Here is what our living room looks like from the outside:
Slapping the paper on inflated balloons, they learn these techniques at school nowadays. This papier maché rendering of our dog Topsy was made by my daughter a couple of years ago.
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A Bad Guide 
I remember papier maché. We used to make ash trays.
A brilliant idea, that of the Chinese shadows on the windows!
Somehow I can’t see a class of children making ashtrays nowadays.
Thanks, Julia. It was only by chance. We noticed the horses.
No, ashtrays are completely forbidden now. It’s a pity. I was thinking this, last time my daughter brought me a modern sculpture from her art class…
Speaking of Chinese shadows (well, only I was talking about it…), have you seen Harry Potter’s last film? The way they told the story of Death, the three brothers and the deathly hallows is really really beautiful. At least, I loved it.
I thought ‘ashtray’ was the label applied to whatever mishap resulted from the attempt to throw a pot, so kids are probably producing exactly the same thing but with some alternative use being ascribed to it.
“Why, it looks just like an ashtray!”
“No, the school’s lawyer insists that it’s a Chinese chopstick holder.”
“Well, just put it over there by my cigarettes, darling.”
¡jajajaja!
¡jajajaja! to both of you.
Oh no, I haven’t seen the Potter film. I read all the books with Alma, except for the last one. I guess we’ll go then.
Today I got in the mail the dvd of this one Russian Ark that MMcM mentioned.
Yes, I also read all the books while they were coming to market.
When Trini, my elder daughter, was little I re-read the first three ones for her. Then, the last year she read the fourth and in the last 4 months she read the fifth, the sixth and the seventh. And after that she began again with all the saga (she said she wanted to read by herself the first three books, and she did it, in Spanish, of course)
She’s reading a lot (more than me, but this isn’t difficult, I must say…)
She also liked very much the Percy Jackson’s saga, and now she’s very interested in Greek mythology.
The Harry Potter films are sometimes kind of a disappointment for me, but the story of the three brothers in this last one really worth it.
I find Harry Potter so annoying. I watch those films and want evil to triumph.
(On aeroplanes, I should add, as that is the only place I’ve seen contemporary movies in the last ten years)
But I also, think, “If I was a kid now, I’d think this was the most amazing thing ever…”
I think the books are great, truly.
I’m sorry I didn’t know about the Percy Jackson saga, she might have liked those. Do they have the Artemis Fowl books, by Eoin Colfer, in Spanish? Alma really liked those. They’re about Irish fairies who live underground, written in the style of a Raymond Chandler detective story. Alma named our goat Holly after one of the main characters.
We both thought the Potter books could have been edited down by a couple of hundred pages each, but we liked them.
The Pinhut of the past would initiate a discussion on the means of determining literary merit at about this point.
However, here’s a riposte I employed for those who rate works of art on the basis of how much pleasure they provide:
http://www.bookarmor.com/?p=735
Is this a new Pinhut we’re seeing? I think you may be on to something with chocolate books. Vibrators sounds more like Kindle.
Pinhut is doomed to constant renewal.
In children’s books, literary merit is measured by how bored the reader gets. Not just children’s books, come to think of it. I think I measure it inversely to how bored and angry I’m getting, quite a lot like chocolate.
I look for an intense engagement with another consciousness. And style. The writers I favour engender, primarily, respect, for the talent and commitment they show in their works. As William Burroughs said, “You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lunchtime assignation with the work of Barbara Cartland…”
Then it sounds like you’re actively looking for it. As a non-writer I expect to find it, but when it’s not there I get annoyed.
Actively? As in, hunting out new sources to engage with? In terms of literature, definitely not, as I believe it’s rather obvious that, for whatever reason, there are very few first-rate writers emerging anymore. I did take a look at the Jonathan Franzen latest, because it was so lauded, and was duly astonished at the sort of writing people will praise today. I read histories and politics and philosophy instead. The last living novelist I was excited about was James Ellroy (who is always regarded by journalists as being a strange choice whenever writers single him out, but his string of early novels were incredible achievements). His later stuff is not so good, though.
With literature, what I basically do is limit myself to constant rereading of the few writers that do deliver. I am an obessive person anyway, so if somebody is going to read the final part of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger fifty times, then maybe it’s not surprising to discover that I *am* that person. The only additions in recent years to my personal canon were Thomas Bernhard, Maurice Blanchot and Fernando Pessoa. The latter’s The Book of Disquiet is a genuine marvel.
Someone has to make the case against, I suppose, so with a heavy heart…
Pretty much. I didn’t mention that when I tell people I am a writer, the stock replies are:
1) Are you going to be the next Dan Brown?
2) Are you going to be the next J K Rowling?
I make a face like I just trod in dogshit.
“So what do you write?”
“Words, mostly…”
James Ellroy’s good. i also like Benedict Anderson’s style in the book you recommended to me Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Otherwise, there are plenty of writers who I enjoy reading; I couldn’t narrow it to 3 or 4. I don’t read many living writers of fiction.
William Blake’s an interesting writer and artist — Jonathan Jones in the Guardian loves him — but he’s crap on a broomstick.
That was my reaction to the latest Harry Potter poster, “A twentysomething guy still riding a damned broomstick for a global audience…” Human dignity clearly has a price! (About 10 million pounds a flick)
I share this aversion to the fiction turned out by the living. Most of the good stuff was written before railways.
Wondrous photos, Artur.
Third one from the top put me in mind of this Weimar period “photogram” by Christian Schad.
(By the by, Pinhut, the current eminence of Franzen and several other equally boring darlings of the flatulent High Church literati — thinking here of Artur’s recent characterization of late Coleridge — simply indicates there always has to be a commodity available to fill the category “important writer”, even when there aren’t any.)
“there always has to be a commodity available to fill the category “important writer”, even when there aren’t any”
Yes. “Important writer” is now a grid reference. Three to the right and two up from Jilly Cooper.
I don’t think it’s any different in any other art form. All the living architects are crap compared to the famous dead ones. There are some artists I like, but none to compare with the dead painters, etc. Maybe there are some other good living poets besides you, Tom?
And Pinhut’s a good writer of fiction under his wacky nom de plume, “Jason Kennedy”.
Music’s something else.
No, AJP, she hasn’t read the Artemis Fowl books. I’ll look for them and see if she likes them. I’ve tried to make her read the Haggard books that I used to love when I was a child, but she wasn’t interested (yet, I hope). She’s only ten now, so she has plenty of time.
And I agree, at least the 6th and 7th Harry Potter’s books could be hundred (or more) pages shorter. But I enjoyed them anyway.
I would never compare J.K. Rowling with Dan Brown. I never could read more than two pages of his books. She is different, despite all the marketing and publicity that make her look bad. And of course the films, of which I only like for the art and scenery, in fact. Perhaps she’s not a Great Serious Writer (I don’t tend to like them, anyway), but a really funny and clever one. What would people who seek for Serious Litterature think about PG Woodhouse?
My daughter wasn’t as keen on the books I liked as I’d hoped. Apart from Artemis Fowl, she liked books that were set in the present the best. Now she’s more open. Potter was never one of her favourites, but we read it in English before it came out in Norwegian, so she always knew what was going to happen before her friends did and she liked that, I think.
Children’s books? Richmal Crompton’s William Brown books – “Just William” and so on.
They are my absolute favourite. My daughter loved them. We had them on an audio cassette, read by Martin Jarvis, who was unbelievably good as all the characters, especially William. We played them on long journeys in the car. I wonder if they’re translated into Spanish? That would be a job as hard as the recently-mentioned putting Pushkin into English.
Yes, I just found that there are translations in Spanish.
Look. But I fear the translation… it may be too Spanish and oldie (you know we speak quite different than Spanish people) but I’ll give them a try. Thank you.
(One thing I can’t refrain from saying… Those books covers really make you look old, Crown :-)
They are very, very funny. That’s the point of William.
Dearie & I are not contemporaries of the William books!
Just wait until you recommend Don Quixote to me!
OK.
I consider Cervantes a kin spirit, but I’m younger.
That’s true.
So you say.
A lot of people say they’re younger than they really are on the internet.
That’s because the internet has a way of dissipating the wisdom of age.
¡Me descubriste, AJP!
When I was young, my parents had a big collection of novels which must have been published after the war, so around 1950, give or take three or four years either way, and I wondered why they were not buying current novels, but only, occasionally, nice new editions of the classics. When I started to read those older novels, most of them turned out to be really bad. I understood then why the classics were called that: they were the ones that had stood the test of time, while the others had been discarded, while among the modern productions there were mostly bad novels mixed in with only a few good ones. Later, after I had moved to Canada, my mother thought it her duty to send me one of the literary prizewinners every year (there are many literary prizes in France). Some of them I did not finish, and some I never even opened after reading the blurb. The last one was an enormous volume, which I browsed through and eventually read in its entirety, even though I did not enjoy it much. So just because a work has won the Goncourt or other coveted prize does not mean much to me.
Lovely images!!!!
Your window pictures remind me of the Russian fairy tales that are shown on German TV in the afternoons around Christmas time.
Thank you, mab!
m-l, I agree. The prizes often go to disappointing books; it’s the same with the British Booker prize — and also the Nobel peace prize and the Turner art prize — it goes to show that these committee judgments aren’t very good indicators of quality, or really of anything significant. However, I’m quite looking forward to reading this book that won the Guardian’s first book award. Oddly, it’s currently out of print.
Bruessel, thanks. Do they have the Czech one on German television that they have here? We love it and watch it every year. Now I have to find a link… Tři oříšky pro Popelku, or Three Gifts for Cinderella.
I found Artemis Fowls books here, I’ll buy the first one and see what happens. They look funny, thank you. I think Trini will like them. One Christmas present less to think :-).
Alma loved them, let me know if Trini does too.
bruessel, are you sure those are Russian fairy tales ? All the ones I know of, and watch every Christmas, are Czech productions (including the Cinderella one, the film music of which is sounding in my mind as I write).
There are some good German productions too, made I think in the ’80s or ’90s. One I saw twice recently was called something like Der Prinz und das Bauernmädchen. The initially smart-alecky prince makes up riddles for her to solve, and she solves them by clever, artistic means. Aleck gets smart by falling in love with her.
I do know that “Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel”, which is on every year, is Czech, but the two fairy tales I watched while in Germany last year were Russian: Baba Yaga http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069544/ and The Fair Varvara http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0191625/ Another famous one that I’ve always missed but am hoping to catch this year is “Die Schneekönigin” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254782/
I don’t like the German ones so much because I recognise too many of the actors (murder suspect yesterday, fairy tale king today).
Last year I saw/heard a very strange story in English about crazy Russians, the Tempter, flying cats (deer, dachshunds ?), hidden money and drunken priests. One of more of the actors spoke heavy Scots. I can’t imagine where I could have seen a film in English – must have been on TV. In fact I think it was a BBC radio play – but so vivid and weird that I remember it as a film. If anyone happens to know what that was, please tell me !
Grumbly, it was a rather “advanced” production of King Lear.
>A. J. P. Crown, Julia
I have « Guillermo el incomprendido » (« More William ») since 1970.
May I shamelessly congratulate myself on having updated the Taiwan political posters entry?
http://www.bookarmor.com/?p=3168
Sure to raise a smile.
Sí, sin duda que puedes!
Ya voy a verlo =-)
I recommend the Taiwan political posters.
Jesùs, did you like Guillermo? You must say honestly, I have no idea how well the satire in these books could be translated. The boys behave like anthropologists in New Guinea trying to oblige everyone by following conventions that they find mystifying. The stories depend on being able to enjoy the schoolboys’ own logic. And enjoying the caricatures, especially Violet-Elizabeth Bott.
>A. J. P. Crown
Oh, I’m sorry! This book was a gift of my school, a kind of reward. I only read a bit; then I was 9 years old and I hardly read.
And I’m sorry I got your accent backwards above.
Nine years old in 1970, that makes you… pushing 50 — you must have learnt to read by now. Even I can read, now I’m 57.
“A kind of reward” is that what we would call a prize, maybe for coming top of the class?
Ja!
In 1970 I wasn’t born yet. One more year and then, yes… I did my triumphal entrance to this world (this doesn’t sound at all like me!! ¿Who’s talking?…)
When I feel so old and tired as these days, is nice to think I’m young in comparison with someone…
Although time is relative, the important thing is what you did with it… See, I’m depressed again… by my own commonplace thought ;-(
I’d like to read some of those William’s books. I’m sure my mother knew them, I forgot to ask her.
Wow, I’m not even as old as Julia! (1972) When my 80+ year old ‘girlfriend’ took me to karaoke last month, I was the youngest person in the room by 50 years! I felt like a foetus as I sipped my oolong.
Probably, AJ. I will save Julia a job and announce that in castellano, prize = premio.
I was told I have a Latin-American accent today, by a woman who was unaware that I had been in Guatemala for the last 3 years. A strangely worrying discovery!
Were you speaking in English?
Yes, this comment was directed at me after her hearing me speaking English. So she began by complimenting me on having learned English! (If I mention I have dark skin, black hair, etc)
Was she a native speaker of English herself?
I’m watching the Nobel prize thing on telly. They’ve got Liv Ullman reading Liu Xiaobo’s speech he made when they sentenced him to 11 years’ prison. Very good.
Do you class Americans as native speakers? ;-)
I listened to the Taiwan president (not recognised by China) speak today at a ceremony to mark World Human Rights Day. Very moving occasion.
Going to be writing it up for the LRB.
Good. I’ll look forward to reading that.
Julia. Don’t be depressed.
>A. J. P. Crown
I don’t know if I have to say: Oh my God or oh my English.
In 1970, for me, a book like this was a “weighty tome”.
Here, in the 60’s, we started the school when we are 5 so I learnt to read when I’m 5. Then I started to learn French when I was 12. Now the children can start school when they are 3 and learn to read when they are 4 or 5, and they also start a foreign language (normally English); they can learn other language (voluntarily) when they are 12.
As you know, I have started to learn English in my late forties whit my hard brain.
As regards “pushing 50”, my next Birthday still needs 5 months, and I add I look much younger than I am (at least 6 months) (LOL).
About the prize, I only meant that I didn’t choose this book, but yes although only the fourth.
P.S.
I’ll read this book, I promise. Since I have started to read books I only have left one book without finish.
Your English is great. Better than the other Jesus.
Sorry, I just get to see all these new comments.
I was in the torture chamber. Self-inflicted torture.
Yes, pinhut, you are younger :-P , so what! I’m… I’m… You wait a few hours and I’ll find a perfect response… Just you wait!
Thank you, AJP. I’m on it.
“So what! I’m planning to live forever.” would be a possibility.
Julia, don’t bother!
Anybody who saw the view from my apartment can win any argument over who has it best by bringing that up again.
¡ jajaja !
That’s a good one!
(I’ll wait a little longer to use it so that, perhaps, he forgets that the line is not mine… Wise move, don’t you think?)
oh, he answer first!
OK, Llamémoslo un empate! :-)
>A. J. P. Crown
Thanks, but it’s not true; I have a good dictionary. As regards my namesake you know he spoke in Aramaic but his first followers could be heard in all languages, although it is a (holy) ghost story.
>Julia
A young like you can’t be depressed!
The obvious riposte would be, “So what? I’m not.”
A draw it is.
bruessel: I don’t like the German ones so much because I recognise too many of the actors (murder suspect yesterday, fairy tale king today).
They probably have long-term contracts with a few actors. Good for the actors, not so much for the TV audience. On trips to see my family in France I used to watch TV with my parents. They were very fond of the German series “Inspector Derrick” (shown dubbed in French). It was a good series, but outside of the main characters the other actors would show up repeatedly in different roles. They were good actors, but the effect was jarring.
m-l – this sounds great to me. Even better, if they voice and star in all the commercials, too, read the news and present the weather.
Are you an actor, then, pinhut? those actors monopolize all the roles!
m-l, I just feel, aesthetically, it would be great if perhaps just ten people were playing all of the roles on a channel. The scope for multi-layered references between scripts, actors, situations, etc, would be enormous. “Wow, look, he said he loved her in the soap opera that finished ten minutes ago, now he’s putting poison in her drink in the detective show… but, well, she looks fine now, as she reads out the weather for tomorrow… and, my god, they’re husband and wife in the late movie, and now he is bringing her another drink, ‘Is it poison this time?’ she asks, and he pretends to look confused…” The weather report, rather than refer to the climate where the viewers are, would refer to the weather *inside* the TV channel, so each day, the characters in all of the programs would be wearing extra sweaters or bikinis and so on, typhoons, earthquakes.
Hmm, I can see why I don’t need a TV, reading this.
M-l, Having grown up in England Pinhut may have been influenced by “the BBC Drama Repertory Company”, which filled the roles in radio plays and sometimes soap operas. Repertory companies are a very good English stage tradition, where the same people are playing Congreve one night and Alan Bennett the next, and in different towns. For some reason this reminds me of a play & film called The Killing Of Sister George, that I remember as being very good though it’s probably very dated now.
Yes, repertory, though I’ve only been to the theatre on one occasion and that was to see my own writing performed. As I pointed out, there were two advantages, “One, it’s free, and two, I know it’s not crap.”
Well, the internet is theatre of a sort, don’t you think, Pinhut?
Apropos of which, Artur, you may find this of interest (if only because it is dedicated to you).
Not to speak of its humble companion, the folk version.
That’s a good point, but we can’t all write our own plays to ensure satisfaction. I’ve been to see many plays without that security and never once been disappointed — well, not to any significant extent. I love going to the theatre, especially in Britain.
All the world…
I do plan, finally, to go and see a production of Shakespeare, The Tempest would be good.
Oh, I forgot to count all the avant-garde theatre I sat through at university. Funny, that. So I ‘misspoke myself’ in Nixonian fashion, because I have seen pieces by such groups as Uninvited Guest (awful), Desperate Optimists (very good), Blind Ditch (my friends) and Goat Island (terrible).
And Forced Entertainment (not as clever as they supposed themselves to be)
I might have known. You obviously go the theatre far more often than I do.
I was at a tiny arts college doing avant-garde stuff for three years. You went to the on-site theatre pieces (some by students, some by professionals) and then went to the bar afterwards to moan about how crap it was and get absolutely wasted on flat beer. And the government wants to take all this away???
“Do you class Americans as native speakers?”
“and then went to the bar afterwards to moan about how crap it was and get absolutely wasted on flat beer”
Native tongues can be difficult to pick up any more, ‘twould seem, even for the natives. Imagine how complicated the arcane stylistic nuances for mere foreigners, or those who have at some point been coerced into attending a Shakespeare play, then.
Yes. you were at Dartington. When I was young, we knew a man who was the music teacher at Dartington Hall school. A very nice man he was. I always thought it sounded like a great place to go to school.
Like Tom, I’m wondering about the flat beer. It sounds like incompetence on the part of the organisers. When I was at art school we weren’t forced to drink flat beer. At architecture school they only had cans of Budweiser or Miller beer that tasted exactly the same and probaly caused cancer.
“Well, the internet is theatre of a sort, don’t you think…?”
True, but it’s also a cricket ground, a cesspit and a fruit salad.
It was not incompetence, AJ, more that the bar manager was an absolute rogue. It was probably three years of home brew.
“Do you class Americans as native speakers?”
“and then went to the bar afterwards to moan about how crap it was and get absolutely wasted on flat beer”
I take the point here, but I circled around choosing the sort of phrasing we used back then in the late 90s to capture our attitude. Did I speak like this yesterday at the human rights day in Taipei? No.
(And it was just a jest re: status of Americans, I don’t want those unpleasant folks coming back to ‘open a can of whoopass’ etc, on me)
I can almost hear that bar manager (who generally hated students), “You’re creative types, imagine bubbles in it…”
I believe you may like this post on German (East & West) propaganda during cold war.
http://rectoversoblog.com/2010/12/13/propaganda/
¡Saludos!
That’s interesting. I had no idea about those leaflets. I wonder if there’s any record of whether the DDR thought their campaign was successful?