"Where did you go?"
"Away. Nowhere. Here and there."
"What did you do?"
"Some of the 10,000 things . . ."
Fortunately TypePad remembered me and I was able to log in after such a long absence. Looking back at my planning diary for the past six (?) -- yes: six -- months with its scrawls and cross-hatching is enough to prompt mental shuddering. Every entry, every activity, fell into the category of "good" but obviously there can be too much of good things, pax grammatica. Any attempt to pick up prior ambitions and readings seems far less possible than picking up the sweater I began knitting on Prince Edward Island ten years ago: the pattern of both the object and my original intention have vanished. Time to start over.
Although not having actively posted to this site or my other one, gates of another world, I have in a sense kept in touch (in itself an odd idiom for maintaining a form of connection to something intangible, with the only physical touch being fingers on a keyboard) by checking in to sites that reliably and with intelligence transmit news from the great world of events mostly literary and that in a context that is in the best sense of the word "cultural." My touchstone has been Chekhov's Mistress, not only for the writing there but for the links to other sites that take me onward to even more writing, book news, ideas. And ever onward, link after link, and the trail becomes more diverse and distracting until after two hours of exploration, I begin to feel oversaturated with words, more specifically: the words of others. The writing is engaging, the topics and books discussed -- exciting, the urge to respond -- tantalizing, but the loss of Self in the process is not at all in the nature of loss of Self in zazen: it stimulates thought and language rather than quieting them. Also, when the time designated for my own writing has mostly evaporated from excessive litblog immersion, the only word I can construct that fits this experience is that I begin to feel "bloggered."
I need to step back and consider the entire phenomenon of litblogging and my role in it: passive trail follower; peripatetic commenter; active contributor; all of the above; none of the above.
The questions that litblogs raise for me may not have ready answers, and I doubt that I have the stamina and purpose of so many of the regular, articulate folks out there who post daily and whose contacts with the sphere of literary publishing and events beggars my imagination. As it is, the main effect on me is the alarming accumulation of even more books than ever, reaching crisis proportions both spatially and financially. New titles mentioned on the sites I check into are rarely available (either 'yet' or ever) from the public library. The hunt for the same titles at independent bookstores in this city is especially time-consuming when one hesitates to sell one's soul to the conglomerates and prefers to browse in a "real" bookstore wherein dwell "real" booksellers who read "real" books and don't clutter the aisles with yoga chotchkes and bizarrely-scented gift items. Once the desired books are borrowed or bought, then the discussion of same is either fleeting, or elusive, or too intensive to keep up with. Following one's own path through the woods is one thing, but we're talking here about something even more complex: the mycorrhizae that form the living underground network that nourishes the plant life itself.
Enough said. Time for a few more pages of Nuruddin Farah's Links, which was also being read by the main character in Khalo Matabane's film Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon, one of the more impressive films I managed to see at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Only 60 pages into Links and I suspect that this book will be one of the greats in my personal list of important books. Along with Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire and Andrei Makine's Requiem for a Lost Empire. The former two writers will NOT be at this year's International Festival of Authors in Toronto in October, and although Makine was originally listed to appear with Julian Barnes, Michael Crummey, and David Baddiel on October 25, the online listing consulted today does not include Makine. I have yet to do a count of how many of the authors at the international festival are Canadian/American/British; it would be interesting to consider, having stumbled on an editorial from the IFOA of two years ago in eye that still seems relevant, viz the following:
"It's a problem that comes from living and reading in the dominant linguistic culture. We write a lot, we English-speakers in Canada, the States, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. And thanks to the Americans and the British before them, we're terribly effective cultural imperialists, which means Italians and Eritreans and Saudis have a tendency to want to read Stephen King and Margaret Atwood in their languages in a way that we simply could not be bothered to do with their writers."
It's worth noting in the above that those writing in English in India and the Middle East are missing from the above observation, and that part of this cultural imperialism is the linguistic dominance of English (even in an officially bilingual country like Canada), which means that English speakers are less likely to speak second languages (or more) and are reliant on translations, which in turn requires distribution of works in translation from publishers for what is in itself a more limited or exclusive market. There's another enlightened perspective from Robert Gray, the literary cicerone of Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller's Journal, that appeared last May at Words Without Borders in connection with his promotion this past spring of books in translation, "Reading the World." I diligently made note of each book from the five publishers, tracked down a few from the library, bought most of them, and now most of them are still waiting to be read, and will be read, thanks to the initiative of the publishers, booksellers, and litbloggers who supported the idea. I also added a number of my own choices, adding more books by women, and more poetry. Robert Gray's awareness that books written with serious intention offer readers an opportunity to cross borders and inhabit even in our imaginations the lives of others, no matter what the country and language of origin, is fundamental to literature in all its manifestations, including litblogging.
All of the above constitutes no doubt a rationalization of my blog indulgences, a justifcation for become bloggered/overwhelmed by blogs, but still amounts to a full literary larder for the coming winter months. None of the above constitutes what is new and exciting and of the moment in the world of literature (e.g. readings, awards, publishing, festivals) but perhaps is indicative of the fundamental passion of a reader and writer for books that I hope will endure.
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