Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

Red on blue hurts the eye, but obviously makes for great covers. In a similar way, this moment happens to be both weird and perfect for finishing a collection like Birthday Letters. In the 88 poems that broke Hughes' (almost) silence 35 years after Sylvia Plath's death, he finally speaks of their life together.

All the prison animals had to be patient 

While we married. 

It must be one of the most emotionally complex and extraordinary collections of love letters ever written. 

Terror

Was the cloud of you

Birthday Letters was published in 1998, Ted Hughes' last year in life. 

What I Talk About when I Talk About Running by Murakami Haruki

Is what I read about when I think about running. And writing.

Currently Reading: Naipaul

While browsing the library yesterday, looking for Mahasweta Devi (none), a certain Hélène Cixous (French only) and David Rieff's memoir on his mother Susan Sontag's illness (out), I figured I might as well read some more by V.S. Naipaul. In the collection of essays called Literary Occasions he deals with his first attempts at writing, his fears and embarrassments:

I might adapt Dickens to Trinidad; but it seemed impossible that the life I knew in Trinidad could ever be turned into a book. If landscapes do not start to be real until they have been interpreted by an artist, so, until they have been written about, societies appear to be without shape and embarrassing. It was embarrassing to be reminded by a Dickens illustration of the absurdity of my adaptations; it was equally embarrassing to write of what I saw.

Also picked up Murakami Haruki's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, à propos that great essay on running in Joyce Carol Oates' The Faith of a Writer. I'm planning to make myself start running again by intellectualizing the whole thingy. Wish me luck.

Had a great day at Café Edenborg today, by the way, discussing the 'man and the machine' theme of the upcoming Terminator Salvation movie with Professor D. and then talking some favourites by Jeanette Winterson, P.O. Enquist and Nina Bouraoui with Mr J. That place is usually a lousy environment for me to concentrate on reading (especially by the bar), but who cares when peeps are ready to strike a nice literary pose whenever you're up for it.

Reading and Writing: a Personal Account by V.S. Naipaul

I am fascinated by Naipaul's literary awakening. His father had an interesting way of reading to him a few pages here and there, of many different works. This lead to Naipaul not really recognizing all these seemingly familiar stories when he later read them as a whole. He suddenly thought them strange, told for another world. I'm also intrigued by the way Naipaul describes how he became an author, the genres he has chosen and why. I should probably read more.

Currently Reading: Barnes

«Tom said he had "wasted his life" (May 1954). I said, "So have I." He replied, "Yes, but think what you did when you were not wasting it!"»

Djuna Barnes on T.S. Eliot, 1981.

Baby Love - Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence by Rebecca Walker

Baby Love is a memoir in diary form, written mostly during Rebecca Walker's pregnancy with her first child. She writes about the ambivalence she's been dealing with, the worry that she would lose herself and that it would complicate her already complex relationship with her mother (more about that relationship in this book).

"With a few small power plays—a skeptical comment, the withholding of approval or praise—a mother can devastate a daughter. Decades of subtle undermining can stunt a daughter, or so monopolize her energy that she in effect stunts herself. Muted, fearful, riddled with self-doubt, she can remain trapped in daughterhood forever, the one place she feels confident she knows the rules."

Well.

"It seemed that these mothers did not realize that they had to give adulthood to their daughters by stepping down, stepping back, stepping away, and letting the daughter take center stage. These mothers did not seem to know, with all their potions and philosophies, their desires to rehabilitate ancient scripts of gender and identity, that there is a natural order, and that natural order involves passing the scepter to offspring with unconditional love and pride.

Or pay the price."

To protect her unborn child, Walker decides to not have too much to do with her seemingly indifferent mother.

"I can see the importance of making decisions that enable your child to be not just physically safe in an environment, but emotionally and logically safe as well. If the well-being of my own child doesn't inspire me to break through my ambivalence about a person or situation and act more decisively, I have no idea what will."

She also recalls her mother telling her as an adult that she had had to decide to, choose to love her as a child. After Walker's own son is born, she finds that there is absolutely no choice for her loving him. And that bringing him up finally might help her heal her own painful childhood - the divorced parents, the moving all over the US every other year...

It is a quite wonderful book. Read the first chapters here and an interview here. Lastly:

"Human beings create narrative because we glimpse the universal through the specific and feel less alone."

Black White and Jewish - Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker

All ye betweenshippers and shape shifters out there should read this one. It reminded me very much of a childhood spent trying to fit in: in school, at home, with my father and his Chinese friends. Reminded me of a time I had wanted to forget: the early teens.

Made me laugh. Made me really sad. A tad too long, but well written and quite engaging. Spending my X-mas in another town, far from my copy of the novel, I gotta remember to write down a few more of my fave passages later on.

Once again, read an excerpt here.

Currently (Still) Reading: Walker

Sometimes I have to leave it be for a while, Black White & Jewish. Reading it is like revisiting my own childhood, something I can only do for brief moments at a time.

Rebecca Walker writes about her early life moving back and forth over the US, between her african american mother and her white jewish father and his new wife.

"[Mother's] presence at the table would grant me the great luxury of being able to love my family unreservedly, to take them irrevocably as my own. As it is, the specter of my mother, of race, really, and the inability of my relatives to deal with it, leaves me somewhere on the periphery of my own experience, unable to commit to fully being there. Haunted by her absence, I pull back cautiously and feel, even as I laugh and play with my cousins, as if some part of me is alien to the others, as if I am in the family through some kind of affirmative-action plan and don't entirely belong."

Currently Reading: Walker

Had to start with Black White and Jewish even before finishing the Mixed anthology. I am intrigued.

"I wonder what it is like to harbor a primal loyalty to your family: grandmothers, aunts, uncles, brothers. To put them, those others connected to you by birth, by name, before those you choose to claim as your own. To consider the ones you were born with your first layer of protection, your inner sanctum, the blood in which you live that cannot be diluted by the water you drink. I am fascinated by this emotion, this human device that creates purpose and meaning, self and other. Is it something we are born with, or is this subtle belonging cultivated, a by-product of the endless repetition of rituals: setting the table, driving to school, walking the dog?"

Read an excerpt over at Multiracial.com.

Town Boy by LAT

During my last trip to Malaysia, I finally got my hands on the sequel to Kampung Boy, LAT's wonderful story about his childhood in rural Malaysia. Town Boy is about his teenage years during the 60's in Ipoh, Malaysia - where my dad was born and raised. Actually, it seems like Dad's just two years older than LAT and it's great to read this graphic novel after recently seeing my dad's old photos of school friends with rock'n'roll posters plastered all over their walls.



Ipoh is (still) very recognizable in LAT's drawings, and he manages so well to capture the multicultural Malaysian people and their busy street life. He's a genius. Which, of course, is no news to Malaysians.

Head over to First Second Books where there's a nice excerpt.

Sveda by Cecilia Persson

Recently read an interesting interview with Cecilia Persson in the latest issue of the great Swedish periodical called Slut (as in the Swedish word for end, nothing else), about her novel Sveda - on growing up with a mentally ill mother and, to some extent, about Sylvia Plath. The book contains a little bit of everything: clippings, poetry, prose, letters. It didn't really leave me with much, but made for a fairly good read, especially as the subject does interest me a lot.

Get it here.

Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski

I am on a Diski roll.

Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski

The last thing I heard before boarding the first flight towards Antarctica in February, was H. telling me to read this. I already knew about it, but had been hesitant to read it; before this trip Antarctica was a dream that I didn't want to spoil with other people's recollections of it. And when I suddenly found myself going there, I didn't want to be disturbed by other experiences of it, wanted to find my own words to describe it. Naturally, I found the book in the M.S. National Geographic Endeavour library, opened it every now and then, decided not to read it, came back to make sure it was still there and not in the hands of any of my fellow American passengers... This went on during the whole trip.

If there is something I am good at, it's knowing the right time to read a certain novel. Sometimes I start reading a book that opens so fantastically that I have to leave it be for a while (which is why I still haven't been able to read Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphor, Lotta Lotass' Min röst skall nu komma från en annan plats i rummet, or Harry Martinson's Aniara). Now almost four months have passed since I returned, and the other day I just couldn't resist this Skating any longer, as I felt a sudden pang of loss walking about a bookstore, missing the ice so much.

"I am not entirely content with the degree of whiteness in my life."

Jenny Diski is almost too on point. The way she describes her trip and the other (mostly American) passengers:

"Photography is a modern, miniature form of colonization."

And also her recollection of a quite disturbing childhood and the teenage years spent moving between mental institutions and foster care; her mother leaving her when she was 16 never to return, never even calling, writing.

There is so much about this memoir that I can relate to, there's no wonder it took me such a long time and all this lingering about to read it.

The End #1 by Anders Nilsen

And it goes on.

The End #1 is about surviving the loss of one's beloved; "now every day this other person descends into hell or heaven"; talking to his former self the way he was before he knew, when everything was still well.

More.

La Douleur by Marguerite Duras

This is the horror.

Of war and of what comes after; the time that passes between war and peace.

I lived with these stories during my short trip to Paris; the hours between learning about the sudden loss of a dear friend on the bus from Beauvais to the city, and returning home to the devastating cold of the Stockholm streets. It may sound strange, but it was truly a comfort in a weird way.

Rest in Peace, hermanolito. I love you, tú sabes.

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I'm the One that I Want by Margaret Cho

I love Margaret Cho.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Been meaning to read this one for some time, however reluctant. I suppose all the other stories about hospitals and loss finally took me there. It turned out to be very unsentimental and quite beautiful in all its honesty; it made me remember a lot about what it was like losing someone far too quickly. The strange ways of a person in shock.

Poupée Bella by Nina Bouraoui (Again)

I finally got to read it in French.

A book so much on love and writing I can't really write too much about it.

Je ne sais pas s'il faut vivre ou écrire.
Je ne sais pas si l'amour est le sacrifice de l'écriture, ou si l'écriture efface, lentement, l'amour.

Patient by Ben Watt

In 1992, Everything But The Girl's Ben Watt was taken to hospital for chest pains. Some months and a few very serious operations later he came home 20 kilos lighter and missing metres and metres of small intestine.

"(...) The little things we're in for turn out to be not so little after all. An endoscopy. A laparoscopy. A miscarriage. Keyhole surgery. 'It's nothing,' they say. But they all bring invasion."

One third into this amazing book, I felt really sick and wondered whether I should really read on, being so scared of hospitals and operations and various body fluids as I am. But a while later that passed and some sort of numbness took over. I suppose it's just as it would seem when it happens to you - you start out afraid and frustrated by the fact that you have no control and it's all in the hands of health care, but then you somehow learn (or are forced) to bear with it.

"I looked forward to simple, basic things - dry, clean sheets; the feeling of leaning back on freshly pumped pillows; the moment of unwrinkling my brow."

Similar to the tiniest things you have to force yourself to remember you love about life when you have decided to live after having wanted to die, I guess; something I wrote about in a dialogue some years ago: "Ärmmudden på en stickad tröja. Knappt skönjbara stavfel. Värmen i en hunds ljumske."

Ben Watt gets to shower for the first time in weeks after his first operations:

"I feel like a rare animal saved from extinction. I am tiny. A marsupial."

Go buy it.

Don't Go Where I Can't Follow by Anders Nilsen (with Cheryl Weaver)

Spring 2005 Anders Nilsen's fiancé Cheryl was diagnosed with cancer. She passed away later that year. The couple's clippings, letters, drawings, photographs make up a beautiful book that breaks one's heart. It is one of the best things I have read about loss.

Read an excerpt at publisher Drawn & Quarterly.