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Literary
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Notes
January 7, 2009 by Suzan Abrams Dublin is freezing but if I were honest, I still do better in icy temperatures instead of humidity. I still prefer the cold fresh air over the punishing heat that greeted me recently in December in Singapore and Malaysia. That first morning in Singapore...I was wearing something very light and yet, started sweating profusely after just five minutes. I could feel the beads of sweat trickling all down my back and it even rained down my cheeks from my forehead! People thought I was crying! It was very bad but thankfully after a few days, the afternoon rains cooled everything down.
Then in Kuala Lumpur, I would suddenly become nauseous while window shoppping or hurrying to a destination downtown, rushing across the streets. This is one of the worst symptoms of jet lag - that may last up to 2 weeks. I've only experienced it twice actually, considering the many times I've taken planes and in this respect, I've been very lucky. I also hadn't been back for a year so that could have counted for something. Africa isn't included as it's so much cooler in restrospect.
Soon, I'll be travelling again - I would have carried on from Singapore but my partner was missing me too much and so I returned to spend the New Year with him. I think this time it will be the other way around...I'm falling more deeply in love with him by the day.
One of the other things I missed about my flat strangely enough, was my kitchen. I missed the hot smells of a cooked breakfast wafting through the air and also smoked salmon from the oven. Today, despite the severe frost and freezing fog, the sunshine is still filtering happily through my windows.
When I'm away, I also miss the peace and serenity of Ireland which has shrouded me like a halo for months.
I'll be going off for a few weeks and unless I change my mind, most probably to the African continent. It would be lovely to return to a warm welcome from friends. I've also got very good friends in Australia - my best friend is in Melbourne. But there's always such a surreal call to Africa. The land beckons! I think this time I'd like to go by the sea and do a major piece of writing! I'll also be visiting London on my way back.
With every country I frequent, my adventure with literature continues. Sometimes, it's better to see the books you've read about firsthand and make a real judgement on your own. Book blogs by friends - and there's always a real conflict of interest here - who've written average literature are often made up of loud gushing or an exaggerated deliverance. The term is to support or encourage but however noble the attempt, it's still a lie, neverthless. In any case, I no longer read any of these blogs. I also don't have the time. At the moment, I've chosen about 6 at the most, to read dutifully from my link including my beloved writer friend, Saaleha in Johannesburg, 1 from India, 1 from California, another in Saudi Arabia and two in England. It's been this way for awhile now.
The appearance of a book as I've discovered can also be deceptive on the web. Something that looks plain can be tenderly beautiful and something that is praised as attractive can appear dowdy.
I think my language has progressed to a level where it now brings a smile to my face. Sometimes, I do relish reading my own work and savouring the words as I would listen to a piece or music or admire a painting. Many a time, Des has walked into the living room and found me deep in thought, enjoying my pieces of writings. But I'm disciplined and have worked industriously over my craft this last year. Which is why the onset of 2009 leaves me feeling satisfied but equally restless for a yet sleeker acumen of the English Language.
Murder One on Charing Cross Road to Close
January 6, 2009
by Suzan Abrams
London: After nearly 21 years, Murder One, the popular specialist crime bookshop, co-owned by Maxim Jakubowski and who has written some wonderful stories for the Guardian Books Blog UK, will close at the end of January. Murder One features prominently on Charing Cross Road and faces the top end of Leicester Square. Sales in recent years have been poor and the bookshop is to go into voluntary liquidation.For more news, please go here to yesterday's edition of The Bookseller.
America's Most Famous French Bookstore the Librairie de France to Close
January 6, 2009by Suzan AbramsNew York: The Daily News Egypt - a popular Cairo paper that's always on the ball, reports that America's "most famous" French bookstore , the Librairie de France, will close its doors this year after a legendary 73 years in the business. A shocking rent increase due in September where the bookstore is presently housed in New York's Rockefeller Center, online book sales offered at bargain prices plus shipping fees and a reduced interest in foreign-language books are some of the reasons for the impending closure of the store.The familiar complaint is that most people these days visit the area to shop for clothes, cosmetics or electronics.Read here for more news garnered from Paola Messana's superb article.
Iran Releases Persian Version of Khalil Gibran's Jesus: The Son of Man
  January 6, 2009by Suzan AbramsPersian: Ofoq Publication has just launched the Persian version of Lebanese poet, painter and philosopher Khalil Gibran's Jesus: The Son of Man, recently translated by Musa Bidaj, in the Islamic Republic of Iran.Gibran who combined Eastern and Western philosophies and who was influenced by his childhood in Lebanon, his adopted America and also from his time studying art in Paris, wrote his story of Jesus as his last work. Here he tried to visualise the social and secret life of Christ as seen and shrouded by the emotions of people who knew Christ in his everyday life. Gibran wrote his final creative piece in 1928.Credit: Information partly sourced from MehrNews.com.
To Love and be Loved
January 6, 2009
by Suzan Abrams
I think of how it may have been not to have been loved. Then I would be surely free. I could live as I please and die as I please. To be loved and to fall in love is to involve the self with a series of melodramatic overturns, from where there is never the consolation of an onward return journey.
I seem to be turning more unconventional by the day. Someday, I shall be the true artist, poring over my favourite literature and art oblivious to all else; to bedtime and to meals. I am getting there. I think of many other peoples' lives especially those I know in Malaysia. Events are mostly routine, predictable and conventional. During holidays, people take trains, buses, cars and domestic airplanes to return home for the long weekends. During weekdays, from 9 to 5, they work.
I think of how my mother was almost always serving and submissive towards my father. Sometimes she would put her foot down but rarely. I never wanted to be like that.
Someone, larger than life that dons on a constellation of stars and that swings his magic wand has granted me my wish.
Today, my holidays are my own. I take planes sometimes to the unknown. I rest or dine when I like. I can read or write as much as I please. I can go downtown if I wish or curl up on the sofa with the telly if I don't. If you ask me how I got my destiny into this hedonistic state, I am unable to say. Happenings around me are always ethereal. I bask in its magic.
I think of my partner, Des, and how good his love is for me. He is so pure in thought, so good and kind, I fear I will do something wrong in retrospect. He does the extraordinary. He brings me my coffee. He buys me my favourite wines. Because I don't always care for cooking, he makes me dinner. He is after all, a super chef. If I'm grumpy, he'll surprise me with one of my favourite tiny things., although he's never been one for flowers. Being an excellent mimic if I become visibly sulky over an issue, he will gladly mimic me much to my further annoyance and his ready amusement. He reads my writing and helps me grow as an expressive artist. He built my library for me. He understands me better than most. He lets me fly when the wanderlust bug calls, yes, he lets me fly.
This makes me afraid. This makes me sometimes sad. When life is rosy, you don't want anything to dampen its spell of allure. I am undeserving of him. I am not half as good. In sleep, he looks the angel. In contrast, I don't wear any haloes.
I can't understand what I did to deserve this bliss. Being the practical woman I am, I know only too well that everything is transitory, fragmentary. Something fragile and beautiful now may be lost momentarily tomorrow.
Everything feels so perfect, I am afraid the bubble will burst. Vulnerable to the lingering passions of humanity and my hopes spinning on its axis of bewilderment, I pray for the bubble to dance.
The Book of Sins by Bernice Chauly
 January 5, 2009
by Suzan Abrams
in DublinPoetryMalaysia: This 80-page poetry & prose collection titled The Book of Sins, gallantly shaped after the eight imposing transgressions of Pride, Greed, Wrath, War, Gluttony, Love, Betrayal and Lust and later pursued by the charitable studies of Contemplation and Virtues; written by Malaysian writer Bernice Chauly and published by MulutMata, mirrored sharp disappointment for me as a literary reader.I daresay that if I constantly thrived on children's fiction or the likes of Archer and Meg Cabot which would have symbolised a merciless but suitable immersion in simplified vocabulary, then I would have stayed silent with nary a whisper; duly satisfied.But I'm a realist; a serious reader of thinking books bearing exquisite prose - evident surely from this blog alone - and there is no diplomatic way around it.Several of the poems, partly inspired by the naturally industrious and otherwise talented Chauly and her bruised scenes of tragic encounters, endeavoured towards the combined unholy stirrings of cleverness and dishevellement. The poet appears to have emerged with a slight panic in an eager mission to divulge specific enlightening disclosures that mask despondent emotions. In noble attempts to portray a monumental injustice, some of the results go awry.Although wonderful in parts, the raw sins stay cheerless, if not ready to instill boredom after the odd heavy sigh over repeated lamentations. Where the verses may have mastered resurrection with which to command an overcast bleakness and famously measured prowress to bully a reader into disturbing conclusions; the collection proved slightly sub-standard fare and did not manage to essay any kind of remarkable introspection.First of all, the slight shock in viewing Chauly's second poetry collection firsthand, that cruelly betrayed the cover shot's initial good looks on the web.The book turned out to be of colourless production quality and suggested a fair first impression. I didn't expect this sort publication still evident in 2008. The mediocre appearance looked anything but polished; an instantly obvious flaw when compared at first glance against the better produced books that lined the same shelf in the store. My last memory of a similar discovery was from the rows of Reading, Arithmetic and Comprehension textbooks in a few rather dusty stationery shops in downtown Dar-es-Salam in East Africa last June.The competition for presentation is so tough in Europe - and has been for the last few years - , that every self-published book on a store shelf reflects corresponding regal features as those produced by mainstream publishers. A presentation that represents the author's integrity is after all, everything. A first book is a major accomplishment and an important step to recognition and so too, the books that follow this. No one in Europe these days is foolish enough to publish poorly. To be considered for display, a book has to pass the stringent standards for booksellers in the UK and Ireland. I'm not sure if expectations are lower in Kuala Lumpur.
The clever cover design exhibits a bloodshot red resting nicely against a faint grey and white. But a light shade will always probe evil doings for any budget cover and is telling of the cover's sins. In this case, it is easy enough to picture an invisible cutting blade that may have prised over the rectangular cardboard even if this wasn't so.
Also, the tall scrawled words and italics don't sit well on the stark white once the pages are flipped about. I feel as if I'm perusing black ink scribbled into an exercise book and that is the absurd truth of it.At best, I would term The Book of Sins a chapbook and not a book. There is a world of difference. As a chapbook it works. As a book it may not.At first, my sympathies lay in the beautiful poetry whose personality I felt had been locked into the amateur pages. But on reading the book twice just to be sure, this soon changed.I didn't feel in many parts that I was reading poetry at all although the verses hinted of no other format. I wondered if many of the poems didn't work better as performance poetry...the kind of stories you read out to the public or rather shout out expressively. You shout to make an impact. You shout to create a noise and raise awareness. Then a sound lack of enigmatic allure doesn't matter. In a boisterous or enraptured audience, amid clamorous applause, thanks to the oral flow of verses, the sublime beauty of a poem happily goes unnoticed. It would be the wit of the message that suffices.
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