LITERARY TOUR in New York

As you may know, our school  is organizing a trip to New York in February. We have decided to devote one of the days to taking a literary tour recommended in the New York Times.

Here's the link in case you're interested. It takes you to some libraries, bookstores, hotels and coffee houses somehow related to books, literature or writers. We'll tell you about it when we come back!!

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

It's high time we talk about GEORGE R.R. MARTIN, don't you think? He's books have been widely acclaimed, both in Spain and overseas, as has the TV series, Game of Thrones. What about you, are you fans?

Here's an extract from a review from the New York Times:

Martin’s books are essentially the War of the Roses with magic, set largely in a land called Westeros. They are written in the third person, but each chapter takes the point of view of a single character, with several characters recurring throughout. Of particular importance are noble families like the Starks (good guys), the Targaryens (at least one good guy, or girl), the Lannisters (conniving), the Greyjoys (mostly conniving), the Baratheons (mixed bag), the Tyrells (unclear) and the Martells (ditto), most of whom are feverishly endeavoring to advance their ambitions and ruin their enemies, preferably unto death. But as we discover, these people should be paying less attention to their own squabbling and more attention to the nearly deserted northern reaches of the kingdom. Because beyond “The Wall,” the giant construction of ice and stone that marks Westeros’s border, a race of creatures called “the Others” is preparing to . . . well, it’s not clear yet, but it seems to involve turning people into zombies, which is almost worse than turning them into Lannisters.

Martin possesses two virtues in abundance. First, he’s unapologetically coldblooded. Westeros is a dangerous place governed by the whims of men, not the rule of law, and the first novel in his series is famous for (spoilers follow!) dispatching a thoroughly admirable major character with whom readers have been identifying for most of the book. The killing is shocking, and it’s done on the impulse of a temporarily empowered child. (The same child is poisoned two books later, so hey, all’s well that ends well.) This tendency is less in evidence in “A Dance With Dragons” — in fact, some characters are beginning to seem charmed — but at least one moment in the book will have readers saying, “No way did that just happen.”

Martin’s second virtue is a nearly supernatural gift for storytelling. All of his hundreds of characters have grace notes of history and personality that advance a plot line. Every town has an elaborately recalled series of triumphs and troubles. Moreover, historical asides are inseparable from the books’ larger narratives, so as you’re propelled through the story, the sensation is like riding a wave that’s somehow moving away from shore, with the water beneath you growing deeper and more shadowed as your speed increases. 

Read the whole article here.

Ian McEwan's THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS (1981)

Ian McEwan's novella is actually anything but comfort. It is a shocking psychological novel which nestles into one's mind and stirs up questions. 

Read a review by John Leonard here

  
 Here you can also find a series of reflections on the novella.

The Comfort of Strangers  was adapted into a film in 1990 by Paul Schrader, the screenplay written by Harold Pinter.It was starred by  Natasha Richardson, Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett and Helen Mirren.

EOI SAR NEXT BOOK CLUB MEETING: February, 20.

Hi everybody!

This is to let you know the day and time of our next meeting in Sar:

WEDNESDAY, February 20 at 8pm in room 7.

We’ll be discussing Ian McEwan’s THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS (1981)

Hope to see you there and enjoy your reading!

 

WHEN LETTERS BECOME AN OBSESSION

Maybe E.L. Doctorow was right when he said "Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia".  Today I'd like to talk about writers that were OBSESSED (I cannot think of a better word) with letters or words... or arent' they all?

In any case, Stephen King has the protagonist of Misery (lying in Annie Wilkes's bed) write a novel with a typewriter that's missing a letter. We read his manuscript, where that letter is missing, as proof of the absurdity and desperation of his situation. The situation worsens when other letters go missing, to the point that the protagonist has to fill in the gaps with a pencil, or maybe avoid the words that contain too many of the missing letters.

Well, at least there was an excuse here, but there are other writers who didn't have one and they still did it: write whole novels without using a particular letter. Take George Perec, whose book, La Disparition is written with French words and expressions that don't contain the letter "E". And guess what, the team of translators (because yes, one would not be enough) into Spanish translated it without using the letter "A", entitling the book El secuestro.

American writer, Ernest Vincent Wright, professor at the Technological Institute in Massachussetts wrote a book in 1939, entitled Gadsby that contains 50,110 words and not even one "E".

And then you have the opposite trend, authors who wanted a letter to be in the limelight throughout their whole book. Such as a weird poem in latin by German writer Christianus Pierus entitled Christus crucifixus. A thousand verses where all words start with "C". Or Russian writer Nikolái Kultiápov, who wrote a book with 16,000 words ALL of them starting by "O" in Russian...

What do you think???