I don’t exactly know what Chaos Thaoghaire is, but it has quickly become the Studio 54 of the good-looking Dublin arts & letters scene, and the theme of the next big night (Feb 17, at the Odessa Club) is Sex, or “Would you?”
Chaos Thaoghaire has been profiled in the Irish Times, and events get booked out quickly.
Circa Art Magazine’s editor, Peter FitzGerald, had a physical aversion to the above image, and has taken a bold but refreshing step by naming – as an editor of a major art magazine – irony-only art cowardice.
Read Don Paterson’s 2004 TS Eliot lecture on the way forward for poetry:
The way forward, it seems to me, lies in the redefinition of ‘risk’ To take a risk in a poem is not to write a big sweary outburst about how dreadful the war in Iraq is, even if you are the world’s greatest living playwright. This kind of poetry is really nothing but a kind of inverse sentimentalism – that’s to say by the time it reaches the page, it’s less real anger than a celebration of one’s own strength of feeling. Since it tries to provoke an emotion of which its target readers are already in high possession, it will change no-one’s mind about anything; more to the point, anyone can do it. Neither is ‘risk’ the deployment of disjunctive syntax, innovatory punctuation or wee apropos-of-nothing allusions to Heisenberg and Lacan; because anyone can do that, too. Risk, of the sort that makes readers feel genuinely uncomfortable, excited, open to suggestion, vulnerable to reprogramming, complicit in the creative business of their self-transformation is quite different.
And…
I wholly agree with the Postmodern diagnosis made in the sixties that our poetry was becoming domestic, subjective and trivial. But if anything that situation is now far worse. Back then, your post-Movement poem about moving the settee was at least really about a failed relationship. Crippled by the sense of our own cultural irrelevance, we now write poems about moving the settee that are just about moving the settee – or if you’re a Postmodern, about ‘moving the settee’.
And…
On the one side those self-appointed popularisers, who, by insisting on nothing but dumb sense, have alienated poetry’s natural intelligent and literate constituency by infantilising our art; and on the other, those exegetes in whose adolescent, retentive self-interest it is to keep poetry as mysterious as possible, that they might project nothing into it but their own wholly novel and ingenious interpretations.
Artist’s note: I returned to Dublin in early 2006 and got a job with a large engineering firm. At first, I wasn’t supplied with a computer and I hadn’t been assigned to a project – so I sat at an empty desk for about two months. I had been contributing weekly cartoons to The Scotsman, part-time, for two years previous to this; but they finished with my services. So I started this series of cartoons; there are seventeen in all. They are purposefully crude, quick and sparse ink drawings, on pages of printed text.
Charles Dickens, a new biography by Michael Slater, is the first major biography of the great Victorian novelist in twenty years, since Peter Ackroyd’s Dickens.
Little new information has come to light about Dickens in the intervening period, so Slater covers the same ground as Ackroyd and others.
Slater’s book stands out, however, in the depth of coverage it gives to Dickens’s many and varied literary effusions: not just the great novels but lesser-known shorter works, including his long-neglected journalism, which, in Slater’s biography, is the source of some of Dickens’s most revealing writing,
The Uncommercial Traveller pieces of the 1860s are particularly rich in oblique autobiography.
Slater constructs his biography to a great extent on Dickens’s own words.
Dickens wrote so much in so many fields it is remarkable he had time for anything else, but he lived a full and busy life. He burned with a manic, uncontrollable energy, from the twenty-mile walks through the London night, observing and working out his stories, to his deep involvement in social causes, and a highly successful parallel career as an editor. All this is documented in Dickens’s personal correspondence, generously excerpted by Slater.
The dark side of genius is documented, too. From about the age of forty, Dickens was afflicted by a nameless dissatisfaction and a sense of something missing, as he revealed in his correspondence to lifelong friend John Forster, who was to become his first biographer:
“How strange it is to never be at rest, and never satisfied, and ever trying after something that is never reached, and to be always laden with plot and plan and care and worry; how clear it is that it must be, and that one is driven by an irresistible might until the journey is worked! It is much better to go on and fret, than to stop and fret.”
It was this that led him to take the rather scandalous course of leaving his wife, the mother of his ten children, in 1858. At this point, he had twelve years left to live. The Dickens of these years is a more shadowy figure, obsessively secretive. We know he was conducting a relationship with an actress less than half his age, and that this continued until his death. Slater records scrupulously all that has survived for posterity about the affair; it is not much.
For the rest, we have only the veiled answers contained in the fiction of this period: the world-weariness of Sidney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities, 1859), the thwarted lust of Bradley Headstone (Our Mutual Friend, 1865) and John Jasper (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1870 – unfinished), as well as the chronic self-distrust of the title character of the 1868 short story “George Silverman’s Explanation.” These remain our best clue to Dickens’s most secret self.
Slater’s book is a comprehensive and diligent account of Dickens’s life, full and fair and clearly-written. Thorough and briskly-paced, at 636 pages it is moderate in length by the standards of other Dickens biographies. It also contains copious illustrations and photographs, some quite unfamiliar.
-Mark Wallace
You pride yourself on your open, honest relationship. But that doesn’t mean you should blurt out any thought that comes to mind. Sometimes, a comment that seems perfectly harmless to you might be hurtful, awkward or just plain irritating to your boyfriend.
Here are five such comments. Ignore us at your own risk!
1. “Do You Think She’s Pretty?”
When you ask a question like this, your boyfriend knows he can’t win.
If he says “yes,” you’ll probably get jealous and upset. You might even follow up with “Is she prettier than me?” Talk about a loaded question!
Of course, if he says “no” (and she clearly is pretty), you’ll accuse him of being a liar. You’ll wonder what else he’s lying about, even as you assure him you don’t mind if he says “yes.” Pfff… as if you’re that insecure!
Has he managed to convince you that he genuinely doesn’t find her attractive at all? You’ll wonder what his bad taste says about you.
See?
2. “When we’re married/have kids…”
It’s natural to fantasize about wedded bliss and the three kids you and your beau will one day spawn – you’re only human. And sometimes you might even entertain this fantasy very early on in a relationship. But unless you want to scare him away permanently, keep thoughts like these in your head where they belong.
Even if he himself has thought about your happily-ever-after future, he probably doesn’t want to hear it described out loud just yet. Wait until you’re sure you’re on the same page regarding marriage, kids, and the future of your relationship before you start prophesizing. A gut feeling probably isn’t good enough!
3. “Every time I look at you, I feel grief and disappointment.”
Your boyfriend doesn’t want to hear information that might make him think less of himself. And even if he does want to hear it, he really shouldn’t.
Don’t burden him with your expectations and regrets. He used to have dreams too, but now he’s small, vainglorious, and unhappy. He wants to die. You want to die too. You cannot figure out what went wrong, but all that you value is meaningless. You are in a living hell.
4. “My ex did the exact same thing!”
Whether it’s a desirable resemblance (they both always hold the door open) or a less desirable one (neither one showers often enough), your boyfriend never wants to hear that he’s anything like your ex. Ever.
You don’t want him to feel like you’re always comparing the two of them, do you? Think about it: Do you really want him to imagine that he does other things just like your ex? Doubtful. Plus, he might think you’re still hung up on your former flame.
Either way, a comment like this won’t do much for his self-esteem. So the next time you experience boyfriend deja-vu, keep it to yourself.
5. “I’m fine” or “Never mind”
Your face says it all. So does the fact that you haven’t said a word in the past hour. And the way you snapped over the misplaced remote control isn’t hiding anything either. But when he asks if you’re okay, you say you’re fine. At this point, your boyfriend wants to tear his hair out.
Passive-aggressive behavior doesn’t help anyone. First, you miss an opportunity to actually address what’s bothering you. You also bottle up your frustrations and create new problems. By the time you actually try to tackle what’s really bothering you, you’re both too upset about too many things to have a constructive discussion.
-Sally Appletree
I went to the library in the Ilac centre today – based on a recommendation received in a comment here some time ago – in search of classical music. It took me a long time to go, partly out of laziness and partly out of disbelief – and of course eternally out of my irrational fear of libraries. Anyway, it’s true. A large selection of great CDs for anyone who likes classical music.
I picked up four CDs, including one that includes the below: Evgeny Kissing playing Scriabin’s Etude Op. 8 No. 12. Those of you who know how libraries work will laugh when I tell you that I pulled a bunch of coins out of my pocket and asked how much it cost to borrow the CDs.
After a visit to the impressive library at St Gallen in Switzerland, one of the most famous monastic libraries in the world, I walk into the St Gallen Cathedral. The cathedral is so opulent, so gilded; I realise I can’t stand Baroque architecture.
I light a candle and try to pray. I don’t know how. I can’t find spiritual feeling inside myself.
I remember something Cioran wrote in his notebooks, after a visit from an orthodox poet: What right have you to pray for me? I need no intercessor, I shall manage alone. The prayers of a wretch I might accept, but no one else’s, not even a saint’s. I cannot bear you bothering about my salvation. If I apprehend salvation and flee it, your prayers are merely an indiscretion.
Q: Why do we associate high art with misery? Can’t art be fulfilling, uplifting, idealistic?
Schopenhauer: The world is a hell of suffering and struggle.
- David Bremen
Henry Miller on New York.
Video found via batterdgnome (Dave Callan).
