Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Lines from a Library-fest

One of the joys of this US summer holiday has been this -- access to a wonderful public library. Every fortnight I make a trip to the William K Sanford town library and spend a happy hour or two savouring a varied collection of books and periodicals. Have come across books that I am not likely to come across in India, considering they are not exactly bestseller material, nor particularly  India-centric.Then I cart home half a dozen books that please me and also spouse (who dips in, reads a bit, then dozes off). Me, I read all of it, then reluctantly return same to library. In Chennai i have often bought books that I have loved-- i mean purchased for a price when possible, from my very good local lending library, Murugan library, part of easwarilibrary.com group. Can't do that here in the US! 


I re-read for the third or fourth time, one of my all-time favourites --  Bill Bryson's iconic work (now being filmed) --  A Walk in the Woods. Here's  a sampler.
From Chapter 8: 'Each time you leave the cossetted and unhygienic world of towns and take yourself into the hills, you go through a series of staged transformations --  a kind of gentle descent into squalor -- and each time it is as if you have never done it before.' 

From The Angry Island by A A Gill -- a witty critique of current day Britain -- some telling lines:

'It is in the nature of TV and the nature of nature on TV that it comes with a plot, a narrative and a purpose.'

'The English can cover nature with their own blanket of sentimentality and create a world they want it to be, not to be part of it, but to oversee it, to be custodians.'

And here is a line that is particularly fascinating :
'It's worth bearing in mind that the defining characteristics of fascists and psychopaths are great sentimentality combined with amoral cruelty.' 

Here is a dig at Americans and Britishers, together:
'Only Americans and those imitating Americans play basketball; and only those with some weird desire to imitate the English would possibly want to have the world's biggest dog show -- Crufts.'



 
 

From a wonderful collection, 2013 Pushcart Prize 37 Best of the Small Presses; the introduction:

'It's the MOST GHASTLY of times and the most glorious of times.

First the ghastly: politicians; lifestyle; consumers; a culture of celebrity glitter; an internet tsunami of instant facts, factoids and nonsense that obviates knowledge and wisdom; a 'greed is good' oligarchy; vanity publishers taking over the commercial publishing empire; legitimate and terrified publishers in a race to the best-seller bottom; bookstores collapsing; Kindle in charge; profiteers cashing in on wannabe authors with zero talent -- the result? A new censorship of clutter.Everybody into the pool and you don't have to know how to swim. A cacophony of drowning shouts.

Yet it is also the most glorious of times: of course there are thousands of examples -- for instance, the authors of the stories, essays, memoirs and poems printed and mentioned in this edition.....The Word survives indeed thrives in the ruins.'

From the collection, a hilarious and touching story published by Conjunctions, a small NY publisher.

A Family Restaurant by Karen Russell

WELCOME TO " A FAMILY RESTAURANT "!
OWNED AND OPERATED BY THE BANKOPOULOS FAMILY SINCE 1929

This morning, my father approached me waving the new menu from RAY'S ITALIAN FEATS, our rival across the street, and demanded that I type this up for you. 

"Write the story.It's a menu, Leni, it's supposed to have the story."
"Which one?"
"Jesus, I don't know, the story, our story! The family story!"
.............................................................................................

.....Nineteen seventy-five: A restaurant opened up across the street from us. Ray's Italian Feats.
"Italian Feats? What, he's turning Dago cartwheels over there?"
"I think it was supposed to be 'Feast'. "


 The following poem is said to be the contribution of a fourth grader, Rasheda White. Published in ECOTONE



A SHADOW BEEHIVE

I hear an old man and woman playing chess
for some false teeth.I hear a tree knocking
in the sand and the sand flies up and down
and it sounds like a window. I hear cold
old shadows chattering their teeth in the winter.
I hear my sister polishing the shadow's fingernails.
I hear shadow kids playing with a shadow beehive
in the yard and a shadow kid gets chased by the bees
and all the bees are gone so a homeless man comes
down and gets some honey. I hear my mother
in the kitchen drying out the darkness.

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