Drive Time - Premier Radio

I'll be on Premier Radio today just after 4pm for the Review Show. We'll be talking about:

1) Ishmael's Songs and Hymns.
2) Soul Food For Mums - Lucinda van der Hart and Anna France-Williams.
3) Soul Survivor - live worship from Kingsway.

Nijinsky and Diaghilev

How exciting: A new play about Nijinsky and Diaghilev called Rattigan’s Nijinsky. Rattigan is said to have described the dancer and impresario as "the two most famous lovers since Romeo and Juliet”. According to the piece in yesterday's Indie, Rattigan was blackmailed by Nijinsky's widow, Romala Nikinsky, into withdrawing a screenplay commissioned by the BBC in 1974 and Nicholas Wright’s new play explores this. Journalist Paul Taylor wonders why Rattigan, who had never written openly about gay male relationships before, decided he would write about Nijinsky and Diaghilev when Romala was still alive, adding (in brackets) that “(since her husband's death, Romola had somehow managed to become both intensely homophobic and a practising lesbian)”. I wonder if Rattigan knew that (it’s not that uncommon an occurrence) and, if so, exactly what it was that he knew about her and how she would react to his script?

La Teta Asustada

Ha qualcuno visto il film La Teta Asustada ? Non avevo mai sentito di questo film fino alla settimana scorsa quando lo vedevo in un cinema tedesco. In tedesco si chiama Eine Perle Ewigkeit ed in inglese The Milk Of Sorrow (non sono traduzioni l’uno dell’ altro).

Che fortissimo questo film. Claudia Llosa (il direttore) rende una bellezza triste di un pease che non conosco - Peru. E Magaly Solier (chi interpreta Fausta – la protagonista) e’ meravigliosa. Un film profondo. C’era una donna nel cinema che doveva uscire perche non poteva risparare bene dopo comincava la storia trista di Fausta – una ragazza che fosse nato dopo il stupro della sua mamma durante il terrismo all’inzio degli anni ottanta. Pensando di proteggersi contro lo stesso destino, Fausta porta una patata dentro il suo sesso che le causa tanti problemi medicali e psicologici. La trama del film riguarda la morta della mamma di Fausta e la determinazione di Fausta a pagare per la sua sepoltura e portarla al suo villaggio ancestrale. Fausta prende un lavoro come domestica per una pianista chi ha abbastanza soldi e abbastanza collera a gettare un pianoforte fuori della sua finestra se le cose non vanno come vuole. Quando la pianista sente Fausta cantando, le dice che possa avere una perla dalla sua collana ogni volta che canti. Ma la pianista rompa quest’ accordo con Fausta. Lei esegue una canzone di Fausta davanti un teatro pieno di gente, senza chiedando Fausta per la sua permissione. « Tutto Lima era li, » la pianista dice nel tassi dopo la rappresentazione. Fausta, viso orgoglioso, dice, « Te e’ piacuto, no?» La pianista ordina Fausta di uscire della macchina.

Da questo punto, succedono alcune cose inspiegabili.

Fausta ritorna alla casa della pianista e trova le sue parle nella sua camera di letto. Le trova per terra. Ma perche erano li ? Dove era la pianista ? E cosa succede quando la pianista vedeva che non c’erano piu’?

Dopo questo, Fausta sveine nella strada a causa della sua maladia (la patata). Il giardinere di casa della pianista (un amico di Fausta) la trova per strada. Ma come sapeva che era la? Lei stava seguendo o qualcuno gli diceva ? Una coincidenza?

Alla fine del film Fausta ha l’operazione di togliere la patata dal suo sesso e vediamola nel carro di suo zio, portando il corpo della sua mamma fuori Lima al suo paese ancestrale. Quando Fausta vede il mare nella distanza, scende dallo carro e porta il cadavere della sua mamma al di la’ del deserto verso il mare. Benche il suo cadavere sia stato imbalsamato e coperto, dovesse stato scomodissimo per Fausta a portarla cosi dopo al meno un mese di decomporre. Per me questo era la giustapposizione ultima del film – l’imagine cinematografica del deserto, del mare, di Fausta e il suo fagotto sulla sua schiena (tutto quello che porta una bellezza triste) contro la realta’ (che non spieghero’ qua ma che potresti immaginare).

Literary Cliches

Since yesterday literary clichés have been bugging me. After reading Philip Hensher in the Telegraph today and listening to Martin Amis in the Guardian Book’s podcast yesterday, it seems that writing in a straightforward fashion risks being cliché. (Martin Amis: “Whenever a novelist writes ‘she rummaged in her handbag,’ this is dead freight.” Zadie Smith’s makes the same point, which I’ll return to in a minute.)

Here is Philip Hensher in the Telegraph (tweeted today) reviewing Tea Obreht’s novel The Tigger’s Wife:

And it suffers slightly from banality in the writing. The literary novel has its own dreaded clichés by now – “These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life” – to which Ms Obreht adds universal clichés – “Dobravka was a woman possessed”. Her editor might have told her not to use the expression “I thought to myself,” too.

I wonder if it will become cliché to write, for example, that she sat down and drank a cup of coffee? It’s an activity that many people do often. How else should writers describe it? One of the reasons Stieg Larsson’s books work so well is that the picture is clear: “He put down his coffee. He got up from the chair. He opened the door. He walked down the street.” (Those are paraphrases.)

Going back to Zadie Smith and her 2007 essay "Fail Better":

“With a cliche you have pandered to a shared understanding, you have taken a short-cut, you have re-presented what was pleasing and familiar rather than risked what was true and strange. It is an aesthetic and an ethical failure: to put it very simply, you have not told the truth. When writers admit to failures they like to admit to the smallest ones - for example, in each of my novels somebody "rummages in their purse" for something because I was too lazy and thoughtless and unawake to separate "purse" from its old, persistent friend "rummage". To rummage through a purse is to sleepwalk through a sentence.”

Alternatives are not suggested. Perhaps there is a fear that they too might become clichés? The key here is “true and strange”. A writer might be describing a scene that is true and strange, but reaching for the thesaurus won’t necessarily help a writer to communicate the event’s truthfulness or strangeness. I am not arguing for novels full of aphorisms and empty clichés; I am questioning whether we will see writers dressing up scenes or ideas with fancy language.

Are we far away from reading that “he said” has become a literary cliché?

The Review

I’ll be on Premier Radio Drive Time Review today at 4pm. We’ll be reviewing:

1) Novel: Blue Freedom by Sandra Peut. (But don’t read that: read this – The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe.)

2) Album: Love Shines Through by Tim Hughes.

3) Social Media: Hisbook.

No self-help books this time. Phew.

Middle East - Objective Reporting?

Well done to the BBC for its objective reporting of the border clashes in the Middle East on Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning. John Humphrys reported that there was great anger among Palestinians in the Middle East over how Israel reacted when Palestinian demonstrators massed on Israel’s borders yesterday: twelve were shot dead and many more were injured. The demonstrations were timed to mark the 63rd anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. Some of the demonstrators crossed the border into Israel and some of the demonstrators were throwing stones. We also learned from an interview included in the BBC’s report that Lebanese forces also opened fire.

By comparison, other reports have referred only to Nakba Day with no mention Yom Ha'atzmaut.

This is the Guardian:

Demonstrators commemorating Nakba day, marking the 1948 war in which hundreds of thousands of people became refugees after being forced out of their homes, were met with live gunfire, rubber bullets, stun grenades and teargas.

And here is how it should have been done (from The Times):

During protests to mark the 63rd anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, described by Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, unprecedented numbers turned out at the three hostile frontiers in scenes that quickly turned to carnage.

Gay and Lesbian Farmers

I've written an article about gay farmers for Guardian CIF. If you are a gay or lesbian farmer, you might be interested in this:

Christians are not generally known for breaking new ground when it comes to gay rights; they're usually struggling to catch up. Take a look back at this year for example: Christian B&B owners discriminating against a gay couple, Pentecostal foster parents insisting on being allowed to teach that homosexuality is morally wrong and continuing Christian resistance to gay marriage. Who would have thought that a helpline set up to support gay farmers was run by a Christian chaplain? But that's exactly what's happened.

Keith Ineson is an ex-farmer who now works as a chaplain for Churches Together in Cheshire. He extended the remit of his chaplaincy after handling more than one case of a farmer suffering from suicidal thoughts because he felt unable to come out as gay. Within six months of launching the dedicated helpline at the end of 2009, Ineson had received 52 calls – mostly from gay farmers over 50, some of whom were single, and all of whom felt imprisoned, thinking that they were the only gay farmer around. The concern is that if Ineson stopped work tomorrow, the helpline would stop with him: there is a need for Christians with rural knowledge and an understanding of gay issues to get involved in the work Keith is doing.

For the full article, see here.