Category Archives: writing

the window gift

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One thing I will miss very much when I move is my kitchen window.  Shaped like a rectangle, having a latch that lets me open it out like a porthole, it’s a source of pleasure. At night, I let down and shut the venetian blinds.  In the morning, no matter what season, I feel a touch of excitement at what the day might be like.  Because of where I live, snow would not be out of place in warm weather.

There is one thin tree, almost Japanese in its artistry, with a tiny temple bell hung on its branch.  The wooden fence is a beautiful mixture of tans and browns, and the space feels like a private oasis.  That’s why when I pull up the blinds, it’s as if I’m receiving a gift.

window with wine & crackers by Katie Heath

Stories

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llustration by Maja Misevic-Kokar, from “One Thousand And One Nights” (2 volumes), translated from French into Serbian by Stanislav Vinaver, published by Matica Srpska, Novi Sad, 1989.

But you’ve always had faith in stories?

It is what I do. I mean, if you are a carpenter you have faith in carpentry.

                              ~Salman Rushdie interview by Tim Adams, Observer, 26/06/11 

One has to have faith in stories to write stories.  How simple an idea, how deep an idea. If one believes in the power of the narrative, that the act of telling a story can have significance, then how easier is the writer’s task.  Instead of imagining you’re groping in the dark, foolishly scribbling away instead of getting a real job, you can imagine purpose.  Oscar Wilde aside, we don’t value pleasure for itself.  And he was no work shirker.

Placing storytelling the context of a craft, viable as building a house, farming the land, healing the sick, is dangerously marvelous.  It implies that we have a need for a possibility spun by imagination that fulfills a void in our lives.  Can a story save a life?  It can shape a life.

Post Script:  The Private Patient was very good.

http://www.studiomama.com/bookshelf.html

What I’m Reading Now

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Getting a copy of a novel you’ve read by one of your favorite authors must be one of those treats like ice cream on a hot afternoon.  I stumbled across a discounted hardback of P.D. James’ The Private Patient, published in 2008.  What was I doing in 2008?  Why did I not pick up this plum immediately?  In the bookstore, I asked myself, had I read this before?  I must have read this before.  But Callooh! Callay! I had not.  So in I plunged immediately to the check out.

P.D.James is ninety-one, which means she might have been eighty-seven when she wrote this.  Already having written seventeen novels, after a full career of British government work, here is another Adam Dalgleish mystery, featuring the Scotland Yard poet detective.  The comfort and range  of creating a character, building his life, and those of his colleagues must be enormously pleasurable; it brings to mind the razor-sharp Dorothy Sayers and her world of Lord Peter Wimsey.

The appeal of British village mysteries, with their murders contained in an affable world, more affable because we know the mystery will be solved, the motives laid bare, maybe is akin to being inside a cozy home while the rainstorm rages outside.  That was my experience last night.  It may not be her best novel, but it is certainly a good one so far.

 

Image from The Art Journal The Industry of All Nations Illustrated Catalogue(London: Bradbury and Evans, 1851); http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/71600/71689/71689_ribbon_cup.htm