Summer holidays

Taken yesterday at the local botanical garden. I was amazed that this bird let me creep up to within a metre of it while it was enjoying dining on its own King Protea.

So far I’ve had a pretty quiet time on my holiday. We had a really good family Christmas and I’ve been taking it easy since it’s only a week today since my dog died. I’m feeling a bit numb about it now and I’m trying not to dwell on her death itself.

On the book front, I’ve got a lot to keep me busy. In no particular order we have:

Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)
We are all made of glue (Marina Lewycka)
Cape Town Stories (Marianne Barnard)
The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)
Daddy’s Girl (Margie Orford)
Touch: Stories of contact (edited by Karina Szczurek)
Engleby (Sebastian Faulks)
Cape Town Calling (edited by Justin Fox)
Shark’s Egg (Henrietta Rose-Innes)

I’ve started the Lewycka and am enjoying it. It’s light summer reading and her characters are quirky and amusing. I’ve also been dipping into “Touch” which is a collection of 22 stories by South African authors around the theme of human contact. Contributors include: Andre Brink, Nadine Gordimer, Damon Galgut, Ivan Vladislavic, Jonny Steinberg, Alex Smith, Zoe Wicomb. It’s perfect for when you have 30 minutes to spare but it’s not the kind of book I can read for a couple of hours at a time.

So far I’ve read one story from Outliers on the cultural aspect of plane crashes and it was thorough, entertaining and thought-provoking. I’m tempted to sneak a look at what some of the other book bloggers have said about it before I make up my own mind.

The White Tiger (TWT) won the 2008 Booker Prize with its unflattering portrait of India as a society racked by corruption and servitude. Reviewing it in the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries says that one criticism of Adiga’s novel is that he writes about the experiences of India’s poor without himself being poor. Adiga says it is a challenge to “write about people who aren’t anything like me”. But can he actually pull it off?

Stuart Jeffries: “But isn’t there a problem: Adiga might come across as a literary tourist ventrioloquising others’ suffering and stealing their miserable stories to fulfil his literary ambitions?”

Jeffries says TWT has many failings but its “engaging, gobby, megalomaniac boss-killer” narrator (Balram Halwai) seems to be a strength. From village teashop waiter to Bangalore entrepreneur, Halwai is the white tiger who breaks out of his own cage of servitude.

I can’t help thinking about the dark side of India which finds a favourable audience in the West. Makes me think of other writers from the developing world who show up the corruption of their own countries and are applauded for it in the developed world. Locally the name of RW Johnson springs to mind.

Daddy’s Girl is a local (and celebrated) crime novel by the multi-talented Margie Orford. Just not sure I’m in the mood for crime so soon after suffering a trauma of my own. And so I’ve been sampling this and that and allowing my thoughts to settle and flit off again and then settle and so on. Perhaps this is normal. But it would be great to lose myself for a day or so in a really gripping novel.

I’ll take a break and return in early January. Here’s wishing you a fabulous New Year and all the best for 2010.

All hail the Barack (and some summer reading)

Today’s the big day so I’ll be surprised if anyone’s reading blogs other than the political-watching ones. I wish the rest of the day would fly past so I can settle down in front of the TV at 2am and watch the results come in. Remember 8 years ago — when the election race was “too close to call” for what seemed like weeks!?

I’m going to enjoy seeing Obama and the Democrats winning some swing states like Ohio, Florida and maybe some red states such as Virginia. Maybe the race will be closer than we think but I just can’t see that. Obama’s so much better than McCain and, as corny as it sounds, there’s a sense of hope in the air. Maybe this time things will be different. Maybe America can be an inspirational superpower and increase peace and prosperity around the world.

On the reading front I have a number of books on the go (or waiting to have their turn):

The Innocent Libertine (Colette)

The Sibling Society (Robert Bly)

London Fields (Martin Amis)

Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson)

Tonight I’m borrowing Siri Hustvedt’s The Sorrows of an American, which seems oddly out of place today. I’ll report back in due course on the reading above. So far I’m enjoying the Colette but I have some questions. Will have to check what Litlove has to say about her.

The Robert Bly has flashes of brilliance but I find it a bit limited. There are some very interesting ideas in there and I like the way that he develops the fable of Jack and the Beanstalk, comparing the beanstalk to our brainstem and exploring the evolution of the brain. But I’m not totally taken by Bly and I think it has to do with his playing up the role of fathers as opposed to mothers. There’s a stubborn insistence on the role of fatherly guidance rather than an appreciation of motherly containment. As one of the leaders of the mytho-poetic men’s movement, Bly is a self-styled male guru. He’s a softer male if you like but he’s also at pains to criticise the softer male and declare himself in favour of the Wild Man and to argue for an important role for male aggression. I agree but also disagree. What about female aggression? Is the female in Bly’s worldview mainly about nurturance?

Returning to the election, I was looking for a poem that expresses the joy of today. This doesn’t quite get it, but there’s a feeling of careful optimism and gentle celebration maybe.

Spring is like a perhaps hand (ee cummings)

Spring is like a perhaps hand

(which comes carefully

out of Nowhere)arranging

a window,into which people look(while

people stare

arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps

Hand in a window

(carefully to

and fro moving New and

Old things,while

people stare carefully

moving a perhaps

fraction of flower here placing

an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.

Update: I also think Mary Cornish’s excellent poem “Numbers” could apply. Here’s how it starts:

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I think the “generosity of numbers” is a good way of describing that process in which the electoral college votes get divided up between the two candidates. As the votes come in the presenters touch the state concerned (Virginia for example) and then another 11 votes magically get added to the tally of Obama (hopefully). Which will be the decisive state which takes him over the tipping point?