Siri Hustvedt on Jane Austen

Happy holidays clubbers!!

For Austenites (lovers of Jane Austen’s work) and for all those who are reading THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN, here goes a “Christmas present”: a video where Siri Hustvedt reflects on Jane Austen’s work and its importance today.
(I’ve just noticed Jane Austen is the author we’ve mentioned the most here…!).
Enjoy your watching (and your readings):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytoCUi8sYn8

MINI SAGAS

I just came across this website where they publish 50-word stories, like the mini sagas we worked with in the past. I saw this one and just wanted to share it:

"He gazed longingly, desire written in every fiber. The irresistible scent teased him. Quick slip and grab; the prize was his!

She was too fast, and caught him by the ear. Disappointment sank into the pit of his stomach.
Mother put him on time-out. No apple pie until after dinner."

Tennessee Williams's "The World I Live In"

Here you have extracts from "The World I Live in" an essay by Tennessee Williams which may enrich our reading of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (and, by extension, our worldview!).Hope to see you this Wednesday to discuss about it!

Do you have any positive message, in your opinion?
Indeed I do think that I do.
Such as what?
The crying, almost screaming, need of a great worldwide human effort to know ourselves and each other a great deal better, well enough to concede that no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil and so forth. If people, and races and nations, would start with that self-manifest truth, then I think that the world could sidestep the sort of corruption which I have chosen as the basic, allegorical theme of my plays as a whole.
(...)
Why don't you write about nice people? Haven't you ever known any nice people in your life?
My theory about nice people is so simple that I am embarrassed to say it
Please, say it!
Well, I've never met one that I couldn't love if I completely knew him and understood him, and in my work I have tried at least to arrive at knowledge and understanding.
I don't believe in "original sin". I don't believe in "guilt". I don't believe in villains and heroes-only right or wrong ways that individuals have chosen, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, their antecedents.
This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it. And that's why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.
Why don't we meet these people and get to know them as I try to meet and know people in my plays? This sounds terribly vain and egotistical.
I don't want to end on such a note. Then what shall I say? That I know that I am a minor artist who has happened to write one or two major works? I can't even say which they are. It doesn't matter. I have said my say. I may say it still again, shut up now. It doesn't depend on you, it depends entirely on me, and the operation of chance or Providence in my life.

This essay first appeared in the London Observer, 7 April 1957

To read the whole essay go to:

http://books.google.es/books?id=VcyFkNOYsFgC&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=the+world+i+live+in+tennessee+williams&source=bl&ots=fmzy5bBqU-&sig=iUVjH-tH9DPngV-HZDM5rzhtDG0&hl=es&ei=9N3lTpDxO9SAhQfR6smFAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20world%20i%20live%20in%20tennessee%20williams&f=false

WRITING - Connections

YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS:
http://www.metmuseum.org/connections/writing#/Complete/

Researcher of Medieval manuscripts Wendy Stein discusses her fascination with writing and its history.

"If somebody hands me something that I need to sign and hands me a ballpoint pen, I will reject it."

Over 400 Xmas card every year!! OMG.

But I do like pens with a continuous flow too and FONTS!

I've kept a journal since I was 9, I keep writing letters and postcards and I love anything that's handwritten (with only ONE exception to this rule). I can see how my handwriting has evolved in so many ways, ant it's actually kind of funny to see the e-/in-volution.

The idea she mentions about "Your personhood conveyed through handwriting", I personally think it's BEAUTIFUL.

What do you think about writing? Handwriting? What about your writing experience?

WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE SIMILE, LIKE?

The worst similes are sometimes just a hair's breadth away from the striking dislocation of the best.

A late-night investigation into why a group of teenagers could be heard laughing like sozzled hyenas downstairs while the rest of us tried to get to sleep revealed the cause as this list of 56 hilarious similes, purportedly from US high school students.

I'm attaching the first ten as a sample, check the rest out here:

Borrowed from this blog.

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

ONLY FOR JANE AUSTEN FANS...

... who I know are very numerous in our book clubs!

Jane Austen biographer discovers 'lost portrait'

Biographer Dr Paula Byrne is convinced that 'imaginary portrait' was actually drawn from life

Jane Austen scholar Dr Paula Byrne claims to have discovered a lost portrait of the author which, far from depicting a grumpy spinster, shows a writer at the height of her powers and a woman comfortable in her own skin.

The only accepted portraits of Austen to date are her sister Cassandra's 1810 sketch, in which she looks cross, and an 1870 adaptation of that picture. But when Byrne, biographer of Evelyn Waugh and Mary "Perdita" Robinson and with an Austen biography due out in 2013, was given a portrait of a female author acquired by her husband, Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, at auction, she was immediately struck by the possibility that it could be a lost drawing of Austen.

Read the whole article here.