Sumant Srivathsan on what you call picture books for adults
The graphic novel syndrome affects most Indian writer-artists working with the comic-book idiom to tell their stories. The term has been injected with a sense of gravitas by its purveyors, and as such, has resulted in plenty of extremely self-conscious and contrived storytelling. For instance, take Amruta Patil’s Kari. It’s a drone of an illustrated short story (or is it captioned paintings?) about a whiny, lesbian advertising professional that doesn’t even use the format of a comic book. Sarnath Banerjee does better with his Corridor and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers, but offers little more than an honest effort. The latter is particularly disappointing in its storytelling. In adapting to the comic-book idiom, Banerjee compromises the integrity of his story, and it ends up meandering like a severed kite. If ever there was a case to be made for an editor’s guiding hand, this is it. But where does one find an editor who understands the medium well enough to mentor young writers?
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Jason Guriel on radical poets
… the adjective “radical,” when applied to the noun “poet,” is redundant. Any person worth calling a poet (and there are far fewer of these than we might prefer) writes poetry because more basic modes of communication (like the emoticon-caulked prose of texting, say) just won’t do—because basic communication isn’t the point. “All poetry is experimental poetry,” wrote Stevens. In other words, all poets are always already “radical” or “experimental” or “innovative.” This isn’t to suggest that good poets haven’t occasionally huddled around some hub, mimeographed or e-mailed a manifesto, and declared themselves an avant-garde; this is only to suggest that all poets are mavericks, whether they, or their circle, choose to brand themselves as such or not.
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Charlie Higson on the teenage obsession with vampires and zombies
Zombie stories are life lessons for boys who don’t mind thinking about bodies, but can’t cope with emotions. Vampire stories are in many ways sex for the squeamish. We don’t need Raj Persaud to tell us that plunging canines into soft warm necks, or driving stakes between heaving bosoms, are very basic sexual metaphors. Stephenie Meyer, who writes the phenomenally successful Twilight vampire books, is famously a clean-cut goody-two-shoes Mormon. She knows that young teenage girls don’t want to think about the full beastliness of our bodies, and what real sex entails.
Jason Guriel is so full of it. The “Any person worth calling a poet [does whatever I say real poets do]” trick can’t have been convincing the first time someone used it in a freshmen lit class and certainly isn’t convincing now. Who the hell does he think he is?
I’m afraid I agree with Nicholas. But then I’m always suspicious of people as prescriptive as Guriel especially about something as eccentric, whimsical, playful and plain contrary sometimes as poetry.
Hmm, I forgot my standard disclaimer: ‘I do not necessarily agree with these people, etc.’
Anyway, I understand the great love we all have for Guriel and his bizarre rants. Sometimes I wonder if Poetry publishes his columns just for all the people waiting to read what he has to say and then pounce on it. And he certainly asks for it.
This time I do sort of agree with him, and I liked what he said about Johnston. The main reason I say this is because he picks up that line by Stevens — ‘All poetry is experimental poetry’ — and I applaud the fact that he makes this point, or rather remakes it.
The rest of it I don’t care much for, especially the ‘poets write because they want to show, not tell/want to use a hallowed form of language’ type of argument. He really needs to stop speaking for a group of people that is so much larger than himself.
As a review I thought the article did part of its job in making me want to read Johnston (not so much the other poet). The other commentary was redeemed by that point he made. In fact that may be the only reason I posted the link to his article here.
What do you think? About Stevens’ comment?
And while we’re on the subject of things getting old, hasn’t Open Magazine done the whole find-nearest-loudmouth-say-inane-yet-provocative-things-about-contemporary-Indian-writing once too often?
Nice juxtaposition though. The irrelevance of labels.
Haha, I try my best. I considered using semicolons, but I always mess those up, as I do most punctuation.
Oh, I took it as read that you didn’t necessarily agree.
Much as I like Stevens’s aphorism, I think it doesn’t rise above the level of manifesto (well, if you think that’s something to be risen above). It’s programmatic, not descriptive–”real poetry does X.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. It only irks me when blowhards like Guriel (who, come to think of it, reminds me of a certain someone. . .) think it’s defensible as a descriptive claim.
Hmm, maybe it would be worth having someone with a tad bit more intelligence and a lot more humility than Guriel to work along those lines.
And who? Who?
Zombie stories — good ones — have always been to me about people sheared to their barest elements. It doesn’t even happen in response to the crisis so much as other people. Zombies are slow, clumsy, unintelligent, unorganized, predictable. On paper they don’t stand a chance against anyone with their wits about them. But in practice, the survivors unravel. Their true cowardice or arrogance or courage or calm emerge and together they all clash and, often, the conflict is enough to sabotage their efforts to survive. They fail against an enemy barely more dangerous than a pack of roving children. Crisis destroys our facades. The real demons are us. A good zombie story has the same premise as Lord of the Flies. It just employs more personification and brain eating.
Vampires can suck eggs.
The delicious irony of being a “clean cut mormon”. The pride of LSD churches everywhere, Ms Meyer .
(Oh wait! Its the LDS churches everywhere. Damn.)
I have actually disgraced two cults in a single statement. Heh.
Jon’s comment is spot-on.
Another less serious appeal of zombies is a certain attitude toward violence. Zombie apocalypses allow violence without consequences: one is permitted and even obliged to slaughter dozens, scores, if not hundreds of people—and this is a moral act, mind you. They’re zombies! This is why you get teenagers (including me) “planning” for zombie apocalypses, right down to the correct caliber of ammunition to use. Right next to the fire evacuation poster in my college dorm there’s a zombie safety poster. (One piece of advice: don’t fight zombies with fire, because the only thing worse than a walking corpse trying to eat your brain is a walking corpse trying to eat your brain while on fire.) My friend, for his 18th birthday, got a crowbar with the word “Re-killer” etched in the side.
This also partially explains the appearance of the typical zombie. They’re mangled, bloody, dead-looking, asking for more. Why not kill them again?
Zombies appeal to boys and vampires to girls — I can see that in broad sense. Higson makes the line too clear, too neat for me.
My experience of zombie films is limited to one made in the 1950s called Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was remade recently into a film called Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman I think. Terrible stuff. The original is quite good, and the zombies look just like humans.