS the confluence of three considerations indicates that the Danish publishing industry is in a crisis:
1) The business is in the process of going modern with the deregulation of prices.
2) There is a financial crisis and the audience is turning from public to private.
3) The book trade has hit a postmodern wall bigger than mere technological changes.
LWS explains that the market has undergone a changed from pre-modern into modern and is now facing the postmodern wall:
Interest in the pre-modern was in content, and material comes second. The market was simple, lucid. The modern market is characterized by being a goods market. Quantity takes precedence over quality. This does not mean quality is out, but true emphasis is on quantity.
When we get to the postmodern marked there is a shift in values. Parts of the pre-modern undergoes a renaissance and audiences become more interested in quality. On the other hand the complex marked goes into a hypercomplex marked and the marked structures are impossible to grasp, both from the inside and outside making the perspective fragmented. This leads to a questioning of the industry’s function. The problem is not getting the items, but sorting through the immense amounts of them and in the process creating value. In the strictest sense buyers don’t need editors or bookshops – so in order to reclaim a place in the chain the industry needs to find out what its top-qualification validating its existence is. In stead of holding on to the values of a commercial market, the value of qualification in publishing goes to quality. In the modern market authority and power lay with the expert, but in the postmodern the power has shifted to the audience. Focusing on profit has neglected the struggle between the audience and the business and miscommunication. The Danish publishing industry needs to make clear to its consumers that the seemingly high price is connected not so much to production costs as the amount of editing hours and various steps in profiling books.
LWS goes on to say that independent bookstores are cultural intermediaries, not market connoisseurs. The logic is that emphasis is on quality and not quantity. Her advice to the industry is to focus more on strategic communication, getting to know an audience and most important the industry itself. Expanding and developing competences and not shying away from using knowledge to stand out in the crowd.
Panel debate with bookstore owners and publishers
After the two presentations a panel of four representatives (two from bookshops and two publishers) talked about their take on Danish publishing today. All were pretty much unanimous that the industry needed to go all out on quality and that the industry needed a proper trade organization in order to create a framework and avoiding confusions and mixed signaling from one end to the other. The two bookshop representatives criticized the development that had included supermarkets into the fold, making it very hard if not unfair to compete with, and changing the direction of the book market into volume and bestsellerism. Supermarkets are easy, but they demand high discounts. The conclusion is that the whole of the market needs to start talking with another if publishing is to survive.
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