For an article published in The Guardian online last week, Dan Vyleta compiled his 'Top 10' of books written in the author's second or adopted language. Discussing the practice of writing in a language other than one he was born into, Vyleta comments:
"It is true that for many of us our relationship to our adopted language is not territorial. Mine is an English that I cobbled together from the many places I have lived and the books I have read, a transnational quilt. It limits me in some respects, and opens avenues in others."
Among those on his list were books by the usual suspects - Conrad, Nabokov, Brodsky, Beckett - along with some by lesser known (Emine Sevgi Özdamar) or currently prominent (Aleksandar Hemon) writers. It was great to see Ha Jin mentioned, whose book of essays The Writer as Migrant (The University of Chicago Press, 2008) has a simultaneously steadying and animating effect.
Through this piece I learned that the technical term for such writers is 'exophones'. Literally, this means 'outside of voice'. Which carries all sorts of dismissive overtones. 'Exolingual', an alternative in the same vein, would suggest something else entirely.
I'm actually rather amused by efforts to find appropriate labels: emigré, transnational, post-national, heteroglossic, polyglot... Wouldn't it be interesting to consider how, to a certain extent, all writers use a hybrid tongue, one of their own making?
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Upstarts out and about
The UpStart posters are up around Dublin city. Among the earnest political promises that hold little currency we find the unexpected: a fantasy scene, a political cartoon, a startling line, a combative message... The impact is not enormous - these posters are dotted here and there, sometimes overwhelmed by the bankrolled electioneering slogans and those familiar rigid faces - but for those with even moderately roving eyes they provide relief and make a bright splash in their day.
Great credit is due to Aaron Copeland, mastermind of the initiative, and to everybody working for months now to bring it to fruition; kudos too to all the artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians who have donated their - mostly uncredited - work to the project.
All the work for UpStart, including the images/text on the posters, is now being added to the project's website, where there's also a lively blog. I haven't yet managed to locate the poster with my contribution - eventually I hope to add to this post an image of it in situ.
*Update, later on 20/2/2011: Here it is, courtesy of Unkie Dave's photostream on Flickr.
Great credit is due to Aaron Copeland, mastermind of the initiative, and to everybody working for months now to bring it to fruition; kudos too to all the artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians who have donated their - mostly uncredited - work to the project.
All the work for UpStart, including the images/text on the posters, is now being added to the project's website, where there's also a lively blog. I haven't yet managed to locate the poster with my contribution - eventually I hope to add to this post an image of it in situ.
*Update, later on 20/2/2011: Here it is, courtesy of Unkie Dave's photostream on Flickr.
Monday, 14 February 2011
The Films of Nanni Moretti
I became acquainted with the films of Nanni Moretti about ten years ago, through La Stanza del Figlio (The Son's Room): a clear-eyed, minimalist piece on random loss and the illusion of control, grief and the coming to terms with it. I noticed how Moretti told his story using a series of sharp vignettes that built on each other to bring about a complex effect. The comfortable lifestyle of the family in question made an impression, as did the lightness and airiness in the atmosphere, which I put down to geographical location.
I have since watched several more of Moretti's films, in random chronological order, the most recent being Aprile, from 1998. His commitment to the political left - completely absent from The Son's Room, which seems more and more like an anomaly within his oeuvre - is abundantly clear, as is his deep concern with life in Italy and the country's international standing. The failure of the Italian left is a constant motif, with his opposition to the premiership of Silvio Berlusconi - see in particular 2006's Il Caimano - indicative of his sentiments. All this is constantly juxtaposed with apparent events from his own life and his love of image and documentary filmmaking. Movement is also an important element - his Vespa is a vehicle for all sorts of shifts and freedoms - as is intellectual discourse, and humour. But two things have struck me the most: an air of self-depreciation, a slight sense of the ridiculous which he assigns to the character "Nanni" played by himself, constantly dealing with failure at something or other but crucially not giving up, finding a way to carry on; and the superficial disparity between his leftist ideology and polemics and the rather comfortable circumstances of his characters.
Is this a comment on hypocricy? Or does the richness of the mediterranean climate afford - at least on the surface - the people depicted in his films an easier mode of living? A soft humanity in his characters shines through, a closeness between them that rarely appears suffocating and a gentleness in the way they correspond with each other despite differences of opinion or personality: all these radiate a sense of well-being generally absent from the harsher climates of northern Europe. Is this a trick of cinema, part of the unending game played by memory, or simply a nostalgia for a disappeared (or never there in the first place) set of life rules?
I have since watched several more of Moretti's films, in random chronological order, the most recent being Aprile, from 1998. His commitment to the political left - completely absent from The Son's Room, which seems more and more like an anomaly within his oeuvre - is abundantly clear, as is his deep concern with life in Italy and the country's international standing. The failure of the Italian left is a constant motif, with his opposition to the premiership of Silvio Berlusconi - see in particular 2006's Il Caimano - indicative of his sentiments. All this is constantly juxtaposed with apparent events from his own life and his love of image and documentary filmmaking. Movement is also an important element - his Vespa is a vehicle for all sorts of shifts and freedoms - as is intellectual discourse, and humour. But two things have struck me the most: an air of self-depreciation, a slight sense of the ridiculous which he assigns to the character "Nanni" played by himself, constantly dealing with failure at something or other but crucially not giving up, finding a way to carry on; and the superficial disparity between his leftist ideology and polemics and the rather comfortable circumstances of his characters.
Is this a comment on hypocricy? Or does the richness of the mediterranean climate afford - at least on the surface - the people depicted in his films an easier mode of living? A soft humanity in his characters shines through, a closeness between them that rarely appears suffocating and a gentleness in the way they correspond with each other despite differences of opinion or personality: all these radiate a sense of well-being generally absent from the harsher climates of northern Europe. Is this a trick of cinema, part of the unending game played by memory, or simply a nostalgia for a disappeared (or never there in the first place) set of life rules?
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