Posts tagged as:

writing

To say they rule my world

19 September, 2009

in O internet, commentatrix

I look forward daily to the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates, which I have praised elsewhere on these pages.  In addition to the reasons I cite there, I wonder also if it is because his work exemplifies my sense of what reasonable argument can be: steady, reflective, connected to experience but also to the wider culture, discreetly slangy, thoughtful.

This morning’s short essay on Prince, “All of my Purple Life” was a typical treat.

One thing I’ve appreciated about Prince, as I’ve aged, is that he knows how to sing about sex, like a man honestly singing about sex. Much of the misogyny in hip-hop (and I suspect in other art forms too) comes from, forgive my profanity, a deep-seated fear of ass. Men–and especially young men–fear what they will do to be physically involved with a woman with whom they’re infatuated. They compensate by turning this fear on its head and projecting. They make women into temptresses, gold-diggers, and villains, and make themselves into conquering heroes. Pussy don’t rule me, they’ll say–even though pussy ain’t thinking about them. Which is the problem, or rather their problem.

I think writing about gender and pop culture needs more of this kind of careful, humble, exploration of what can easily turn into a call to arms or, worse, an outbreak of hnurgh, hnurgh, hnurgh.  To what extent is a fear of someone else assuming power over us a fuel for all kinds of hateful, or even hate-skirting, words?

{ 0 comments }

Quick Note

11 June, 2009

in O internet, commentatrix, writing & research

I see this morning that Deborah is leaving The Hand Mirror.  I wanted to note what I think has been a significant contribution of hers there, cross-posted from her own blog, and that is the Friday Feminist series.

I came to feminist theory at university, where the reading I did for my literary studies subjects ranged across some of the thinkers and writers cited by Deborah, along with others.  It was that sense of having a written heritage–some of it difficult and contentious–that enabled me to define my own thinking, amorphous though it remains.

Feminist theory has also, I think, given feminism legitimacy in the academy by virtue of being published and citable.  There’s research involved in collating these extracts and I hope Deborah will continue to do so at her own site.  This explanation of her intent is also helpful.

{ 5 comments }

Motivations and Impediments

6 June, 2009

in O internet, at home, writing & research

One of the reasons I have such energy for writing here at the moment is as a kind of proof-positive against my perpetual fear: that my professional and voluntary roles at Concrete University will drain my energy reserves and leave me unable to do anything except work, eat dinner and go to bed early.  The present time of year, in which I am between semesters (we run on a slightly different calendar from the undergraduate university proper) is a time in which such a worry seems to flourish.  So there’s a defensive element to my prose, getting as much down as possible so that when the time crunch comes I won’t feel I wasted it when I had it.  (The final chapters of my manuscript could benefit from the same kind of fidelity, it must be said.)

[click to continue…]

{ 7 comments }

The author as ghost

5 April, 2009

in O internet, writing & research

Vanity GoogleThere are various names, are there not, for the act of running your name(s) through a Google search: vanity googling, auto-googling, and so on.  I do this from time to time, looking in particularly for any citations of my work and also, of course, the possibility that someone has started a hate-blog about me (some strange part of my mind remains ever fourteen; one can never be too vigilant).

A little while ago I came across this article, written for a 2001 issue of a periodical then newly online.  My contribution was extracted from the first chapter of my then-recently-submitted thesis, and its publication a chance to share a part of a trawling of my field that I thought would likely never see the light of day elsewhere, on account of its length.

[click to continue…]

{ 2 comments }

The tenant moves in

5 January, 2009

in meta-diarist, mine host, writing & research

It’s my hope that if you’re reading this it’s because you’ve followed the redirection from my old home at wordpress.com.  I hope that those of you kind enough to link to that site will update your links to here. *

As with any move, my attention at the moment is held by the bright shiny newness of it all, so it may be a day or two before I begin the usual reflective writing for which I am known across the prairies of the internet.

Let me tantalise you in the meantime by contending I have fewer than five thousand more words to write before my manuscript is complete: final draft, reading for final editing.  Once I began, at the prompting of the señor and a friend or two, to move around large blocks of text, the thing began to take shape much as a puzzle might unexpectedly near completion.  I am quite pleased with it, but that could be the result of a summer’s break.

CP

*2249 ETA: I’ll also be cross-posting from here to my old LiveJournal (primarily just because I can), for those of you who prefer to read my entries there.

{ 14 comments }

Cross-pollination

22 September, 2008

in O internet, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, teaching & learning, the social round, writing & research

I have non-teaching time, at this, the sweetest time of year.  Most of Concrete University, and much of Sockburn too, is heavy with blossom.  Individual petals blow in drifts across lawns, adhering to my clothes and hair, the north face of the house and in the ears and up the noses of unsuspecting puppies.  A few days of rain at the end of last week made the gutters run with lemon-coloured pollen water.  The return of the sunshine is such that, though eyes stream and grow puffy on people and animals alike, the whole of the western suburbs seems to be strolling about, amiably, in short sleeves, asking itself how nice it is to see the sunshine.

[click to continue…]

{ 5 comments }

Sockburn and the southern Gothic

28 April, 2008

in at home, commentatrix, in Aotearoa

The relocation of Philip Matthews, the former Listener journalist, to the South Island has, I infer, brought about the confrontation that many northern migrants must make with the different way of life here: colder and sparser, a sense of foreboding appears to infuse the sensibility of the new arrivals. Of course, I am reading into this article a sense of personal difference from what is the here and now: the muggy, populous green environs of Auckland’s triple star (south, west and east-Central) superseded by the colder, grimmer and more constrained climate of these southern outposts.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

Not Given Lightly

28 April, 2008

in O internet, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, meta-diarist, writing & research

I’m flattered—really flattered—when bloggers and students and friends refer to me as literary or even literate.  I mean it.  It’s struck me in the last few days, as it seems to do seasonally, how I don’t belong to a community of poets, novelists or even critics, at least as these things might be conventionally recognised.  I have no stellar contacts nor networks to my name; I am not of the scene, as I perceive it.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

The common-place book

23 March, 2008

in O internet, in Aotearoa, meta-diarist

There is plenty to read on my blogroll, and I find new gems—no stone unmined—every week.  Stef and Deborah represent themselves and their experience with lucidity and clarity multiple times a week, and are collaborating with others on The Hand Mirror, whose premise shows what many of us know: that the second wave has not yet dissipated.

My online recherches for material on Murakami, whose Norwegian Wood I am working on (in translation) with my literary studies students, brought me in passing to the selfdivider, which is well-turned indeed.  Reading this new writing has led me to think about the kind of writing I am doing here, and how it has changed in the four years since I began writing, in this mode, online.

[click to continue…]

{ 2 comments }

darkness, burrowing like a mole

16 March, 2008

in at home, commentatrix, writing & research

In many ways, writing fiction is easier than academic writing or even the kind of fragmentary autobiography I keep here: few references to chase, once research is done, and the pleasure of making things up, as opposed to introspectively examining one’s mind.   These points of difference, however, belie what is the greatest risk for me in generating fictive prose, which is that I may write over the top of my plot and characters rather than revealing them from within their own mise-en-scène.  This is sometimes described as telling, not showing, but a more reliable indicator for me is how easy it feels: if I’m thinking “I can do this!  Yeah!” instead of something closer to “urrrggghh”, then I’m likely doing it wrong.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries