| In search of foreign travel books | Daniel Kalder Spare me the 'Brit abroad' travelogues. For once, I want to see other cultures through foreign eyesAh, the modern travel book. You just can't get enough stories about happy chappies tootling about in novelty vehicles to demonstrate how jolly nice we all are, can you? Actually, you can. I reached my novelty vehicle limit years ago, when I read one of those Around Eastern Europe in a Trabant books that was so cloying I had to kick it about the flat for 10 minutes, just to get the taint out of my system. It's not that I don't enjoy reading about foreign lands; I just yearn for a fresh perspective. Specifically, I yearn for a non-Anglo-American perspective. I have this demented idea that it just might be interesting to read accounts of foreign lands written by foreign authors, who speak foreign languages. Of course, with British publishing being so heavily into Jordan and the wise musings of Ant and Dec, I stand little chance of seeing this fanciful idea realised. Nevertheless, I can dream. I dream of reading a Russian author's account of central Asia – like Ilya Stogoff's mASIAfucker, for instance. The Russians were in Asia for a long time, so it's just possible that some of their authors might have an interesting take on the place. Or what about a Polish report on the lost world of communist Czechoslovakia, such as Mariusz SzczygieÅ‚'s Gottland? The book has been praised everywhere it has been published – which, needless to say, does not include Britain or the US. Meanwhile, earlier this year German author Karl Schlogel produced an epic book about the USSR in 1937. If his work on Moscow is anything to go by, this will be light years ahead of any number of worthy tomes on Stalin currently doing the rounds in English. Alas, as a non-German speaker I'll never read it. There's always Ryszard KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski, I suppose, but even then, Anglo-American publishers only translate his books on war zones and revolutions. The quieter stuff remains accessible to Poles only. There are other exceptions but they are few and far between.I think what intrigues me about non-Anglo-American travel is the idea of double displacement: not only are you in strange territory, but you're seeing it through an unfamiliar lens, with different references and associations. It's a challenge to read these books: they are slippery to negotiate, but all the more illuminating for it. Recently the folks at the Dalkey Archive made it possible for me to enjoy this rare sensation by translating Andrzej Stasiuk's travel book Fado. Admittedly, they slipped it out under cover of darkness with minimum publicity so that no one would find out, but I thwarted their plan. (Full disclosure: Stasiuk's firm Czarne publishes my books in Poland, but that has no bearing here. Had Fado been rubbish I'd simply have passed over it with a diplomatic silence.) Fado (a style of mournful Portuguese song) consists of a series of complex, polished essays and feuilletons about the neglected interstices, voids and wastelands of central and eastern Europe, particularly in the areas surrounding Stasiuk's home in the Carpathian mountains. Nothing much happens in these travel miniatures: Stasiuk meditates upon a car park in a provincial Polish town, attends a conference on a dead Serbian author, drives past a Gypsy settlement in Slovakia, or thinks about Pope John Paul II's decaying body. However, each of the moments Stasiuk captures allows him to illuminate some aspect of this region's past and present: how it relates to Europe, to Poland or to deeper existential issues that affect us all. He writes about ideas and images that are exceptionally difficult to grasp, define or even perceive. He is alert to the tiniest shifts and changes in the landscape, inward and outward, and he addresses them with wit, compassion and lyricism. Indeed, the book was so good it filled me with a strong desire to spend more time in the car parks of obscure provincial Polish towns. But it also filled me with an unexpected, new yearning. Forget about foreigners speaking of foreign lands, Fado made me wish that in Britain we had an author who could write so acutely about our own ancient landscape and its peoples. Of course, there's no end of TV dullards walking the length and breadth of the UK, camera crew in tow, talking twaddle. There may well be an obscure Scotsman lurking in the borders, but he's probably mumbling to himself in Lallans about the dastardly English and "colonisation". In England, there are some talented esoteric sorts working in the cities, even writing very fine books. But in the villages? In the mountains and hills? No - or, nobody writing at Stasiuk's level anyway. There are, however, numerous jolly chaps tootling about in novelty vehicles. Lucky us.TravelDaniel Kalderguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Colum McCann wins National Book award for fiction Irish-born writer's novel Let the Great World Spin, focused on Philippe Petit's World Trade Centre tightrope walk, acclaimed as 'gravity-defying feat'Colum McCann won the fiction prize at the National Book awards in New York last night for his novel Let the Great World Spin, an allegorical story inspired by the events of 9/11 and set around Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the twin towers in 1974.McCann, who grew up in Dublin, moving to Manhattan more than a decade ago, dedicated his win to fellow Irish American Frank McCourt, who died earlier this year. "I think he's dancing upstairs," the author said.He was cited by judges for achieving "a gravity-defying feat". "From 10 ordinary lives he crafts an indelibly hallucinatory portrait of a decaying New York City, and offers through his generosity of spirit and lyrical gifts an ecstatic vision of the human courage required to stay aloft above the ever-yawning abyss," they said.The eminent US literary awards, which are in their 60th year, also honoured 84-year-old novelist, playwright and essayist Gore Vidal for his "distinguished contribution to American letters", and presented Dave Eggers with an award for "outstanding service to the American literary community". As well as being an author, journalist and screenwriter, Eggers is co-founder of 826 Valencia, a non-profit writing and tutoring centre for young people, and of independent publishing house McSweeney's.The non-fiction prize was taken by TJ Stiles for The First Tycoon, a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, builder of the original Grand Central railway station in New York, while the poetry award was won by Brown University professor Keith Waldrop for his three related poem sequences, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy.Children's author Philip Hoose was named winner of the young people's literature prize for Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, an in-depth account of the life of the early civil rights champion. In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, the 15-year-old Colvin did the same thing in Montgomery, Alabama, and found herself shunned by her community. She went on to become a key plaintiff in a landmark case which struck down the segregation laws in Montgomery.Colvin, whom Hoose interviewed extensively for the book, was at his side as he accepted the award. "Because of this woman, our lives have changed," he told the audience. The evening also saw The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor named the best of all the National Book awards' fiction winners in the last 60 years, as voted by readers. O'Connor beat past winners including Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner and Thomas Pynchon to take the prize.The other winners, selected by a five-member, independent judging panel for each genre, received $10,000 and a crystal sculpture.FictionAwards and prizesAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Holiday Books: The Illustrator With these plainspoken, charming “letters,” the renowned illustrator counsels an imaginary pen pal in his trade. feeds.nytimes.com |
A new poem by Simon Armitage for Tony Blair Simon Armitage unveils his poem PoodlesPolitical poems are tricky. Too obvious and they are embarrassing, too subtle and they miss the point. I believed Tony Blair when he promised to unearth WMDs, and felt cheated by the reality. At the time, Blair was accused of being Bush's poodle, a metaphor that seemed destined to become a poem. Then, a few months ago, the Guardian printed photographs of poodles in various states of absurd topiary, and everything fell into place. I was thinking of Blair at Bush's ranch, playing the part, and of the horse as a symbol of the American wild west. The poem's speaker is an innocent who recognises a naked emperor when he sees one.PoodlesThey all looked daft but the horse-doglooked daftest of all. The cute red bridle and swishing tail,the saddle and stirrups, the groomed mane.The hair round its feet had been shaved and fluffed into hooves.Close up, on its hind, there were vampire bites where the clippershad steered too close to the skin. Skin that was blotchyand rude. I leaned over the rail and whispered,"You're not a horse, you're a dog."It bared its canines and growled: "Shut the fuck up, son. Forty five minutes and down come the dirty bombs –is that what you want? Now offer me one of those mintsand hold it out in the flat of your hand. Then hop on." I was six, with a kitten's face and the heart of a lamb.Tony BlairPoetrySimon ArmitageSimon Armitageguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Prayer and nonsense | Andrew Brown The patent untruth of religious language might have more benefits besides making it memorableI have been reading the letters of CS Lewis again: they seem written from an immense distance. In important ways, they are. He reached the trenches, as a second lieutenant in France, on his 19th birthday; of the time when he got his blighty wound, the regimental history records that The casualties of the 1st battalion between 14th and 16th April were: 2/Lieut. L.B. Johnson died of wounds (15/4/18) and 2/Lieuts C.S. Lewis, A.G. Rawlence, J.R. Hill and C.S. Dowding wounded: in other ranks the estimated losses were 210 killed, wounded and missing.Incidentally, the wounds that ended his war were caused by a British shell dropping short, or what we would now call "friendly fire". But when there are 215 casualties in one unexceptional regiment within two days, no one makes a big fuss about whose shells kill whom. But for all the social distance to Lewis's world, two of his characteristics leap straight to ours. The first is what a good reader he was, which is to say a good critic. The other is that it mattered. He was always trying to write something more than "a readable and convincing slab of claptrap" (as he described Macauley) and very seldom failed, however often he was wrong. But his mythology of language was extremely strange. In a letter to his brother, (17 January 1932) he writes As we learn to talk we forget what we have to say. Humanity, from this point of view, is rather like a man coming gradually awake and trying to describe his dreams: as soon as his mind is sufficiently awake for a clear description, the thing which was to be described is gone … Religion and poetry are about the only languages in modern Europe – if you can regard them as "languages" – which till have traces of the dream in them, still have something to say. Compare "Our Father which art in Heaven" with "The supreme being transcends space and time". The first goes to pieces if you begin to apply literal meaning to it. How can anything but a sexual animal really be a father? How can it be in the sky? The second falls into no such traps. On the other hand the first really means something, really represents a concrete experience in the minds of those who use it: the second is mere dextrous playing with counters, and once a man has learned the rule he can go on that way for two volumes without really using the words to refer to any concrete fact at all ...I am not interested here in the question of whether there is any external referent for "Our Father, who art in Heaven", though I suppose I should point out for the benefit of the sky-pixie crowd that Lewis takes for granted that the meaning cannot be literal. That is the whole point of his argument. I am more interested in a a potentially much more destructive approach, which came out of a paper published last year with the wonderful title "Connections from Kafka" by two psychologists, Travis Proulx, and Steven Heine. The very short form of their argument (which deserves a longer post on its own) is that nonsense or the violation of expectations actually strengthens our ability to find meaning. What's more, if we are exposed to nonsense or loss of meaning in one area , this will increase the meaning and order we find in others. Earlier work of theirs has shown that moral beliefs or group affiliation can be strengthened simply by swapping the experimenter out, without explanation, halfway through a test. That, surely, is the mechanism behind all modern fundamentalisms. Anyway, there is lots of evidence that anxiety increases our tendency to see patterns and meaning in the world. The standard atheist assumption is of course that these patterns don't really exist. In some cases, and some experiments, they don't. But the latest Proulx and Heine paper had a fascinating twist: after being exposed to a twisted version of a Kafka story, in which nothing at all made sense, their subjects were better able to detect patterns that really existed in letter strings they were given to match. The counter-intuitive nature of religious language is often remarked. There are whole theories about just how much counter-intuitiveness is needed to make a religious story most memorable and thus most widespread. But counter-intuitiveness is really just another term for the violation of expectation and the denial of meaning. If Proulx and Heine are right, then counter-intuitive religious language will not just be more memorable: it will help the participants to perceive meaning in the threatening world around them. Sometimes that meaning will be objectively there. This is a long way back to CS Lewis, but I think it shows his instinct was right: "Our Father, who art in heaven" actually means something to the people who say it, in a way that more literally sensible language just couldn't. The rule for religious language is clear: if a dalek could understand it, it wouldn't be worth saying.ReligionPsychologyAtheismCS LewisChristianityAndrew Brownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |