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27/04/2023
Finished Housekeeping. Went to Pegasus and bought two more books by Marilynne Robinson. I love this book. It took a while to bring me up to speed with its visionariness – took me a while to settle into it – but now I am somewhat tempted to start it again from the beginning immediately.
The way it begins is: “My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs Sylvia Fisher.” Right from the start I was wondering about that 'fled'. The book is the story of life in a single house with those caregivers, under the shadow of tragedy and transience, in a small town next to an immense cold lake. The title seems to promise that the book will be something rather normal, and it isn't. The title is there to warp and twist and be looked in at through windows. A central question is whether the childrens' lives will ever become settled, amidst all this tragedy and vision and overbearing weather.
Other reading: we have reached the hinge of my masters course. Previously there was a little of my classmates' work to read, but from now on, there will be lots. Fun so far, though the time of my own needing-to-have-written-stuff is nigh upon me, I swear there was an extra week between me and the first deadline which all passed over the course of yesterday.
Today I read the first folio extract of one of my classmates, making notes with a red pen, didn't start out liking it at all, but just reached a story in the middle which made me sit up and go “Huh! Good writing is happening all of a sudden, this is sharply observed and funny and doing subtext.” I hope the stories were written in order, that would suggest steady improvement and I might like the next one even more.
I discovered a month or two ago that the IML has a small cottage maintained for it in the Wairarapa for weekend bookings by its students, by old family friends of Bill Manhire, the now-retired grand old ridgepole of the writing school. Minorly magical-seeming advantages of being a cultural institution! I'm off there on Saturday with no internet but several notebooks.
Finished Housekeeping. Went to Pegasus and bought two more books by Marilynne Robinson. I love this book. It took a while to bring me up to speed with its visionariness – took me a while to settle into it – but now I am somewhat tempted to start it again from the beginning immediately.
The way it begins is: “My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs Sylvia Fisher.” Right from the start I was wondering about that 'fled'. The book is the story of life in a single house with those caregivers, under the shadow of tragedy and transience, in a small town next to an immense cold lake. The title seems to promise that the book will be something rather normal, and it isn't. The title is there to warp and twist and be looked in at through windows. A central question is whether the childrens' lives will ever become settled, amidst all this tragedy and vision and overbearing weather.
Other reading: we have reached the hinge of my masters course. Previously there was a little of my classmates' work to read, but from now on, there will be lots. Fun so far, though the time of my own needing-to-have-written-stuff is nigh upon me, I swear there was an extra week between me and the first deadline which all passed over the course of yesterday.
Today I read the first folio extract of one of my classmates, making notes with a red pen, didn't start out liking it at all, but just reached a story in the middle which made me sit up and go “Huh! Good writing is happening all of a sudden, this is sharply observed and funny and doing subtext.” I hope the stories were written in order, that would suggest steady improvement and I might like the next one even more.
I discovered a month or two ago that the IML has a small cottage maintained for it in the Wairarapa for weekend bookings by its students, by old family friends of Bill Manhire, the now-retired grand old ridgepole of the writing school. Minorly magical-seeming advantages of being a cultural institution! I'm off there on Saturday with no internet but several notebooks.
