hearing a story

Last night, listening to some music. Unremarkable, undistinguished, a mixture of songs and singers with which I am unfamiliar. They sounded a lot the same.

Then, out of nowhere, the line: I'm too old for the girl I love, but she doesn't know it yet.

Can't shift it out of my head, now.

pain/paean

For I am Publishers Weekly, and lo, I am bored:

'...a pleasant, if shallow interlude'. '...too much of which isn't especially insightful or funny.' 'Clearly, subtlety is not the order of the day. Sadly, neither is quality storytelling.' 'The narrative is preachy and bland.'

How. Could. You. Stand. It??? How could you stand to write a book and worrit and hope and pray and fearfully open up the hallowed PW pages, or not open them but have someone else open them for you, only to find your blood, sweat and tears boiled down to being 'not enough to buoy a routine plot'?

Weird, reviews of stuff. Regular folks just don't have to deal with such things. Why, I almost never read of myself in the library journal, "her dialogue with publishers is predictable and weak,' or 'while her copy-editing is incisive, the actual figures are very routine, which detracts from the pace', or even, "her selection of YA books for our collection is interesting and creative, but she has failed again to avoid the heavy-handed Kiwi-isms that tend to lace her decisions.'

Creative people. How are you not always sobbing into your tea and bourbon? Because everyone is never going to like your book. I mean, PW does like some books, as well as being so fearfully bored with others. But does one reviewer's 'skilful, nuanced mosaic' cancel out another's 'disorganised plot and one-dimensional characters'?

O God. A 'routine plot'. The cold sweats and the vapours.

Dear new baby...

Dear New Baby Sarah Madeline,

Please find enclosed “Baby Jacket To Fit 0-3 Months”.

I dunno, little dude. It looks awfully wee to me. I mean, I know you’re pretty new and everything, and I understand that people your age are usually on the small side. But I’m not convinced. Now I’ve finished making it, it seems to me this would fit a relatively well-built guinea-pig.

In 15 years’ time, your mum will be sorting through a houseful of crap and she’ll come across all the tiny things you wore right now, and will marvel at how someone so little and perfect morphed into this thing that tramples her dreams and hates her and leaves hair straighteners about the house on a daily basis. I just want you to pass on a note to her, that when she pulls out this jacket, she can reassure herself that you actually probably never were small enough to fit into it.

Still and all. I haven’t had a lot to do with people like you, so maybe it’ll work out all right. I mean, I do know one incontrovertible fact – that whatever age you are when this thing fits you, it will only continue to fit you for approximately two weeks. You guys grow fast.

It’s a good thing, because another thing you need to know is that your mother is firmly against dressing you in any sort of pastel, baby-coloured garments. The trouble is, the kind of wool they make in those colours is specially made to be thrown in the washing machine on numerous baby-vomit occasions and survive. Once you move away from baby-related colours, the type of wool that will still kiss your baby-skin with the softness of a thousand fairywings is mostly also the type of wool that has to be handwashed.

I know! No parents of a weeks-old baby will have the time or presence of mind to do that, right?

So what I suggest is, wear this for the one week you’re still tiny enough to fit into it, puke on it, and then instruct your parents to throw it away immediately. It’s the best solution for all of us.

Welcome to the world, kiddo. We’re glad you could join us.

Love, A.

what is it then?

I wore my New Zealand Book Month shirt to work on Friday. Because even when you're not in New Zealand, well, it's still New Zealand Book Month, so you have to show willing, and display your logo with adopted-kiwi pride.

Here is every single conversation I had on Friday:

COLLEAGUE: *looks suspicious at the sort of allegiance I am electing to display in a work environment*

ME: It's not weed.

COLLEAGUE: What is it then?

ME: It's a book.

COLLEAGUE:...

ME: It's a book.

COLLEAGUE: Is it a book about weed?

ME: *facepalm*

balancing the hemispheres

Recent local tourism activities indicate the following proof:

Universal equilibrium. QED.

deny the legitimacy of difference, Murray!

I’m reliably informed by the one careful owner of a three-year-old daughter that a well-known brightly-shirted children's entertainment group has done a cover of the tune “Old Dan Tucker” on their latest release. The three-year-old cites it as ‘her favourite song’, which is saying something, because that one about fruit salad is surely hard to top.

Wikipedia tells us:

‘Old Dan Tucker entered American folklore soon after it was written. Its simple and malleable nature means that singers may begin or end it at any point or invent new verses on the spot. In fact, hundreds of folk verses have been recorded. These folk versions can be quite ribald. This one, recalled by a man from his boyhood in Benton County, Arkansas, in the 1910s, is one example:

'Old Dan Tucker was a fine old soul,
Buckskin belly and a rubber ass-hole,
Swallowed a barrel of cider down
And then he shit all over town.'

Tucker is an animalistic character, driven by sex, violence, and strong drink. He is ugly, unrefined, and unintelligent, even infantilized. As a stranger in town, his devil-may-care actions show his problems with or ambivalence to adapting to local mores. More broadly, Tucker's disdain for social norms allows the song to send up respectable middle class American society…’

It's unconfirmed, but rumour has it the group's next album will be a Kevin Bloody Wilson cover.

Aw, now. As we all quite well know, KBW is about "the denial of the legitimacy of difference" and "the politics of identity...in the context of the current 'culture wars' debate". Constructing the politics of identity; it's what all the college kids are calling it these days.

I wonder what Old Dan Tucker would have to say about that?

lunch with the literati

The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, held in British Columbia last week, has a quite brilliant comedy twist (I mean, other than calling itself the Sunshine Coast Festival when it’s in B.C. Good one). On the last night of the festival, the authors and other bigwigs gather aprons, teatowels and implements of destruction and serve up a salmon barbecue to attendees. There are photos as proof, and everyone looks remarkably jolly, given they’re being reminded of effectively what they might well be doing as a job if the whole writing thing hadn’t worked out. Is this a scheme to take writerly egos down a peg, d’you think?

Either way, this scene must forthwith be replicated at literary festivals and conferences and awards shindigs the world over. Could the Booker nominees be persuaded to come up with a casserole for the judges? What about the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Potluck? The Montana Awards Strawberry Tea Social? Pasta Night at the Sydney Writers’ Festival!

The culinary expectations would focus the authors’ minds far more than the usual acceptance speeches, Q & As and panel discussions. Going home after a successful keynote address knowing they’ve got to knock up a batch of raisin buns for tomorrow’s coffee morning, and that someone can be relied upon to comment “I don’t care if she did win the Governor-General’s Award, her pastry’s like lead,” would radically up the performance anxiety.

Husband-and-wife team Yann Martel and Alice Kuipers could co-ordinate the teacups. Stephenie Meyer, who got such a rough deal recently from teenagers the world over for not writing the book they expected, might be happy spearing cheese and pineapple cubes on cocktail sticks. I hear Nick Earls does a good line in pesto. And the sandwich production line could have Lloyd Jones digging into the economy-sized pail of mayonnaise and Salman Rushdie cutting off crusts.

Who’d you have in your literary lunch lineup?

fair go, though

There may never be a time when there is too much Tim Winton in the world, and we can keep track of the latest here with the handy Tim Winton Watch fe-yature. In general, we do seem to be all a bit surprised that Breath didn’t get on the Booker list; I suspect it’s because it fails in the 'ah, but could you use it as a doorstop, or stand on it to reach very high things?' category.

Anyway the reviewer in the NZ Herald appeared to concur on overall brilliance etc etc, but she still couldn't resist a stab at the ‘heavy-handed Australianisms’.

All those bloody Aussies going about talking like Australians all the time and doing Australian things. In Australia. Flat out like lizards drinking. With pocketfuls of Anzac biscuits smeared in Vegemite. Heavy-handedly. Tch indeed.

worst week of the week award

When you look back and take stock of the last five working days, and it turns out that the most successful part of it was when you accidentally performed minor hand surgery on yourself with a box cutter, well, then you know it’s been a winner of a week.

merry-making

There's been a distinct lack of merriment about the place lately, and although I haven't really had the time to find sources to add merriment, it has been my duty to eliminate some of the causes of the lack of it.

On the right, a swift (the big umbrella thing that, in a Harry Potter-style moving photo, would be spinning madly). To the left, a ball-winder. The whole setup is engineered to enable you to wind skeins of yarn into balls of yarn without getting it all tangled up until you collapse in a sobbing heap. It's the ultimate anti-stress device.

Wrapped around the swift? It's the green blanket. Here's what it looks like now:

Ready and waiting to be turned into something that doesn't have me donning the shroud of woe and despair every time I pick up the needles. I love this about knitting. Almost never is there a point where it can't be undone and made better. Suddenly, a piece of misery becomes a heap of potential. Let the merriment be forthcoming.