Trendy But Casual

York, York

I know I should be talking about the fantastic Toni Morrison reading last night, but a post by Bookman Beattie praising this piece by Henry Alford in a recent New Yorker reminded me that I wanted to complain about it.

The premise is: taxi drivers in York are learning Auden poems to celebrate the centenary of the poet's birth. So the whole piece is written from the point of view of a taxi driver. A London taxi driver. Who says things like "corblimey" and "guv." The piece is even called "The Knowledge," after the training and test that prospective London taxi drivers have to undergo.

Taxi drivers in York, of course, are not tested on the Knowledge, nor do they speak in a Cockney accent. York is more than two-hundred miles north of London. It's in Yorkshire, innit (as Alford's cabbie might say). Alford's cabbie also drives an actress from York all the way to Paddington Station in London - a drive of four hours. (It's Vicky Entwistle, from Lancashire, who, for the last ten years, has appeared in Coronation Street, a series set and filmed in Lancashire.

Miss Entwistle may have wandered into the wrong county, but Alford's cab driver says she knows "her way round a pound note." This is some achievement: pound notes were withdrawn from currency in England in 1984. Maybe this is one of the many reasons this piece seems so very tired, so very old-fashioned. It's as funny as Dick Van Dyke on the rooftops of London ('Cor - what a sight!'). Why is wit like Brando's web-bound, while lame pieces like this end up in the New Yorker?

The one actual York reference is a mention of Tower Street. I was at university in York in the late 80s, and loved it. It has Roman walls, the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, and Bettys Cafe Tea Rooms, where I frittered away much of my time and money. T.Middy and I hope to visit all of the above some time this summer.

Toni Morrison, Any Minute Now

Toni Morrison flies into New Orleans this afternoon: she'll be reading at Tulane this evening. (McAlister at 7 PM - doors open at six, and there'll be live music from six-thirty.) This visit has been consuming us for months, sincce we first talked about inviting her, and I can't believe it's finally April 12. If any crazy people happen to read this, please do not even think of trying to take over the Q&A period: dozens of students (from Tulane and from the public high school classes who attended our Morrison lecture series) submitted questions, and we chose seven of the best to speak tonight.

I know that the local crazy people are not reading this: they are at home, plotting to tell Toni Morrison that someone blew up the levees.

Two of my students, Ada Bidiuc and David Olson, were interviewed about the Morrison visit by the Times-Picayune, and they acquitted themselves extremely well. By the way, I'm not the director of creative writing here, as the article suggests; it's my fantastic colleague, Peter Cooley. Poets run things; fiction writers are too busy getting their nails done. At least, that's the way it works around here.

Links

Trendy But Casual (the novel, not this glorious blog) is getting some reviews: at Beattie's Book Blog, The Lumiere Reader, and the Sunday Star-Times. Also, I answered some questions for NZ Girl. The photo on that page is a self-portrait, taken in my office at Tulane. (Students may recognize the chair.) This is why you should blow-dry your hair every day: you never know when you may need to take a self-portrait lolling in the fake leather armchair in your office.

Results, etc

So: Larry Birkhead is the babydaddy. Now I can get some work done.

Big envelopes were just delivered to my door, from Penguin. I'd hoped they contained very big checks, but in fact they held a collection of quite elaborate promotional materials from the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award. Almost 170 libraries (representing 49 countries) took part, though I think I've obsessed enough about libraries in the post below.

Also in the mail: Pico Iyer's novel, Abandon, pretty much the only one of his books I don't have already. I interviewed him yesterday morning, for a New Zealand magazine, because he's going to be at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in late May. (As am I, by the way, if you're passing through; so is my new friend, Richard Ford.) As well as being a brilliant travel writer, Pico Iyer is possibly the world's nicest man.

Online: in last Sunday's Observer, Henry Porter asks "Where is our Orwell, where is our Dickens?" In the article, he argues that there's not enough "serious criticism" in Britain produced by writers or intellectuals. "Where are the novelists with their indictments of government and society? Where are exposés of some unregarded part of the termite heap? Where are the dramatists who can barely speak for their anger?" Instead, he says, "there seem to be an awful lot of middle-aged blokes dragging their tortured souls around the literary circuit, fretting about their display in Waterstone's."

Also online, you can visit Ian McEwan's web site and see the three very slightly different covers for the U.K., Canadian and U.S. markets of his new novel, On Chesil Beach. Maybe someone can tell me why these covers need to be different at all. I really don't understand why covers MUST be changed all the time, and the incredibly similarity of each of these covers suggest that it was a waste of time and money. (It's the same photo in each, handled in a slightly different way - the main difference is in typeface.)

McEwan was not happy with one aspect of Natasha Walter's review in The Guardian, by the way: she confused a character's views on the peace movement in the 60s with his own. He wrote a smackdown letter to the editor about it. I'm going to use the last paragraph of it when I teach a novel-writing class next semester.

Numbers

Here's an interesting story from the place I live, Louisiana.

FEMA is beginning to release money to Mississippi for an alternative housing program. Mississippi has been awarded $281.3 million, compared with $74.5 million for Louisiana, even though it lost 61,000 homes during Hurricane Katrina compared with 205,000 homes lost in Louisiana during Katrina and Rita.

The Times-Picayune reports: "FEMA said that the alternative housing financing wasn't determined based on need but on the quality of the proposals." The paper goes on to say: "Louisiana officials, including Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, said the distribution appeared to be a gift from the Republican Bush administration to Mississippi and its two GOP senators and Republican governor." You can read the complete story here.

Norwegian Libraries Rule

Hibiscus Coast was longlisted for the 2007 Dublin IMPAC Literary Award, thanks to the Dunedin Public Library. The short list, announced this week, is: Julian Barnes, Arthur and George; Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way; J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man; Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Peter Hobbs, The Short Day Dying; Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men; Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses; Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown. (I can't begrudge my boyfriend, of course.)

Note: all men. A weirder note: five of the short list were nominated by Norwegian libraries. (Among others: you can get multiple library nominations.) Books which were NOT nominated by Norwegian libraries: Safran Foer, Coetzee and Rushdie. Books with only one library nomination: Hobbs (Bergen), Petterson (Bergen) and Rushdie (Berlin). The book with the most library nominations (eight): the Safran Foer.

Slapdown among Norwegian libraries: Bergen (2 successful nominations), Oslo (2), Stavanger (1) and Deichmanske Bibliotek (3). If you're a writer reading this, send your book to a Norwegian librarian.

Successful nominations by a library south of the equator: just one - the State Library of Queensland, for Irish writer Sebastian Barry. Number of nominees from south of the equator: one - Coetzee, who's won the Nobel Prize.

Author bios on the IMPAC short list site that do not mention where the author is from: four (Barnes, who is British, Safran Foer and McCarthy, who are from the U.S., and Rushdie, who was born in Bombay, lived for a long time in London and now lives in New York.) I guess you could say three of these writers are famous enough to dispense with prosaic biographical information; Rushdie would argue, perhaps, that nationality isn't important. Or maybe you only transcend your nationality if you come from or live in one of the 'important' places of the world.

Number of succesful nominations from a South American library: one - Bogota for Coetzee. Number of successful nominations from an African library: none. Number from an Asian library: none. And before anyone points out that nominated books must be written in or translated into English, note that a large number of non-English-speaking libraries in Europe are represented here, aside from those canny Norwegians: Germany, Belgium, Finland, Greece, and Russia. By the way, British and Irish libraries don't dominate - Liverpool nominated Barnes, as did Belfast; Cork nominated Coetzee; and Dublin nominated Barry. Eleven U.S. and Canadian libraries feature on the shortlist - all nominating Barry, Safran Foer or McCarthy.

I'm too tired of all these lists to draw conclusions.

First Post

My third novel, Trendy But Casual, was published this week in New Zealand, and I've been doing a few readings: the Tennessee Williams festival here in New Orleans last weekend, and then the University of Arkansas. (I was invited by Ellen Gilchrist, and got to spend time with her wonderful MFA students.)

Until the talented Miss Hannah has time to make me a web site, I'll be posting here now and again.