Writings

Kim Chul: The poet who said sorry

Tuesday, February 24th, 2015

The end of 2014 saw a deeply silly furore over Seth Rogen’s The Interview, an otherwise forgettable, ‘satirical’ account of two bumbling idiots deployed by the FBI to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The film prompted rage from Pyongyang.

The whole affair was interesting to me because it was something of a rarity. North Korea often gets cross with other nations – that isn’t rare – but it’s unusual for the North Korean elite to get involved in cultural matters beyond their own border. Indeed, far more fascinating/horrifying censorship stories have emerged from within the hermit kingdom.

Take the life of North Korean poet Kim Chul. (more…)

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On Knut Hamsun’s Hunger

Saturday, November 29th, 2014

Per Oscarsson in the 1966 film adaptation of Hunger, Knut Hamsun's classic novel.

In the genealogy of fiction influences this novel is the missing link.

In retrospect I could have inferred the existence of such a novel from the totality of other novels I have read. Its influence crops up everywhere: in outsider-type characters across several novels and in Kafka’s ‘Hungerkunstler’, in biographies, and even in my own stories.

The account begins, “It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him…”

This young man with no purpose, no allegiances, no job, no worldly ambition wanders through the city. He has previously written a couple of articles for a newspaper and earned money for it. But now the money has run out and he cannot pay the rent.

He leaves a note for his landlady, shuts the door behind him, and walks the streets. He gives no thought to the future – it is late evening before he begins to think of where he might sleep for the night. He is proud and honest. No family or close friends are mentioned, he never thinks of them, nor do we learn anything specific about his life up to that point. He is educated and has student friends, the editor treats him as a social equal. Yet he has no-one to appeal to in his abject state. He seems to lack a self-preservation instinct: there are surely options open to him, a loan from someone, family members however distant, his schoolteachers. It is easy to say “he is too proud to ask for help”. But pride is just a word, and as the reader sinks fully into the narrative the man’s moment-by-moment experience pushes aside any simple explanation of motives.

In the opening pages our nameless narrator gives some of his last money to a beggar, pawns his waistcoat, and spins a fantasy tale to the pawnbroker of how he is a famous philosopher. The pawnbroker gives no indication he disbelieves the story. The narrator goes on his wanders, making up prestigious identities to impress beggars and strangers on park benches. At one point he follows – ‘stalks’ them would be the modern word – two young women. His mood veers from elation to despair. The reader experiences a constant anxiety that this man will commit a random crime or some act that will end in his destruction.

He thinks about God:

“God had struck his finger down into the network of my nerves and gently, quite casually, brought a little confusion among the threads […] And there was a gaping hole after his finger, which was God’s finger, and wounds in my brain from the track of his finger.”

The account plunges deeper and deeper into the subjectivity of the moment. Each individual reader will draw on their own concepts to make sense of what is happening to the narrator. I myself might put it: He loses grasp of any socially-constructed understanding of the self. He becomes a man with no history and no name. He is like an engine which has become disengaged from the vehicle, and spins making much noise and vibration. Any engagement with the world will be arbitrary – he might become a grocer’s assistant or might starve or might get thrown in jail.

He gets physically weaker and his thoughts are out of kilter. Pages are spent delineating the narrator’s sleepless nights and manias and vomiting and delirium.

Knut Hamsun painting by Alfredo Andersen (1860-1935).

Knut Hamsun by Alfredo Andersen (1860-1935)

A couple of incidental notes: Nobody seems to be afraid of the narrator, even though his behaviour borders on frenzied. The girl he meets, the stallholders, the man on the bench – none seem to feel physically threatened by this young man so clearly “off his head”. In the city where I am now, daily life in public is circumscribed by fear. People are aware of dangerous areas, there is a frisson of fear each time a beggar is a little too obtrusive, security guards stand at the doors of every Centra convenience store. I have no idea whether modern Dublin has a higher violent crime rate than 1890s Oslo, but the fear level in the former is certainly higher.

Another incidental point is the narrator’s annoyance with disrespect from a servant. She has figured out he is poverty-stricken and cheekily asks if it was him she saw picking his teeth on the steps of the Grand Hotel. Although the narrator loses most of his sense of self, he knows he is definitely not a servant.

Such concepts as fairness, nobility, and pride still animate the narrator. He himself does not question the existence of values and ideals and a background notion of nobility. This text is far far distant from the naturalism of his USA contemporary Stephen Crane.

One possible reading is that pride, awe, artistic vision and joy are irreducible. They are not however concepts which can accessed by introspection; instead they find expression in the pulse and pain of every second of daily life. We live out these ideas.

Whatever else he may be, Knut’s hungry man is not the product of circumstance. This is not a delineation of a victim of society.

Knut’s Hunger had to wait over a hundred years until 1996 for a proper, generally-praised translation. In an appendix, the translator of the depicted edition, Sverre Lyngstad, discusses the two previous translations. There is a bowdlerised rendering from 1899, and a 1967 translation by Robert Bly.

Lyngstad pours such contempt on the latter that Robert Bly must have gone out back and chopped through a few dozen logs: “It looks as though the translator was either unaware of these difficulties or decided to produce his own text, using Hamsun’s original as a mere pretext for undertaking an independent creation.”

Aiden O’Reilly

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Aiden O’Reilly’s collection of short stories, Greetings, Hero, is out now, priced £10.70 / €13.69 / US$17.35

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Exclusive excerpt from Vorrh 2 by B. Catling

Sunday, October 27th, 2013

OL LONGFELLAR, ADAM AND A PREVAILING BREEZE: AN EXTRACT FROM THE ERSTWHILE, VORRH 2

Execution techniques vary widely and cultural preferences do not always travel well. Such was the case in Essenwald. The twentieth century’s fashion for enclosing the act and making it clandestine and elitist was not well-receive d among the ancient tribes of the African continent. They wanted, demanded something more theatrical, lavish in its spectacle and democratically available to all. (more…)

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Selected Poems – Anne Champion

Monday, September 9th, 2013

We proudly present a selection of brilliant poetry by Anne Champion.

Read these hard-hitting beauties right here.

 

Anne Champion is the author of Reluctant Mistress, a poetry collection released by Gold Wake Press in 2013. Her work appears in Verse Daily, The Pinch, Cider Press Review, PANK Magazine, The Comstock Review, Poetry Quarterly, Line Zero, Thrush Poetry Journal and elsewhere.  She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a Pushcart Prize nominee and a St. Botolph Emerging Writer Grant nominee.  http://anne-champion.com

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From Untitled Chapbook – Katie Longofono and Mary Stone Dockery

Sunday, August 18th, 2013

We bring you an exclusive extract from a collaborative as-yet-untitled chapbook by the ultra-talented duo Katie Longofono and Mary Stone Dockery. (more…)

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Pepper the Yard with Light – Matthew Porubsky

Wednesday, August 14th, 2013

We bring you a very exciting extract from Matthew Porubsky’s book-length poem Pepper the Yard with Light.

Read it here.

 

Matthew Porubsky lives in Topeka, Kansas and works as a freight conductor for the Union Pacific Railroad. He has four collections of poetry, voyeur poems, Fire Mobile (The Pregnancy Sonnets), Ruled by Pluto and John.  His poetry has been featured in RHINO, Quiditty, The Journal (UK), {HOOT} and elimae. Visit mppoetry.com for more info.

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Atavistic Elf – Meg Tuite

Sunday, August 11th, 2013

She was gamey, ossified in my being, with a tattoo of a cockroach on her right arm and bagpipes on her left. I sat across the cafe from her every morning and tried not to gouge out my eye from lust for her musk. She permeated my wail that I tucked under my wretched self so I wouldn’t have to flog myself at home again.

I was an unkempt skull she twirled by and nodded at. Someone like a flowerpot seen everyday and barely noticed. I hoped there were blooms that dripped like a rosary in my wake. (more…)

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Selected Works – Pepe Arroyo

Wednesday, August 7th, 2013

Pepe Arroyo carving

back to the barter system

i finally put an ad up in The Pennysaver.
for months, i’ve been trying to come up with
a good company name and after much deliberation
finally settled on one. so, my ad read:
Metaphysical Heating + Air Conditioning,
Artistic Craftsmanship at Reasonable Prices.
Ask For Pepe. (626)390-7765

and yesterday i got my first call. the voice
on the other end, a woman’s, sounded sexy
and desperate. maybe it sounded sexy because
it sounded desperate. a hairdresser in Covina
complaining that her recently-installed a/c
ain’t cutting the mustard and wanted to know
if i can go by and take a gander at it. (more…)

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Braving the (new) New World

Saturday, August 3rd, 2013

“If I’d learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.”― Alex Garland, The Beach (more…)

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Charlie Brooker Knew

Monday, July 29th, 2013

20130729-173456.jpg

Charlie Brooker knew.

Don’t like this post.

They look at the screen, at the boxes on the screen. Each box contains a face and each face exhibits a smile or a pout. Each face is static. There is no movement, no emotion. Some boxes have pictures of flowers, or food, or a car. These are the people who want to be their friends, but think they are not beautiful enough. Not beautiful enough to be virtually real.

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