A Distinctive Spanish Voice

Here is an uplifting video to accompany a moving song by perhaps Spain's greatest rock singer, the late Antonio Vega. 

A Future Generation and "Fantastic Mr Fox"

On an apparently ordinary train journey back from the north of England yesterday, there was a young family sat in front of me; a mother with her little son I guess around 5 or 6 and her daughter who looked a year or so older. Nothing unusual there but there were no computer games and no mobile phones. In fact the little girl was reading a children's book by Roald Dahl and the son was playing word games with his mother. For most of the three and a half hour journey, the mother continued to encourage the children to read and to engage with language and with no electronic media. I thought these children could well be destined for real future careers. Perhaps it's worth mentioning too that the family were second or third generation South Asian and such a fine family too.  

International Literature

Here's an internationally eclectic selection of fiction and non-fiction that I found in the Guardian newspaper's blog on books. The actual article's entitled: "The best summer reads and where to read them." I've also included all the links to the particular books so just hope they all work. 

GREECE

"Tom Holland, classical historian and novelist This has not been a good year for the Greeks, but it has been an excellent one for books on a Greek theme. Holidaymakers to the Aegean can always remind themselves of more heroic times by tucking into Peter Krentz's The Battle of Marathon (Yale £20), a gripping account of the ancient Athenians' finest hour. Poetry lovers should be sure to invest in The Known, a translation of selected poems by Nikos Fokas, one of Greece's finest living poets: his elegiac and often unsettling meditations will make the perfect accompaniment to a late-evening glass of ouzo in a village square. Finally, for the perfect beach read, look no further than Zachary Mason's witty, inventive and often deeply moving reworking of Homer, The Lost Books of the Odyssey (Vintage £7.99) – a worthy winner of last year's Criticos prize. In 44 startlingly various versions of Odysseus's adventures, we are given, among numerous other treats, a Penelope who turns out to be a werewolf, a Cyclops who turns out to be Homer and a Helen who turns out to have been abducted by Death.

SPAIN

Julius Purcell, Barcelona-based culture writer Spanish fiction lists are dominated by Javier Marías, lugubrious to some and monumentally beautiful to others. A good start is Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (Vintage £9.99), about an adultery gone horribly wrong, and which I found to be lugubrious… and monumentally beautiful. Many novels about Spain are now being written by South American immigrant writers. Of the few translated so far, the late Roberto Bolaño's The Skating Rink (Picador £7.99), a Catalan love story featuring embezzled public money, is a good example. Classics that can be found in English, and which deeply affected me, include Ramón J Sender's 1960 Requiem for a Spanish Peasant (Aris & Phillips £14.95), about a village that becomes a microcosm of the Spanish civil war. Juan Marsé's Golden Girl is a witty portrait of a mediocre pro-Franco writer, who, after the death of the dictator, tortuously rewrites his own life history with the help of his unstable niece. Among the best of recent non-fiction is Javier Cercas's The Anatomy of a Moment (Bloomsbury £18.99), a part-investigative, part-narrative analysis of the 1981 coup attempt against the Spanish parliament. John Hooper's The New Spaniards (Penguin £10.99) surveys the country's ultra-traditional/ultra-modern paradox, while Giles Tremlett's Ghosts of Spain (Faber £9.99) expertly exorcises Spain's contemporary traumas.

FRANCE

Andrew Hussey, Paris‑based academic and cultural historian France Observed in the 17th Century by British Travellers, edited by John Lough, is a collection of letters, documents and travellers' tales in which Brits witness, with horror and fascination, the economic and social conditions in France, the courts, the church, the poor state of the armed forces and what goes on in Versailles. In complete contrast is Voice Over (Faber £10.99), a novel by Céline Curiol, which is an example of what I'd call Eurostar literature. It's about a woman who reads out the announcements at the Gare du Nord in Paris and is completely bored and ready for sexual adventure, which she finds by falling in love with a transvestite. It's like an uber-sexy Tale of Two Cities. My favourite French classic has to be Journey to the End of the Night (Oneworld £12.99) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. It's an epic that takes you all around the world, but the centre of the world is Paris, or Céline's delirious, slightly hallucinatory, incredibly poetic vision of it. There are two translations but neither conveys the scabrous energy of Parisian lowlife slang, so it's best to read it in the original.

GREAT BRITAIN

Alain de Botton, author and social entrepreneur If you're holidaying at home in the UK, you might want to bring along Gavin Pretor-Pinney's The Cloudspotter's Guide (Sceptre £8.99), because it encourages us to give up on the false dichotomy between good weather (cloudless) and bad weather (cloudy) and learn to appreciate the hidden beauty and complexity of an unclear sky. Because no good holiday is complete without fierce arguments, bring along a great British therapist such as Donald Winnicott, author of the beautiful, useful and lyrical book Home Is Where We Start From (Penguin £12.99). One of the joys of holidaying at home is the capacity to dream about what it might be like if you were somewhere else, without encountering the disappointing reality. This is one of the themes of the wonderful Geoff Dyer's book Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It (Abacus £8.99). Last but not least, pack in Simon Jenkins's guide to the churches of Britain, England's Thousand Best Churches (Penguin £22), as when you've done all the usual more exciting visitor attractions, gorged yourself on fish and chips, walked a windy pier or two and admired the view from Ben Nevis, there's nothing quite as comforting and boringly interesting as a British country church.

ITALY

Matteo Pericoli, architect, author and illustrator of Observer series Windows on the World Seeing how the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification is unexpectedly rushing through this country's blood, it would very sensible to read Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard (Vintage Classics £8.99). Published posthumously in 1958 and set during the Risorgimento, it appears to be a perfect metaphor of all things Italian, back then and, most importantly, now: the clash between the north and the south, the complex idea of Italy's wholeness, the sense of cynical realism and resignation embedded in everyone's way of thinking – just to name a few. Plus Tancredi's ever-lasting quote: "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." Ignazio Silone's Fontamara is a novel set during the fascist era in a fictional village in central Italy's Abruzzo region. Its passive and vulnerable peasants live in misery, the outside world barely exists and their only tangible relationship is with the soil they cultivate. Because of fascism's censorship, Fontamara wasn't published in Italy until 1947, and soon after it became a fundamental document to understand the complexity of Italy's south. Another insightful tool for this is Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah (Pan £8.99), in which the Sistema (the name used in the Campania region instead of Camorra) has created a parallel criminal world, organised beyond anyone's imagination and, apparently, beyond any possibility of being dismantled.

TURKEY

Maureen Freely, novelist and translator of Orhan Pamuk Princess Musbah Haider had an English mother but grew up in the Ottoman court during the early years of the 20th century. Around her, the empire was crumbling, but she was one of the last to know. Her memoir, Arabesque, is one of the most charming books I have ever read. Carla Grissman is an American woman who spent a year in a remote and impoverished Anatolian village in the late 1960s; in Dinner of Herbs, she describes her experiences with extraordinary insight. Fifty years ago, Yashar Kemal was the Turkish novelist. His first book, Memed, My Hawk, is set among the aghas and brigands of south-east Anatolia and is one of the great modern epics. It is very unusual for a bookish person to head for Turkey these days without packing a few novels by Orhan Pamuk. But don't forget his memoir, Istanbul: Memories of a City (Faber £9.99), still one of my favourite books. The Istanbul in Moris Farhi's Young Turk (Telegram £8.99) is joyously multicultural, if under threat. But not forever, as Selçuk Altun proves in his edgy, witty, dangerously literary novels, of which two – Songs My Mother Never Taught Me and Many and Many a Year Ago (both Telegram £7.99) – are available in English.

EGYPT

Ahdaf Soueif, Anglo‑Egyptian novelist Start with The Dawn of Conscience by James Henry Breasted. It's old, but then what it deals with is even older! It's a brilliant introduction to ancient Egyptian life and thought – and its continued relevance today. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Saqi £14.95) by eminent Lebanese author Amin Maalouf is a great read. Take care though: it's not the angle that western readers are used to. Everyone should read one Naguib Mahfouz novel. In English, Miramar is the one I'd go for. Egypt: The Moment of Change (Zed £16.99) edited by Rabab El Mahdi and Philip Marfleet – this provides an excellent background and interpretation of today's Egyptian revolution. Tweets from Tahrir edited by Alex Nunns and Nadia Idle will take you right up to the present and give you a sense of the Egyptian revolution as it unfolded.

UNITED STATES

Jonathan Freeman, Granta editor Although primarily about the far north, Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams (Vintage £9.99) is a must-read for anyone travelling to North America. Lopez reminds us that long before interstates and factory farms carved it up, America was a continent of astonishing beauty. If you're going to be driving – which I recommend – bring a copy of John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley (Penguin £9.99), a travelogue that covers almost 50 states. It also has a dog aboard – always a good thing in my book. Chances are you will want to skip the Rust Belt. Don't. The story of America's decline can be seen in this necklace of creaking towns that stretches from Philadelphia up to Buffalo, over to Cleveland. Richard Russo has conjured them vividly in his novels, especially Nobody's Fool (Vintage £9.99), which is raucous good company. Finally, once you point your car left of Cleveland you're bound to head toward the high plains and the far west. No one, not even Cormac McCarthy, has captured it like Annie Proulx in Close Range (Fourth Estate £7.99), her first of three collections she wrote about Wyoming. Skip Brokeback Mountain – you know how that ends.

CROATIA

Erica Zlomislic, Toronto writer who worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia during the 1990s wars As an alternative to the usual reporter dispatches from Croatia in the 1990s, try Island of the World by Michael D O'Brien (Ignatius £15.54). The novel follows the Croatian protagonist Josip Lasta through the second world war and the wars of the 1990s to eventual redemption. Have tissues at hand. For something equally dramatic try American writer and activist Julienne Eden Busic's riveting novel Lovers and Madmen: A True Story of Passion, Politics and Air Piracy (iUniverse £15.99). The story starts with blonde, blue-eyed, model-like Eden falling in love with exiled Croatian dissident Zvonko Busic, who fights to gain Croatian independence from Tito's Yugoslavia. The book is rife with secret police assassinations, poverty, imprisonment, passion and, finally, a plane hijacking. For a touching collection of short stories from the 1990s Croatian war try Do Angels Cry?: Tales of the War (Ooligan £7.38) by Matko Marusic. It's especially poignant now, precisely 20 years since the war broke. For something less tearful while strolling along the cobblestones of old towns, try Dubrovnik: A History (Saqi £14.99) by Robin Harris. The book is a detailed history lesson explaining why the "pearl of the Adriatic" is more than just a pretty walled city in Croatia.

THAILAND

Rattawut Lapcharoensap, US novelist raised in Bangkok For those unfamiliar with Thai literature, Kukrit Pramoj's magnum opus Four Reigns (Firecracker £10.99) might be a good place to start. Though not untroubled by a certain conservative nostalgia, it's a wonderfully expansive historical novel tracing the life of one woman across the reigns of Rama V to Rama VIII, from the 1890s to the second world war. For those interested in Thai short fiction, In the Mirror: Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era, edited and excellently translated by Benedict Anderson and Ruchira Mendiones, collects many of the major short works of the 60s and 70s, from Suchit Wongthes to Sulak Sivaraksa. Somerset Maugham's seldom-read The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong is a quick, interesting and, above all, sinuously written travelogue of the author's time in the region. I also greatly enjoyed Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork (Atlantic £7.99), Lily Tuck's Siam, or The Woman Who Shot the Man, and Joan Silber's recent The Size of the World. Then there's Paul M Handley's The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej (Yale £25), which needs to be read before one enters the country. It's banned."

The original article can be retrieved at:

http://www.blogger.com/goog_387189196

A wider list of recommended reads can be found in an earlier post:

http://markdan44.blogspot.com/2011/03/building-bridges-between-cultures.html

or Building Bridges Between Cultures (March 2011)

Woody Allen and his Typewriter

I'm a great fan of Woody Allen's films; they're always worth watching especially because of the dialogue which he still writes on a typewriter. With a superb sense of humour and perceptive observations of the relationships between his characters, he draws you in to his films. Here's a clip from a relatively recent film and one starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem ~ 

Here's a classic excerpt from 'Manhattan' and a great piece of script writing ~

An interesting portrait of his life and work can be found on the imdb.com website or 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000095/bio

A statue of Woody Allen from a photo I took in Oviedo in northern Spain where he filmed parts of 'Vicky, Christina Barcelona'

Words and Their Staging

According to Ludwig Wittgenstein thinking is "a widely ramified concept. A concept that comprises many manifestations of life. The phenomena of thinking are widely scattered." 

For example: 

"speak thoughtfully

speak without thought

think before speaking

speak before thinking

think while speaking

speak to yourself in imagination

think of someone

think of a solution to a puzzle

let a thought cross your mind."

etc etc

He points out that the word thought appears to correspond to a simple activity. However when it is used in different situations the word becomes "ragged." The reader has "a false picture." In other words it deceives us into believing because it is only one word "we think it represents one sort of activity." (ditto)

It is easy to forget that "a word's meaning depends upon its staging, the scene or circumstances in which it is used." Perhaps language is often taken for granted and one of the reasons why I read such books is to try and raise my awareness of just how potent words can be. 

"Once a word leaves your mouth, you cannot chase it back even with the swiftest horse."

(Confucious)

"The pen is mightier than the sword"

(Charles Dickens) 

 thought

Wittgenstein quotes from 'Introducing Wittgenstein' Icon Books (2010)

Fiction as History

One writer I've found that carefully crafts his work, meticulously choosing each word to capture the three dimensional nature of his characters is Graham Swift. I first discovered his work or more specifically his novel 'Waterland' when I was at university in the nineties and what a revelation. He seems to evoke the whole history of the Fenlands in England's East  Anglia through the thoughts of his characters particularly the central protagonist of the secondary school history teacher.The novel is one of those books that still resonates long after being read. It also inspired me to read more of his work such as 'Last Orders' which won the Booker literary prize. This is perhaps a modern updating of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as it narrates the journeys both physical and psychological of four friends who drive from London to Canterbury to pay their last respects to a late friend.  

The extract below I found in 'The Independent' newspaper

"We still know little for sure about the prospects for intelligent fiction in a digital age. Yet most observers agree that the status of the professional "career novelist", one devoted to an exacting craft that builds over many books into a shelf that makes sense, may shift from that of a rare species to a deeply endangered one. Read Graham Swift – this quietly commanding new novel, and the eight that preceded it before and after the big splash of his third book Waterland in 1983 – and feel the weight of what we stand to lose. Single-minded, gimmick-proof, Swift's fiction has paid unswerving attention, in both the fine detail of his prose and the wide architecture of his forms, to what the critic Raymond Williams called "structures of feeling". These novels have grown organically into a social-emotional record of modern English experience sensed on the pulse, on the tongue – in the heart. Future historians should trust them above headlines" 

(Boyd Tomkin The Independent)  

Here's Boyd Tomkin's original article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/wish-you-were-here-by-graham-swift-2298489.html

The Depths of Thought

This poem seems to capture the one to one experience of the reader and the writer; it is as if the poet or narrator speaks directly to the reader personally. In these days of seemingly continual sensory bombardment, it's such a relief to turn to the printed page and Wallace Stevens captures this experience so perfectly.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night.


Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned over the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be. 

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself 
Is the reader leaning late and reading there. 
(The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm~ Wallace Stevens)  

Asian Landscapes

These photos were sent to me from a friend, a teacher I used to work with in Russia, so I thought I would share them. A mood of serenity perhaps with a touch of melancholic wistfulness is evoked; a temporary sanctuary from the pressures of work and studies. 

Reading a Russian novel on a Spanish island

While I was reading Saturday's Guardian newspaper I came across an engaging little piece on a writer's experience of reading on a relatively remote Spanish island. It was actually Formentera, one of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean. 

"It was early summer and I'd gone on holiday to the island of Formentera, feeling particularly ragged and exhausted after a play I'd written, acted in and produced. I booked to stay in the same hotel I'd stayed in as a child, not knowing for sure if there were any other hotels, and arrived to find that it was on the top of a hill almost an hour's walk from the coast. So every day I set off with my costume, a towel and a book – Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and spent the afternoon lying on the beach immersed in Russia, romance, philosophy and suspense. As the days passed, these worlds began to tangle together, Anna's soaring feelings for Vronsky, the white sand of the beach, Levin's discourses on nature, a quick, cold dip in the sea. I never think now about Kitty's frustrations, or the terrible suffering of Anna as she is forced to choose between her lover and her child, without remembering the long trudge up the hill to La Mola, and the sense of peace as I sat on the terrace eking out the last pages in the fading light. I arrived back in London, refreshed and restored; though I've never been back to Formentera, I've reread Anna Karenina many times."

 (Esther Freud)

To read the summer book recommendations by various writers and artists then try:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/17/best-holiday-reads?INTCMP=SRCH

A Real Community Spirit

On a recent trip to Canterbury, we came across these posters just outside the cathedral. It was both moving and inspiring to see people of all ages and backgrounds contributing to such a great and sacred work of heritage and architecture. 

A warming sentence starter: "I love my cathedral because ..." 

The Films of Michael Winterbottom

One of the most versatile British directors at the moment is Michael Winterbottom. I've found many of his films compelling and often moving. Apparently he enjoys filming on location preferably outside and with a hand held camera creating a sense of immediacy as well as intimacy with his cast. For instance in his film "A Mighty Heart" through continually panning to each character's facial expressions, he is able to convey their sense of tension and fear. Similarly in "Genova" again shot on location, he expresses an almost palpable sense of  loss and rootlessness as the family members attempt to come to terms with their grief. These as well as "Code 46" and "The Claim" are my preferred films and are the ones well worth watching. Admittedly some of his work doesn't really appeal to me but the films mentioned I enjoyed, largely on the basis of their exploration of character and how people could react in such unsettling circumstances. 

The director at work:

A Mighty Heart 

 Genova 

Code 46 

The Claim 

Here's a link to an engaging overview of his work:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/30/michael-winterbottom-british-cinema

The Painted Cityscapes of Leonid Afremov

It's wonderful to discover something new especially when you are submerged in work and research. Here's a painter then who's originally from Belarus but now lives in Florida, USA. His work reminds me a little of Marc Chagall's, the great Belarusian painter. I remember seeing Chagall's beautiful stained glass windows in a church (the Fraumunster) when I was on a previous holiday in Zurich.  

It seems like Chagall's mozaic of colours has influenced the artist Leonid Afremov from Vitebsk, Belarus. According to the artist's web page it's the same town where Marc Chagall was born. Interestingly the same page also points out that "Leonid Afremov graduated from Vitebsk Art School in 1978 [which] was founded by Marc Chagall in 1921. Along with Malevich and Kandinsky, Leonid Afremov is one of the elite members of the famous Vitebsk art school."  

Here's some of Leonid Afremov's work I've found and would like to share:  

If you would like to see more of his work or find out more about the artist try this website:

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/leonid-afremov.html

Classical Spanish guitar

This is a lovely example of classical Spanish guitar.  

An Inspirational Storyteller

One Extra Word

I
I grew
I left home
I had no plans
I hunted round for meanings
I wrote and sang songs energetically
I reluctantly studied formal French and German
I taught English while picking up Madrileño informally
I hesitantly followed my heart back to Devon shores
I found teaching English to mixed-nationality and multicultural classes fun
I taught and acted and married and parented and taught more
I designed creative activities for fellow teachers at Isca School to use
I emerged open-eyed after the security of teaching fourteen years at one school
I banged my head against brick walls until DELTA agreed to publish Spontaneous Speaking
I kept thinking “How on earth do I support my family without a regular job?”
I have built up a freelance career storytelling, leading teacher workshops and acting alongside teaching English
I write practical pieces for magazines about student creativity in language learning, through storytelling, drama and song
I am invited all over Europe and further afield to do storytelling and storymaking workshops with English learners
I work locally with the very young and the very old, migrant worker families, young offenders and disabled people
I notice that when people are given recognition and support, there is a positive impact on their confidence, fluency and creativity
I expect to continue living in Devon with my wife, sons and my parents nearby, adapting to opportunities as they arise

Live performances on YouTube of David telling traditional tales here
David Heathfield

I've been to a number of David's workshops on storytelling and he's always worth listening too. His work continues to influence my teaching practice.

Photo Montage and Song

This is a such a superb song with a wonderful video photo montage.