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| Myth appropriation Owen Sheers talks to Sarah Crown about love, war and cruelty to animals in White Ravens, his modern re-telling of one of the 11 stories of the Welsh myth cycle, the MabinogionSarah CrownAndy Gallagher feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin Jay Parini shudders at the thought of President PalinSarah Palin is a figure of fun on the American left, easily lampooned as a know-nothing, gun-toting ex-beauty queen who loves God and the red, white and blue above pretty much anything else except for Todd, her macho husband, who races snowmobiles across the Alaskan tundra. To the American right, she represents family values and a nostalgic return trip to the Reagan era, when America "stood tall". Her folksiness strikes them as refreshing.I was as eager to read Going Rogue as any of the 300,000 people who bought it on its first day out in the US: could this woman be as foolish as she seemed during the campaign? Certainly her television interviews with Katie Couric on CBS put the nails in her coffin. She appeared shockingly ignorant of policy matters, and could recall the names of no newspapers that she read with any regularity. Her chief claim to fame in international affairs was a view of Russia from the shores of Alaska. (You can actually swim to Russia from Alaska, she tells us in her new book, as if this somehow mattered.)Quick to see their problem, the McCain people did their best to make sure the Alaskan governor had as little contact with the press as possible. It got so bad, Palin informs us now, that a couple of times she had a friend in Alaska "track down phone numbers for me, and I snuck in calls to folks like Rush Limbaugh" and other rightwing media pals. Even on her own campaign jet, her handlers refused to let her talk with reporters at the back of the plane. "No! Absolutely not – block her if she tries to go back!" they cried.To bolster his right flank and attract women voters, John McCain had cynically opted for a running mate who was, by any stretch of the imagination, unqualified for a position a heartbeat away from the presidency. The reality of Palin seems to have taken him by surprise.Certainly the "real" Palin shines through her memoir, which seeks to position her for a run at the presidency in 2012. Let's give her credit where it's due. She quite properly defends her right to run for public office without sacrificing her role as a mother. Referring to the fact that another woman (a federal judge) criticised her because she often held her Downs syndrome baby while campaigning, she writes bravely: "I'm a mom. He's my baby. Who is this woman to say I cannot hold my baby in public? No one told me that running for office means a woman candidate has to switch off her maternal instincts and hide her children from view. If that's required, then count me out."Part of Palin's appeal lies in her frankness as well as a fierce consistency. In choosing to give birth to her last child (she knew well in advance that he had Downs syndrome), she stuck by her deeply rooted principles. Similarly, as governor of Alaska, she didn't cave in to her own faction on the matter of benefits for same-sex couples. She stood firm, explaining that the law required her to support these benefits, even though she personally disapproved of them. "As governor, I meant to follow the law," she writes. There is something admirable in that.Yet Palin often seems petty as well as mean-spirited. For instance, she refers to one of her political opponents in Alaska as "a wealthy, effete young chap" who did his best to defeat her. She puts him down with hardly a flicker of regret: "He would go on to host a short-lived radio show while blogging throughout the day, all of which were major steps up from a previous job as our limo driver at Todd's cousin's wedding."In this vein Palin settles many scores, heaping scorn on her enemies in Alaska, in the media generally, and certainly the McCain camp, where everyone was apparently determined to silence her. The persistent bitterness of her tone is unappealing.The prose is gee-whiz folksy, with purple tinges now and then, as when she describes the setting of the Alaska state fair: "With the gray Talkeetna mountains in the distance and the first light covering of snow about to descend on Pioneer Peak, I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything smalltown America with rugged splashes of the last frontier." Palin's ghostwriter seems to be saying: "Look, Sarah! No hands!" (Buried in the voluminous acknowledgments section at the back of the book are hearty thanks to Lynn Vincent "for her indispensable help in getting the words on paper".)In a rambling final chapter, called "The Way Forward", Palin urges Americans to rush back to the simpler world of Reagan and his "morning in America". Like her hero, she prefers small government to big, except where the military is concerned. One can never have enough weapons or soldiers. Overall, there is little of substance here: Palin avoids talking about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan; says nothing on Israel and the Palestinians. Iran and North Korea fail to attract her attention.In Palin's snug and self-satisfied world, hockey and basketball matter more than global warming or the spread of nuclear weapons, and a man is judged by his vehicles. (She says of Todd, whom she met in high school: "Not only was he one of the only kids in town who owned his own ride – he owned two, the Mustang and a 1973 Ford F-150 long-bed pickup that he used to haul a pair of Polaris snowmachines.") In the course of more than 400 breathless pages, one learns enough to shudder at the thought of President Palin.Jay Parini's The Last Station will be published by Canongate in February.Sarah PalinPoliticsSocietyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Breakfast briefing: Amazon's author deal, and Microsoft's latest spots of bother • The publishing industry has got plenty of worries about the ebook market - just witness Simon & Schuster's decision last week to delay electronic publication of new titles by several months - but perhaps the biggest threat is now materialising: best-selling business author Stephen R Covey has signed an exclusive deal to let Amazon sell digital versions of two of his books, sidestepping the publishers completely. Covey, author of the massive The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has signed a year-long, experimental deal which should give him a higher cut of the profits and bypasses his publisher (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, Simon and Schuster).• Microsoft is in hot water after it was accused of stealing from Canadian startup Plurk. The service (think of it as a bit like a version of Twitter that's popular in Asia) claims that a new MSN China service, Juku, uses not only a very similar design - but the code too. "Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery," they wrote. "But blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world".• Oh, and if that wasn't enough... for several years, Microsoft has been making something called COFEE - a suite of forensic tools for law enforcement agents, that helps them grab encrypted or password-protected data. But a group of hackers have given the company a virtual wedgie by releasing a program that effectively makes COFEE redundant. It's not the biggest of deals, given that the tools themselves are not the most complex on the block, but it's not good news for Microsofties.• Oh yes, and just in case you didn't notice the absolute flood of promotion we did yesterday... the Guardian now has an iPhone app, with which owners of Apple's handset can get the news delivered in a nice little package. It took a while, but hopefully it's worth the wait and the price - £2.39 in the UK, and $3.99 in the US. Other countries should be coming soon.You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.Amazon.comEbooksPublishingMicrosoftSoftwareIntellectual propertyHackingLaw and technologyBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Extract from Beauty by Raphael Selbourne Winner of the 2009 Costa debut novel awardCosta book awardsFictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
The digested classic Vintage, £7.99The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine. I had written this sentence, destined to be the opening line of my memoirs, when something happened so horrible I cannot bring myself to describe it. I spoke of memoir. But I have no time for fine writing. I had intended to take myself away from the world and write a cookery book.How overwrought this opening now seems! How knowing the artifice! But this was the 70s, a decade when myth and Freudian allusion was sweeping through Bohemia, so perhaps I can be forgiven. And if my remarks about fine writing were too contrived even then – how happy I was to pick up the Booker Prize for my efforts – then do remember I was Prospero, desperate to abjure the magic of theatre for my hermitage by the sea, the sea.Today I have been swimming naked in the blessed Northern sea, the sea, diving from the cliff into the gentle waves, my body growing scales like a merman as I sported like a dolphin, before easing myself out of the mysterious deep, my fingers clawing at the rocks for purchase. I'm sorry. I'm doing it again. I don't seem to be able to help myself. Melodrama and opportunist symbolism have been my trade for so long, it is hard to loosen their bonds.Perhaps I should make myself known as I make myself a ploughman's lunch, ploughman's lunch. My name is Charles Arrowby. You probably recognise the name. In my time I have been a famous actor, playwright and theatre director, but now I am in my 60s I tire of the egotism of the stage and have left London to live alone in Shruff End, a remote dwelling perched on the edge of land, o'erlooking the sea, the sea, that sometime had the still calm of mill-ponds past and at others crashed tumultuously in frothy whirlpools of anguished darkness.It is night and as I lie within the inner room – the house itself must be allowed its own Freudian symbolism – I feel the time is right to mention the thing that was too horrible to describe in the first paragraph. For as I looked down into the sea, sea, the wild waters opened to reveal a vast grey monster from the deep. What sort of animal it was I cannot say! Though if you choose to see it as my subconscious staring back at me, you won't be far off. Two days have passed since I wrote that, days in which I have immersed myself naked in the sea, the sea and I feel the time is right to introduce more characters. Clement was my first mistress. She was much older than me, an actress who took me under her wing and launched my career. I will promise more of her, but such is my unreliability, no more will be forthcoming. Then there is Lizzie. She is younger than me, a lesser actress, but hopelessly devoted to me. She now shares a house with Gilbert, a sweet, ineffectual gay thespian. Neither must we forget, Rosina, whom I stole away from Peregrine, only to discard her. Nor James, the Buddhist, my cosmic cousin, doppelganger, alter ego, rival; call him what you will. So there we have them. Clement, Lizzie, Gilbert, Rosina, Peregrine and James. All names redolent of a certain class. But that's the way literature was back them.That was the prehistory. Now then we reach the history. The time when letters and characters began to serendipitously arrive as if by magic – that word again. First came Lizzie, pleading with me to love her, to let her be my object. It was tempting, but no. Next a letter from James that I read while lying naked after swimming once more in the turbulent sea, the sea. He too will come to visit. And now a car appears. It is Perry – he does so hate being called Perry – and Rosina. I am so very grateful to Perry for having been so adult about my elopement with Rosina, a level of maturity not since reciprocated by his wife."I'll kill you," she snarled, "if you take up with Lizzie again. You are mine." A more developed character might have wondered why it was that even though I was well into my 60s women could not resist throwing themselves at my feet, but I confess my limitations got the better of me and I preferred to dwell on the possibility of the supernatural."I am not in a relationship with Lizzie," I declared. Rosina did not believe me and drove off angrily into the night. And in her headlights, I saw her. Hartley.Once more I find I have been economical with the truth, but this time I shall tell all. I promise. Hartley was my childhood love. We were inseparable. A working class Romeo and Juliet. And then she left me when I went to drama school. No reason, no explanation. She left me heart-broken. Perhaps it was because of her I became the thespian I am, but that's another story. Here she was again. Mysteriously turning up again after 50 years, living in the very same village as me.What follows is the essence of tragedy. Though you may read it as pure farce, as coincidence piles upon coincidence and everyone starts behaving in still more unbelievable ways.I followed Hartley to her home. "You may now be old, fat and ugly," I implored, "but I have always loved you, darling Hartley.""Be still," she begged, "for I must remain unhappily married to the violent Ben and together we must mourn the disappearance of our adopted son, Titus."If I hadn't been so busy swimming naked in the sea, the sea, I might have wondered if I was now in a bad Thomas Hardy novel, and as I emerged from the deep another car drew up. It was the meditative James with an unknown youth."I suppose you must be Titus," I said. "I am very much in love with your mother and would like to adopt you.""That sounds fun," he replied. "I'll stay for a while."My memory gets a little blurred at this point because people come and go from the house with extraordinary speed and with little explanation and now I find myself surrounded by Lizzie, Gilbert, Peregrine, Rosina, James and Titus."I'm going to kidnap Hartley and make her marry me," I said.Rather than, as lesser mortals may have done, seeing such action as delusional idiocy requiring the attention of a doctor if not the police, the others recognised it for what it was; an important expression of the futility of egotism. So they helped me enact my plan."I'm not that happy about it," Hartley said. "But I'm not so bothered I'm going to try and escape."A few days later we were out by the boiling sea, the sea. The next I remember is waking in my bed. Someone had tried to murder me! But who could it be?"It was me," said Peregrine. "I've always hated you for taking Rosina away from me.""Phew," we all replied. "As long as it was only you, we don't need to call the police.""I think perhaps it might be time to take Hartley home, though," James said sagely. Reluctantly, I agreed, though only once Titus had promised to stay and we set off by car back to Hartley's hovel.""Who is throwing stones down on the car," we yelled as the windscreen shattered. "It's only me," Rosina laughed."Phew," we all replied.We made our way back to my house where we stripped off naked and plunged into the churning sea, the sea. A shriek rent the air. It was Lizzie. "Titus has drowned,""Perhaps then Hartley will now be free to live with me?" I wondered out loud, before lapsing into a week-long fever during which I remembered that I had seen the sea monster again during my attempted murder and it had been a Buddha-like James, walking on water, who had rescued Prospero.I woke to find some letters. Hartley and Ben had emigrated to Australia; James had willed himself to death in a Tibetan trance; Perry and Rosina were going to Ireland and Gilbert and Lizzie were doing something else. I swam naked in the calm waters of the sea, the sea – the monster replaced by seals.There the history ends. Or rather it should have. Because I've just had a letter from a 17-year old girl asking me to impregnate her. The absurdity of magical realism never fails.Iris MurdochFictionJohn Craceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |