AS Byatt & Contemporary British Fiction

There was a marvellous inteview with AS Byatt in yesterday's Guardian Review. I particularly loved the following quote, but you should really read the entire interview. So enlightning and so clever.

What distinguishes her is a sort of grounded curiosity. She has been a visible admirer and encourager of younger writers including Hensher, Lawrence Norfolk, David Mitchell, Adam Thirlwell and Ali Smith. Her advocacy is "not entirely disinterested, because I wish there to be a literary world in which people are not writing books only about people's feelings. If you notice, all the ones I like write also about ideas. You know, there's been that sort of clonking account of what was good about British writing which was McEwan, Amis, Graham Swift and Julian Barnes - but there's all sorts of other things going on. In fact I admire all four of those writers . . . and they don't only do people's feelings but nevertheless it's become ossified.

Reading "..I wish there to be a literary world in which people are not writing books only about people's feelings. If you notice, all the ones I like write also about ideas..." made me very, very happy as did her insistence that contemporary British fiction does not begin nor end with McEwan, Barnes et al. All my literary rants of the past decade summed up elegantly by someone vastly more intelligent than me - isn't that just splendid?

Do Not Feed the Culture Vultures?

Glasgow does visual arts so very, very well and every year we get the added bonus of a four-day art fair. Guess what? It's that time of year again.. Today we went to the Glasgow Art Fair and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Last time we went, we nearly ended up buying a Lucy Campbell painting (specifically one extremely similar to this one). We both liked its fairytale qualities and I felt strangely comforted by its Philip Pullman-ness. Today I'm glad we didn't buy it. I think Campbell has her definite strengths but I think they lie within the realm of illustration rather than painting.

This time the Art Fair was visibly affected by the recession. Saturday afternoon was simply not that crowded and quite a few vendors confided that they were having a tough time shifting anything. Interestingly this year also saw galleries from Spain, Vietnam and the Czech Republic trying their luck. Diversifying or maybe the stands came cheaper this year? The Vietnamese stand was spectacularly crap, incidentally.

Ever the pop culture aficionado, Dave spotted Carl Moore's work immediately and was very, very taken with his Animals Who Want To Be Other Animals series as well as the Robot Dreams series. I'm not sure about the robots, but I loved the Animals series too.

Proving that I have way more taste than money, I headed straight to Jonathan Wolstenholme's watercolours (the cheapest one was £2,900 - that's a lot of sweaters!). The website does not do them justice, but try looking at The Descent of Books with its clever, humourous details or Murder in the Library which ticks all my boxes. Wolstenholme's watercolours may not be cutting edge or setting the art world on fire, but, gosh, they'd look nice in my imaginary library.

And for any woolshop/yarn shop (however imaginary), what about a few David Blyth prints? We had a good natter with David M. of Peacocks Visual Arts (who represents David Blyth), which made a nice afternoon even better.

On days like these, I just love living here. I really do. Art and beauty nourish my soul.

Behaving as the Wind Behaves

Let the Right One In was a much better film than book. Everything which was overegging the book-pudding had been removed in the film: neverending subplots, irrelevant and distracting characters, and immense wordiness. The film was sparse, beautifully shot, and intense. While not the masterpiece it has been made out to be, the film was excellent. Also, it is always a joy to see a horror film where the real horror is found in everyday life rather than a supernatural monster. Recommended. (Also: a joy to watch a Swedish film. Swedish is such a beautiful, poetic language and I adored the film's cheeky use of traditional Swedish symbols such as the Tre Kronor towel)

(Also, also:  who plays Oskar's father? I swear he looks familiar but the actor's not listed in any credits I can find?)

Before the obligatory knitting update, a quick print culture geek link. Earliest known dust jacket found at Oxford. I might come back to that and explain why it's very cool.

Knitting, then. I am about 4 inches away from finishing the back of my Geno. I have a sort-of deadline for my cardigan early next month and it looks unlikely that I will make it. A 4-ply lace cardigan on 3mm needles in less than three weeks? I'm knitting like a woman possessed, but I am already behind schedule. Due to the small-ish needle size, my fingers tense up if I knit for more than three hours in a row. Also, yesterday my right shoulder began playing up (to the extent that my back started giving me problems) and while I am not sure if it is knitting-related, it does slow down the progress of Geno. Irritating.

Of course it does not mean I haven't begun pondering the next summer knit and I'm leaning heavily towards Flicker from Rowan Studio 15. Although not in beige.

Title: on the topic of horror.. well.

What's In A Name?

The US has some very strange place names.

Bad Axe, Michigan: "While surveying the first state road through the Huron County wilderness in 1861, Rudolph Papst and George Willis Pack made camp at the future site of the city and found a much-used and badly damaged axe."

Climax, Minnesota: "The town briefly made national news in 2004 when school superintendent Shirley Moger refused to allow students to wear shirts bearing the town motto, "Climax - More than just a feeling"(..). The motto was picked following a contest. Some runner-ups in that contest were "No End to Climax," "Cling to the Culmination: Climax Forever" and "Bring a Friend to Climax.""

Cylinder, Iowa: "One story suggests that the name comes from a vehicle that passed over the creek and dropped a cylinder. "

Eclectic, Alabama: "Tradition has it that the town was named by a local resident who had taken an "eclectic" course of study at school and so named the town because of the various surrounding geographic areas."

Hell, Michigan: "After Michigan gained statehood, George Reeves was asked what he thought the town he helped settle should be called, and replied, "I don't care, you can name it Hell for all I care.""

Helper, Utah: "Trains traveling westward from the Price side to the Salt Lake City side of the plateau required additional "helper" engines in order to make the steep 15 mile climb up Price Canyon to the town of Soldier Summit. Helper was named after these helper engines."

Hygiene, Colorado: "This community's name stems from a time when it had a sanitarium to work with tuberculosis patients."

Man, West Virginia: "The name of the town is believed to have come from the last syllable of the name of Ulysses Hinchman, who was a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates."

Micro, North Carolina: "According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.4 square miles (1.1 km²), all of it land."

Muleshoe, Texas: "It is home to the National Mule Memorial. The mule is celebrated for his strength and sparse eating habits, traits which endeared him to the pioneers. In war, the mule carried cannon; in peace, he hauled freight. His small hooves allowed him to scale rocky areas."

Peculiar, Missouri: "The story goes that the annoyed Thomson wrote to the Postmaster General himself to complain saying, among other things, "We don't care what name you give us so long as it is sort of 'peculiar'," (with "peculiar" in quotation marks)."

Pillager, Minnesota: No word on whether the name relates to the Scandi-Viking stock of Minnesota's inhabitants, but "Minnesota State Highway 210 and County 1 are two of the main routes in the community."

Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico: "it took the name of a popular radio program in 1950, when Truth or Consequences host Ralph Edwards announced that he would do the program from the first town that renamed itself after the show."

Going through Wikipedia (as I did), I could not help but noticing major naming trends: Independence, Liberty and Union were three very, very popular names. Naming your town after presidents or the founding fathers was also common. You get many, many places named after geographical features or local animals. Interestingly, people also seemed to name their settlements after early 19th C thinkers such as Humboldt and, ahem, Byron or Greco-Roman philosophers or places. Homesick settlers were also quick to name their new homes after what they left behind (to the extend I'm tempted to do a US tour of Europe at some stage). Bold advertisement such as "Belleville" is less common, but you still get it.

But, honestly, who'd name a place after a dropped cylinder?

Gifted

This is the week of receiving gifts, it seems.

When Kirsten Marie visited, she offered to make me some bling out of materials we bought at The Bead Company. I don't wear much jewellery, but I do appreciate handmade things. And so a few weeks later these earrings arrived by post and I think they are very, very pretty. I'm not a Slytherin but I am  a sucker for all things green and/or silvery. Thank you, Kirsten Marie!

And then Other Half gave me an abecedarium (of sorts) because he knows I love typography and lettering above most other things in life. And he got me a pop-up abecedarium! It's amazing. You can see how Marion Bataille's ABC3D works in this little YouTube video:

R.I.P. JG Ballard

The author J.G. Ballard has passed away. More at BBC.

While JG Ballard's seeming obsession with technology, disaster, sex and violence was not to everyone's taste, there is no doubting the huge impact of his work. He was an original, a man who spent most of his life charting hopes and terrors, and trying to make sense of the 20th century.

And he wrote Running Wild which I read at school and still consider one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune to read.