elfriede jelinek

“Print is dead”. That’s the motto Elfriede Jelinek’s last literary gesture seems to be saying. What an incredible writer Jelinek is! With books such as ‘The piano teacher’, ‘Lust’, ‘Greed’, and ‘Wonderful, wonderful times’, it seems an amazing gift that a writer of such stature goes online to offer her last work, ‘Envy’. Unfortunately, non german readers will have to wait for a translation.

Jelinek, Nobel Laureate 2004, says, “Anyone who wants to can download it or print it out.” She describes the process of “publishing a text on the Internet” as being “wonderfully democratic.” About the Internet itself, Jelinek says, “I find the Internet to be the most wonderful thing there is. It connects people. Everyone can have input.”

Jelinek’s experiment shows how the Web can be used to generate interest and create an audience. But what is Jelinek’s gesture saying about publishers?

hemingway

"Hills Like White Elephants" is an amazing story, almost pure dialogue. It is an impressive and subtle account of the conflict between 'the American' and a 'girl', a couple waiting for a train in Spain. The conflict is the inevitable abortion the girl will have, and the subltlely lays in the disguised way the resolution is conceived in terms of narrative:

"Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get along".

"Of course it does. But I don't want anybody but you. I don't want any one else. And I know it's perfectly simple".

"Yes, you know it's perfectly simple".

"It's all right for you to say that, but I do know it".

"Would you do something for me now?".

"I'd do anything for you".

"Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?".

ernest hemingway

"With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright green in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid looked up at her".

"'Anyway, I want a cat', she said, 'I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat'". (In "Cat in the Rain").

miklós radnóti

In 1944, Hungarian jew Miklós Radnóti was deported to a labor camp in Yugoslavia. Too weak to walk he was shot to death with other prisoners. The mass grave in which they were buried was exhumed after the war and Radnóti's last poems, describing incidents of the march, were found in his trench coat pocket by his wife.

From "Foamy sky "

The moon sways on a foamy sky,
I am amazed that I live.
An overzealous death searches this age
and those it discovers are all so very pale.
...
The forest bled and in the spinning time
blood flowed from every hour...
...I lived to see that and this,
the air feels heavy to me.
A war sound-filled silence hugs me as before my nativity.
...I stop here at the foot of a tree,
its crown swaying angrily.
A branch reaches down -- to grab my neck?
I'm not a coward, nor am I weak,
just tired. I listen.
And the frightened branch explores my hair.
To forget would be best,
but I have never forgotten anything yet.
Foam pours over the moon
and the poison draws a dark green line on the horizon.
I roll myself a cigarette
slowly, carefully. I live.

--Tajtékos ég, translated by Gina Gönczi

grace paley

Grace Paley (1922-2007)

"People talk of alienation and so forth… I don't feel that. I feel angry at certain things, but I don't feel alienated from it. I feel disgusted with it, or mad, but I don't feel I'm not in it." (Grace Paley).

Grace Paley died a month ago. I’ve been going through her short stories. There’s one that I especially like: ‘Samuel’, about a boy who stupidly dies while loitering around on the subways. After Samuel’s death, his parents have another child. And these are the chilling lines in which the short story ends, taking the mother’s point of view:

“But immediately she saw that this baby wasn’t Samuel. She and her husband together have had other children, but never again will a boy exactly like Samuel be known”.

maria luisa bombal

Going through Bombal's bibliography I was made to remember...

María Luisa Bombal, who died without receiving the National Award for Literature, contemplated suicide. That was in Santiago in 1941. Instead, she ran into an old fiancé in the Hotel Crillón, impulsively drew from her handbag a Mauser pistol, fired four shots into him. He recovered, forgave, filed no charges.

"We have organized a logical existence over a well of mysteries".

"It may be that true happiness lies in the conviction that one has irremediably lost happiness. Then we can begin to move through life without hope or fear, capable of finally enjoying all the small pleasures, which are the most lasting."
Maria Luisa Bombal

ian mcewan

"Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight, I have had my eye on other people's parents", Preface to 'Black Dogs'