Posts by Jolisa
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Ah yes, the famous mental "heath" sector -- not to be confused with the more medically-recognized mental health sector. I suspect this person is trying to insinuate something about my personality, although I'm not quite sure what it is.
Tis a literary allusion, m'dear. They have detected (probably using the arcane tools of comparative literature, which are surprisingly similar to those things the dentist uses to remove tea-stains from one's teeth) the brooding, Heathcliffian depths that you usually keep so well hidden under your sunny, workaday, banjo-strumming scientist shtick.
(She said, wutheringly).
I'm off to spill something on my copy of the Reserve Bank Annual so I can check that it does, indeed, wipe clean.
-
So the great NZ hat-tipping, cock-snooking, conventions-of-plagiarism-challenging, pastiche-mash-up-novel-of-collective-genius remains to be written. Perhaps we can have a crack at it here?
Cos, as they almost certainly didn't chant in the Castro during the great authorship-rights rally of 1978: "we're here/ we're intertextual/ get use from it!"
Philip, I haven't read Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Varanasi/Death in Venice, but am I right in supposing that all the allusions he makes are all to Thomas Mann?
Actually, here's Dyer himself, as interviewed on the Amazon page for the book: "Yes, the first part is a version of the Mann novella--the opening sentence is ripped straight out of the opening line of the original."
That's fine, and not at all comparable to what's going on in this case, I'd argue. Explicitly spinning off a classic is one thing. But when one of your borrowed passages (the one on prison design) comes from a <200pp guide to Tasmania that tells you how many sheep were exported in 1973, outlines recent hydroelectric developments, and, in passing, describes the Tasmanian aborigines as having been "somewhat childlike," that's not allusive po-mo/po-co, it's just random.
Of course -- advocatus diabili here -- it may also become a terribly brilliant and/or perfectly acceptable wikipedia-age way to write a Warholian soup-can of a novel* -- just not under the current conventions (or laws), or in a way necessarily likely to win the trust or good will of readers accustomed to the credit system, and who prefer their fiction to bear the tragically old-fashioned imprint of a single author's sensibility, set against the inevitable aura of the entire history of literature.
Honestly, feel free to go ahead and make the argument, anyone, and/or produce a great example. Because it will make novel-writing a helluva lot easier for all of us.
* I don't actually believe this, I just thought I'd type it to see how it looks. My analogy doesn't work, because Warhol's soup can is precisely that singular soup can, not a scrap of clip-art here and a smidge of nutritional info there, all photoshopped together into an unconvincing simulacrum of a soup can. Plus, it was nearly a century ago that Modernism and Dada got all excited about collage, and I'm really not convinced that cut-and-paste wiki-novels are the next big thing. But argue away -- my pillow fight has resumed and I'm needed as ref. -
One of the bi-products of this system
Heh. Thread-merge. (If you say Emma's name three times backwards she will appear and furnish a list of famous bi authors, which is to say, all the great ones. Shakespeare in the house!).
I would chime in at length but am stuck in weekend mode, supervising terrifying pillow fights between an enormous 8 year old and a wily 3.5 who is willing to play dirty, if bringing a sword to a pillow fight with somebody twice your size counts as playing dirty. So, uh, nothing deep or on topic to offer here at the moment. (Except to say that we were inspired by that minor intertextual masterpiece, The Princess Bride.)
But Philip, your points about film are, as always, golden. And Jake, Giovanni, Danielle & Keir have articulated everything I might have said about why they're tangential at best to current discussion.
"If the novel had taken a knowing and artful spin along the lines of
"who owns history", I'd have loved it, whether it was a roaring success or beautiful failure. Alas, for all our purposes here, Bridget Jones's Diary it was not. The afterword, rather than saying "you'll know where to find more if you're looking for it, wink wink," is a very conventional set of nods to other people's ownership of various aspects of the story. Just, not all of them. Which was the problem. Rather than allusion or invocation, this struck me, and still does, as just a drive-by.(Latest find = chunks of online encyclopedia entries. Small chunks, but chunks nonetheless).
So the great NZ hat-tipping, cock-snooking, conventions-of-plagiarism-challenging, pastiche-mash-up-novel-of-collective-genius remains to be written. Perhaps we can have a crack at it here?
[Uh oh, got carried away - pillow fight ends in tears - exit pursued by small enraged bears]
[Just to note: I've edited the above for clarity at Jolisa's request. For some reason she never got the magic moderator privileges -- RB]
-
Most beautiful chord in the world, that's why. Wanna arm-wrestle over it?
-
Rofflenui, OtherDavidH.
So I've been having a few illuminating conversations with people on both ends of the literary editing process. Gosh the literary sausage factory is a mysterious business, even, or more so, when it's gourmet sausages we're talking about.
I have always assumed that authors submit really, really, really clean copy, just because I'm a fusspot about that myself. But not all do -- some really are better storytellers than they are writers. I say that rather jealously as someone who is a better (journeywoman) writer than (blazingly creative) storyteller.
In any case, it sounds like the publishing houses might want to spend a little more lolly on their editors and prioritise the editing. Sure, it would mean rejiggering the budget, but think what they'd save on reprints/amendments/errata slips and all that after-market PR.
I'd love to hear from any honest-to-goodness editors (or people who've been lucky enough to submit to a really good one) on this, if they're feeling bold enough to break cover??
Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
-
But that is absurd, don't you think? Imagine reading a novel then coming upon a description that is suddenly in quote marks with a footnote or endnote! No, better that you write a novel using all your own words, even if you have consulted other works for information.
Exactly. Footnotes have no place in a novel (unless you're Terry Pratchett, Kurt Vonnegut, or David Foster Wallace, I guess). The sort of exception I was thinking of was not footnoting per se, but doing what Witi does at several points in his novel, which is to say something like "Wakefield's speech was inspiring, especially when he said..." (NB this is a remembered example).
Even then, I'd rather have the character describe how the speech affected them, maybe including a phrase that lingered in their mind, rather than wading through paragraphs of the speech itself.
And i don't think novelists (providing they are not copying directly from others of course) should list all their resources, either. I think this reduces a novel to an assemblage of facts and diminishes the work of imagination that goes into it. A novel is not an academic paper, nor is it non-fiction.
Yep, I think you're right there too. Maybe one or two really pertinent books that changed their thinking. And Ian McEwan, for example, could have signalled further something like "I am indebted to Lucilla Andrews's powerful memoir for one indelible scene, which alert readers will note for themselves."
Plus,one of the dangers of appearing to give a comprehensive list is that you're in trouble if it turns out not to be comprehensive.
-
Ukulele chords are always on topic, David. You know that.
But on the piano or ukulele you can play:
Blue [G]smoke goes drifting [G7]by into the [C]deep blue [A7]sky,
And [D]when I think of [D7] home I sadly [G]sigh...I play it in C, but transposing into your basso profundo cowboy G, I'd use an A minor where you've got A7.
It's sadder that way. Sigh.
After reading the sources she seemed -- to employ the terminology of comparative literature -- a bit crap.
Ah, but see, was it interesting crap? One of the things that my (ahem) professional studies gave me was the ability to appreciate a beautiful failure. There's almost always more to say about one of those than there is about something that succeeds in what it set out to do. And finding things to say is our business.
-
(continued from above post) The overwriting is one thing (when it's not purple spheres and glittering stars, it's whales and rainbows) but the difficulty stepping outside of one's present-day understanding of the universe is quite another. And that's a perfect, subtle, example. Nice close reading!
I take your point about the distinction between story-telling and writing. There is something rather intimidating (to me, anyway) about having to sustain a historical thought-experiment over 500 pages, and I wonder if anxiety about being able to do so might have led to the surfeit of research and all that historical buttressing and scaffolding. I don't know. Perhaps the story could be told from the inside-out for better results... and/or as a series of linked short stories?
Maybe the thing is that he's good at writing what he's good at writing. For all that Ihimaera has come to disavow them, his early works still really work for me. There's a powerful love and compassion and warmth and also sly critique in those stories (and in the good bits of Whale Rider) that, while not to everyone's taste, is a distinctive 'voice' and a memorable one, and we'd be the poorer without it.
I see his discomfort with aspects of those early works, but I think if sentimentalism is how one finds one's stories, then one should embrace it, not be embarrassed by. But then I'm a sentimental soul.
As Oscar Wilde (another sentimental type) is said to have said, at least on greeting cards: "Be yourself; everyone else is taken."
And there's Judy Garland's version, too: "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."
-
Spike, that's an extremely astute set of observations.
-
I think she is inviting you to a swingers party
Ding dong!
I think that there is a strong case for intertextuality, and it sounds like if he'd been open about his appropriation and reinterpretation of the works he'd have a much stronger work, but a thoroughly different work.
That would have been fantastic. And it's interesting, because I think that is a major part of Ihimaera's literary kaupapa - see the bit in Guy Somerset's article where he raises the question of who owns history.
As far as I can tell, though, the "reinterpreted" quotations are mainly window-dressing, and the properly cited secondary sources, especially when it comes to the Tasmanian section, are used more or less uncritically, as pieces of "fact."