TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| The Morning After Mary Karr’s third memoir layers the pangs of recovery with those of motherhood, divorce and making art. feeds.nytimes.com |
Guardian first book award In the final Q&A with the shortlisted authors, Eleanor Catton discusses her novel The RehearsalWhy did you decide to write a novel about arty teenagers?In my honours year at university I'd become massively excited about the idea of the performativity of selfhood, particularly with respect to gender. The Rehearsal grew outward from these ideas, I think – the characters and the plot really came second. Teenagers are so wonderfully self-conscious about their own selfhood, and this hypersensitivity turns everything into a performance of a kind. In this way the high school setting provided me with a good platform to explore the ideas I was interested in. Also, the experience of adolescence was still fairly fresh in my mind – I was 20 when I started writing the book.Was it your first attempt at writing?I wrote a lot as a child and as a teenager, but rarely finished anything. The Rehearsal was definitely the first work of length that I ever completed. As an undergraduate student I became really interested in film-making, and had written a bunch of short films that I produced and acted in (very poorly, on my part) with a small group of friends. I think that this flirtation with another medium hugely influenced how I approached the writing of The Rehearsal, especially towards the end when I began shuffling the scenes around – the process felt very much like editing a film.What came first?The very first page. The novel's first scene began as a dramatic monologue for a former girlfriend who was studying acting at Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand school of drama. She was an accomplished saxophonist and we thought it would be fun to try to showcase both talents somehow. I never finished the monologue, but when I returned to the unfinished document some months later (it was very short – only about four pages), I realised that it would behave much more strangely and complicatedly as a piece of fiction. The novel grew from there.What were the hardest bits?So much of the novel occurs in the same location with the same four characters and the same prop (a saxophone). I occasionally had a hard time dreaming up new ways to transform the space and the action creatively. I worried a lot that the novel would be too static and repetitive.How did you research the novel?As a student I'd recently read a lot of critical theory about performance and performativity, particularly queer theory and feminist theory, and I returned to those texts again and again. I read plays – Tony Kushner's Angels in America was a massive influence – and 20th-century theatre manifestos too, such as Towards a Poor Theatre, The Theatre and Its Double.How did it come to be published?I wrote The Rehearsal while I was enrolled in the MA programme in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, New Zealand. The manuscripts are read and critiqued by three external markers at the end of the year: your supervisor, a published New Zealand author, and a publisher, Fergus Barrowman of VUP. Fergus contacted me directly after he read the book and offered to publish in New Zealand. The UK offer came about six months after the NZ publication.What are you most pleased with?The Rehearsal really allowed me to put a seal on a specific chapter of my life. It helped me grow up – both as a writer and as a person – and through the writing of the novel I was able to leave a number of obsessions and doubts behind. I hadn't expected that – that a novel might have the power to "give back" to its writer in such a way. I'm happy that the book has such a persuasive life, and liveliness.What would you do differently/better next time?Absolutely everything, I think – I can't imagine writing another book that resembles The Rehearsal in any way. At the moment I'm working on a book of fantasy, and it couldn't be more different.Who were your literary models?I didn't try to model The Rehearsal on the work of any author or group of authors, but I am always inspired by works which meditate self-reflexively on their own form in a way that is generous and full: Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.Listen to Eleanor Catton discuss her novel at guardian.co.uk/books/guardianfirstbookawardGuardian first book awardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Polanski's Ghost Writer to premiere in Berlin The latest film from the Oscar-winning director, currently under house arrest in Switzerland, will be unveiled alongside Martin Scorsese's Shutter IslandThe big star of next year's Berlin international film festival may yet prove to be noticeable by his absence – the new picture by Roman Polanski has been selected to premiere at the event, but the director remains in detention in Switzerland.Polanski's drama, now called The Ghost Writer, is based on a novel by Robert Harris. It tells the tale of a writer recruited to help a disgraced British prime minister produce his memoirs against the backdrop of a possible indictment at the international criminal court. The film stars Pierce Brosnan as the statesman and Ewan McGregor as his hired author. Kim Cattrall and Olivia Williams take supporting roles.Polanski, the director of Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist, is currently under house arrest at his Swiss home awaiting likely extradition to the US, which he fled in 1978 following a conviction for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. When the 77-year-old director was arrested while en route to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich film festival, the organisers of the Berlin event protested what they claimed was "the arbitrary treatment of one of the world's most outstanding film directors."Harris revealed earlier this year that Polanski was putting the finishing touches to The Ghost Writer while in prison near Zurich. Patrick Wachsberger of Summit Entertainment, which has picked up US rights to The Ghost Writer, said yesterday that Polanski had approved the final cut from his alpine chalet in the Swiss resort of Gstaad. He said the $35m (£21m) film was complete bar for visual effects."We have talked on the telephone, and Roman sounds in good spirits now that he is sleeping in his own bed and is reunited with his wife and family," Wachsberger told Variety. His partner in Summit, Rob Friedman added: "Roman is a well respected artist and people will judge his film as art."The Ghost Writer will be joined in Berlin by Shutter Island, a thriller by Martin Scorsese, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley.Also in the lineup is the German-Iranian co-production The Hunter, the Shah Rukh Khan-starring My Name Is Khan and On the Path, by the Bosnian film-maker Jasmila Zbanic. The rest of the 26 films in competition will be announced in January."The competition of the 60th anniversary Berlinale will be marked by a mix of styles and genres, by exciting newcomers and renowned directors," said festival director Dieter Kosslick.The 60th Berlin international film festival runs from 11-21 February.Berlin film festivalRoman PolanskiMartin ScorseseFilm adaptationsBen Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Samuel Pepys's diary: 350 years on On New Year's Day 350 years ago, Samuel Pepys first put pen to paper on his famous diary. Here are two extracts from that week:Sunday 1 January 1660This morning (we living lately in the garret,) I rose, put on my suit with great skirts, having not lately worn any other, clothes but them. Went to Mr Gunning's chapel at Exeter House, where he made a very good sermon upon these words:— "That in the fulness of time God sent his Son, made of a woman," &c.; showing, that, by "made under the law," is meant his circumcision, which is solemnized this day. Dined at home in the garret, where my wife dressed the remains of a turkey, and in the doing of it she burned her hand. I staid at home all the afternoon, looking over my accounts; then went with my wife to my father's, and in going observed the great posts which the City have set up at the Conduit in Fleet-street. Supt at my, father's, where in came Mrs The. Turner and Madam Morrice, and supt with us.Friday 6 January 1660This morning Mr Sheply and I did eat our breakfast at Mrs Harper's, (my brother John being with me,) upon a cold turkey-pie and a goose. From thence I went to my office, where we paid money to the soldiers till one o'clock, at which time we made an end, and I went home and took my wife and went to my cosen, Thomas Pepys, and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome. After dinner I took my leave, leaving my wife with my cozen Stradwick, and went to Westminster to Mr Vines, where George and I fiddled a good while, Dick and his wife (who was lately brought to bed) and her sister being there, but Mr Hudson not coming according to his promise, I went away, and calling at my house on the wench, I took her and the lanthorn with me to my cosen Stradwick, where, after a good supper, there being there my father, mother, brothers, and sister, my cosen Scott and his wife, Mr Drawwater and his wife, and her brother, Mr Stradwick, we had a brave cake brought us, and in the choosing, Pall was Queen and Mr Stradwick was King. After that my wife and I bid adieu and came home, it being still a great frost.Samuel Pepysguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Room Service An exquisitely detailed look at the film that brought us “My mother’s not herself today.’' feeds.nytimes.com |