Posts By Penciltwister
Telling stories
I have started to read Karen Blixen’s Seven Gothic Tales and I am really liking it. The first story ‘Roads around Pisa’ reminded me a lot of Don Quixote and how Cervantes playfully deals with sexuality and misconceptions that invite a reconsideration/reaffirmation of the cultural meaning of gender. There is an awful lot of reflection about women and their stand in life in Blixen’s tales. It is really fascinating to read when most of it narrates through the characters of men, and that which is narrated by women is done with regards to their station within the realms of society’s norm. The seven tales from the title are interspersed with many, many tales that use this power of narration to get their story out.
I am a firm believer in the idea that we sculpt our world through narration. The stories we choose to tell are our takes on reality as we perceive it, or in some cases how we challenge it. We accept and join in on some narrations, while we reject and replace others and in doing so we create meaning for ourselves. The characters of Karen Blixen are all trying to communicate their knowledge or view of the world through their tales. There are those in her character-base who create stories that are double-edged, recounting past experiences with present knowledge (older, wiser attitude) while forming their explanation by present outlook. And then there are stories that attempt to incite future action, stories that distress, stories that bring joy and stories that contemplate life’s fickle nature.
Karen Blixen - Syv Fantastiske Fortællinger
Narration has a great power over humans. We relate to each other when we tell tales and listen to stories of others. We invite others to see what we see and use stories to understand others, and mostly ourselves. Telling stories is a very common pastime in my family (both immediate and extended). There are some great storytellers among them that capture their audience with exhilarating stories, and it is of no matter how often we have heard them. It is not so much the story per se, as the setting, the way the story is being told and the feelings that the storytellers convey that have an effect on the listener. Without being told to ‘laugh here’, ‘cry here’, or ‘be shocked here’ you use all of your sociocultural learned skills on picking up signs and identifiable markers.
I guess this inclination towards stories and narration in my family has been naturally conveyed into the wonderful world of literature for me. I feel at home in processing stories and using my skills to look at a text not as an inanimate object that is merely to be read or seen, but a living creation always up for interpretation and always experienced by the next listener/reader in line.
Summertime
As of yesterday I have completed my first year of MA in Comparative Literature! And luckily the semester ended on a high, so I am mighty pleased 🙂
I woke up at 5.20 am yesterday, and could have ripped my pillow to pieces because I wasn’t scheduled to give my presentation until 1.30 pm!! So I had to figure out a way of using up seven useless hours without succumbing to my compulsory need for changing the presentation, adding to it or chucking it in the bin. I was actually kind of proud of my study, but there is always the nagging little voice, “what if I just tweak this, or focus on that… did I explain this well enough or did I get it wrong???”
FINALLY the hour had come (well, as always with a ten minute delay), and I walk in the room where months of studying, reading, writing, thinking and theorizing will either pay off or swish out of my head. In my case the former won over the latter and I walked out of there with a rush I so love when it comes to studying and exams. It is a unique feeling – sometimes a bit anticlimactic, but when you get it right, you get it right!!
So I had a celebratory beer with my boyfriend, and got a bit tipsy as the combo between no breakfast and the adrenaline that had buzzed in my body for nearly 12 hours straight collided with the alcohol. 🙂
So, today is the first day of my summer vacation, and in honor of the buzz I am still on (something like DiCaprio’s ‘I’m the king of the world’ exclamation – complete with the absolutely ridiculous, and toe-cringing, woohoo) I will be embarking on a long list of postponed books, that for too long have yearned for my attention, yes babies momma’s comin’ 😀
I think I shall start with Karen Blixen’s ‘Seven Gothic Tales’, and then work my way through the books, at the rate and manner befitted of their station.
Oh, and I finished Frankenstein on the e-reader two days ago. I don’t really know what to say. I think the modern jaded consciousness will never be as shocked or thrilled as Mary Shelley’s contemporary readers would have been. It is a good read considering the philosophy behind it, but the style of language is too rigid and stilted for me to get behind the text and lose myself in the misery. ‘American Psycho’ on the other hand, now there is a different story!
Plus, I will not be investing in an e-reader of the sorts I tried out, sticking to my books for now. But I really want to try another e-reader, because I am sure that there is good in these things, if only for the sake of the trees…
Writers and booze
Why is it, that in order to be a writer of any standard above boring, you have to have a serious relationship with some vice that is only cool by reason of your literary skills? Or your characters must?
Hunter Thompson, for instance, advocated the absolute surrender to alcoholic beverages and drugs in order to facilitate creative flow. He was under the serious impression that the day he gave up booze and drugs, he was finished as a writer. He was a myth long before he offed himself, but received a revival in popular culture with Johnny Depp’s interpretation of him in ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’.
And then we have the whole scene of crime fiction USA, dating from the 20s and 30s, where the harder the detective, the more he was liqueured up. Off course this fascination most probably stems from the whole prohibition era, and indulgence in illegal substances have always been of more appeal than your average cup of coffee. Raymond Chandler with his protagonist, Philip Marlowe, sink down one bourbon-gin-whiskey after another, get caught up in femmes fatales (another addiction that is life threatening) and shoot their way out of trouble. Guns, women, alcohol, what more can a life-fleeing writer desire?
Drinks and writers
Does literary creativity of the good kind stem from these liquid brave-makers? Or is the gift of creativity so painful that it must be alleviated by any kind of mind-droning substance, that can move the responsibility of the outcome away from the writer and put it in a realm of its very own?
My favorite drinks are Strawberry Frozen Daquiry, Cuba Libre and Mojito. I wonder what strange concoction of writer I will turn out to be…
The E-reader II
I couldn’t keep my fingers out of the cookie jar, or rather the e-reader bag, after the post yesterday. I figured I had earned myself a treat since I, unwillingly and with no quarter, found myself locked inside my apartment for over a week writing papers and reading all there is to know about modern Chinese literature from a historical p.o.v. So I turned the reader on and selected ‘Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus’ as my test-dummy. It is 576 pages long in this reader, and I managed to read about 75 pages before I fell asleep; glasses incessantly poking the corner of my eye, and with animal instinct firmly gripping the reader.
The experience I have had with an e-reader has so far been a bit ‘bleh’. Conservative as I am, I don’t associate the joy of reading with button-pushing, hard steel (or cheap plastic) covers and blinking screens imitating a page turn. And so many buttons to press. Oddly it seems more fast-paced to read a book on an e-reader than it is when reading the paper version. It is if the connotations of bigger (or smaller, since that now is a plus), faster and better associated with electronics these days translates onto my reading habits, whereas with the physical books I go through a whole other motion when reading. I guess it is a sensory thing, and all I have to do is redirect my synapses. I mean, I used to hate Parmesan cheese, but now I love it. How hard can it be to love an electronic device that, if you use logic instead of sentimentality, could save tons of forest from being cut down, just because I have to settle my fix of literary cravings? I should applaud the progress and efficiency.
Foto: Scanpix/AFP/Jody Amiet
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From http://www.barcode-labels.com/pageelec.htm
I will say this in defense of the e-reader: usually when I fall asleep with a book in my hand I crease the cover, lose orientation regarding what page I am on, and I have even torn a page out due to disrespect of gravitational laws. But yesternight there was no such fret. When I woke up this morning, I was on the exact page I fell asleep at and there was no harm done to the cover.
Have you read a book or paper on an e-reader? What did you think?
The e-reader
A whopping 17 days since my last entry just shows how hard I have worked on my exams 🙂 And with this steaming weather it is an accomplishment in itself to lock oneself up inside.
But since I now only have to edit my 20+ pages paper on ‘Women and Sexuality in literature in China – from the 1920s to The Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art in 1942’ (please feel free to suggest a better title :)) before Monday, and read up on the 1000 pages for my oral exam in Strategic Communication on the 14th, I thought I could indulge myself with a little post.
1. For a little while now a little bag has lain on my sofa table that I brought home with me from my last library visit. But since I have been so occupied I have not dared look into it, because I know it would set everything else on pause. Inside the bag is an e-reader, an honest to god e-reader! Going from a person who thought it an offense to put books on audio, to getting exited about a leather-bound ‘fake’ book, I have now succumb to the electronic literary world. It is a Sony e-reader, Portable Reader System – PRS-505 (stupid name), and it is now loaded with 71 books, so I’ll have plenty of options once I get cracking on this baby.
E-reader
E-reader menu
The good thing is that after the 14th, me and my e-reader will be surgically fixed to each other; the bath, beach, bus, you name it, we’ll be there; together. The bad thing about the situation is that I only have it until the 26th of this month (stupid library regulations). I’m not really sure I will get any feel for e-readers in so short a period.
2. I have bought some new books (you don’t say! Shocker…). Which makes the total count of books I have scheduled to read in my summer vacation; drumroll please…. 32!
4th latest book I have bought – The Time Traveler’s Wife
It will be interesting to see just how many books I can cram into my bags when going to the Faroes – 20 kg allowed on the plane, so if I shave everything else to a bare minimum, then maybe 10 books. Then again, I could take carry-on worth 5 kg, that’s easily 4 books + computer. All I know is that this is going to be the best vacation ever! Since there hardly ever is any kind of weather on the Faroes which would be appealing to anyone to spend a whole day out in, I can slump into my mother’s cozy red chair, guiltless for not getting my 30 min. of fresh air pr.day. All’s I need is some tea and the occasional food drive by.
So, anticipating nothing less than a rocking summer, me and my books wish you a happy weekend and a glorious summer vacation (for those where this is applicable, for the rest; huh? No summer vacation?)
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