Of interest: Oscar fashion; novelistic paths; McQueen

Zadie Smith on the lyrical Realist novel (via China Miéville)

These aren’t particularly healthy times. A breed of lyrical Realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked. For Netherland [a novel by Joseph O'Neill], our receptive pathways are so solidly established that to read this novel is to feel a powerful, somewhat dispiriting sense of recognition. It seems perfectly done –  in a sense that’s the problem.

Handwriting

There have been many elegies for handwriting, most notably, perhaps, by Umberto Eco. I suppose it is a lost art, especially cursive. But writing is in my life almost every day. I write in cursive, like most English-literate Indians my age. In the grand scheme of things, I am not very old, but it surprises me to know that people of my generation from other parts of the world haven’t learnt cursive. India is old-fashioned like that.

Divers 2

A lovely note last night saying I’ve been included in the editors’ choice for ‘The Ten Best of Soundzine’ – thank you, Charles, Gene, Phill and Annie, and many congratulations on your tenth issue. This is a wonderful set of editors, and they’ve just invited a new poetry editor to the team — Mary Meriam. 

JG Ballard: ‘The Enormous Face’

Dr Nathan limped along the drainage culvert, peering at the huge figure of a dark-haired woman painted on the sloping walls of the blockhouse. The magnification was enormous. The wall on his right, the size of a tennis court, contained little more than the right eye and cheekbone. He recognized the woman from the billboards he had seen near the hospital — the screen actress, Elizabeth Taylor.

My wonderful day (which included China Miéville)

Shockingly, I’ve had one wonderful day last week. Even more shockingly, it was a Monday. I’ve begun to think that waking up early is a highly underrated activity. A couple of years ago, I used to wake up at 5.45 am everyday to get to French classes before college classes. It was disciplining and beautiful. Must do again.

Of interest: What’s good about men?

Mills & Boons writers reveal their secret formulae

For [Penny] Jordan , the hero also has to have a charitable side. “He’s obviously got to be sexy and high powered because they go together. And they always like them to be well off. But for me he has to have some interest in charity, to do something for the good,” she says.

China Miéville in Bangalore

Toto Funds the Arts in association with the British Council is hosting a reading and discussion with award-winning fantasy-fiction writer China Miéville on the 1st of March at the British Library.

Kamala Das’s ‘An Introduction’

Kamala Das was first introduced to me in an anthology of contemporary Indian poetry that I had sought out because I didn’t know who contemporary Indian poets were. The poem was titled, aptly enough, ‘An Introduction.’ I read and promptly forgot all about it until I was in college and forced to take a paper called ‘Literatures of India 1.’

Phoenix

We were waiting for Medha to come home. It had been three days. We were tired. Ramesh jokingly suggested that we should expect a body bag. I took it quite seriously, however, since we were talking about Medha, who had once returned from her travels with a python in her suitcase. ‘They aren’t poisonous,’ she said, ‘they eat rats.’

January 2010: movies

If I were to recommend only one film from this month’s batch, it would be Aleksey Balabanov’s Morphine. (I am excluding the two Cronenbergs I rewatched as a kind of incantation for the new year. Crash squeezed a poem out of me, of which I am rather proud.) Morphine is based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name.