ReadySteadyBook - a literary site

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Beckett and "the absurd"

"... moral values are inaccessible. And they cannot be defined. In order to define them, you would have to pass judgement, which is impossible. That's why I could never agree with the notion of the theatre of the absurd. It involves a value judgment. You cannot even speak about truth. That's what's so distressful. Paradoxically, it is through form that the artist may find some kind of a way out. By giving form to formlesssness. It is only in that way, perhaps, that some underlying affirmation may be found."

Beckett and "the absurd" over on This Space.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere, samuel beckett

PermalinkComments (3)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Monday 26 April 2010

The JQ-Wingate Literary Prize 2010

The shortlist for this year’s JQ-Wingate Literary Prize has been revealed. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in June. The shortlist is as follows:

• The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck (Harvill Secker)
• My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness by Adina Hoffman (Yale UP)
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (Little, Brown)
• The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand (Verso)

From the press release:

Commenting on the shortlist, Chairman of the Judging panel Anne Karpf said: “We had — as book prize juries famously do — a full and frank discussion. To get onto the shortlist a book needed at least two passionate advocates. The four that emerged are all powerful works that leave you with a different view of the world. Of the two novels, both of them set in pre- and post-war Europe, one is the baroque, unflinching story of a woman's survival (of sorts) despite the depredations of a damaged family and damaging culture; the other, the moving tale of a modernist house whose inhabitants’ hopes for a better future are challenged by the tragic times in which they live. Our two non-fiction choices both ask searching questions about the Middle East: one, controversially, about Israel's founding national story and its Biblical origins; the other, the first ever biography of a Palestinian writer of any kind, beautifully illuminating the Palestinian experience. Together these four books make up a literary feast.”

The JQ-Wingate Literary Prize is "the only UK prize to recognise writing by Jewish and non-Jewish authors, which stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern while appealing to the general reader."

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: awards

PermalinkComments (0)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Thursday 08 April 2010

Jacques Roubaud interview at Bomb Magazine

Not many writers write from both the right and left brains, but Jacques Roubaud bridges that chasm much like an expert martial artist—in a way that makes it seem simple. Or not. Roubaud is an encompassing author. He writes through a full spectrum of the “simple” (i.e. his poetry for children) to mind-bogglingly dense pieces underpinned by mathematical concepts incomprehensible to many left-brained creative folks. After all, the title for his first book was a mathematical symbol—graphic and discrete, yet to explain what it means would take more words than I have been allotted.

Then there’s his life. Child of French Resistance parents. Member of Oulipo, short for the Ouvroir de Litterature Poténtialle, commonly translated as “Workshop for Potential Literature.” Inventor of the “clandestine hunger strike” during his tour of duty in Algiers and translator of Lewis Carroll. University professor of mathematics, but not “a very important one,” as he says, “I didn’t want power!” Survivor of tragedy—World War II, the early death of his wife. Writer through prodigious memory, therefore inevitably grappling with Proust, with whom one senses Roubaud has a wary relationship. But Roubaud himself is now a revered figure in French literature—a postwar writer who, thanks to the ongoing invention of “constraints” demanded by Oulipo, always seems cutting edge...

Jacques Roubaud interview at Bomb Magazine (via Sponge!)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, internet

PermalinkComments (0)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Tuesday 06 April 2010

Interview with Pierre Joris

If Gertrude Stein is ‘the mother of us all’ then Ezra Pound is our father. A strange couple, for sure, but essential to anyone coming into poetry in the second half of the 20th century with the intention to do more than write the traditional neo-romantic lyric. For me, Pound was there first – or rather right after I had found the Beat writers, Kaufman, Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs. His importance was immediately immense, and at least twofold. Starting to read the Cantos I realized that poetry was a life’s work of total dedication, not something one could do on rainy weekends when moved by the spirit. Pound also immediately made clear that a learned poetry, a poetry that includes not only history, but also various sets of knowledges, was not necessarily a boring ‘academic’ poetry. The range of his work was liberating. Everything from everywhere could enter the field of writing, to be energized into that multifaceted, multilayered construct called a poem. Amazing!

My friend Pierre Joris interviewed at nY-web (via wood s lot).

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, poetry

PermalinkComments (1)Related PostsEmail to Friend